How Meghan took Harry from bloke to woke in a blink - Patrick Mercer

Well, just over two years ago, my wife and I were lunching in Nottingham when we overheard two couples reporting on Prince Harry and Meghan’s first official duties as a couple after they had announced their engagement.

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The visit in December 2017 had happened the day before, just around the corner from our restaurant, and one couple had been in the centre of the crowd when the Royal couple had gone on their walkabout.

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Their verdict made both of us stand-to.

Now there was nothing remarkable about our informants. They were a middle-aged couple of, I guess, farming stock. The wife said: “Oh, Harry was marvellous, but Meghan... well, she’s a bit... a bit pushy, isn’t she? I reckon there’ll be trouble there. Another Fergie...”

Mrs Mercer and I were rather surprised.

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I’d met Harry a couple of times while my wife has been transfixed by their obvious delight with each other and the way the lovers seemed to blossom once their engagement was announced.

The local media had been had been in overdrive by the fairy-dust-touched pair moving with such ease among ordinary folk, so the couple’s view was certainly not what we’d have expected.

But, so far, they’re dead right.

And let me say this from the start, I could detect no trace of racism in what was said. It just seemed to be an honest opinion, unblemished by anything other than an obvious reticence to be critical.

And it’s a damn shame.

Harry had some youthful indiscretions but he fought for his country, carried out his royal duties with aplomb and threw himself into some excellent charitable causes and we were proud of him.

He seemed to be just what the Royal Family needed – a blokish sidekick for his dutiful but slightly colourless brother, our future King. And, of course, Harry could have had his pick of potential wives.

And he seemed to be conducting a series of auditions for this role with enviable gusto!

Yet, while the choice of Meghan was one few would have predicted, the whole nation rejoiced.

But how he changed.

Harry went from bloke to woke faster than you could blink.

One minute he was chanting on the rugby stands, the next appearing barefoot at a climate-change conference.

If that wasn’t enough, when the Royal couple refused to allow the public a glimpse of baby Archie, or confirm whether their son had been born at their home, as suggested because of their desire for a home birth, or in hospital, more alarm bells started to ring.

We pay the lesser Royals handsomely to open hospitals in Hull, to spend Christmas at Sandringham and to drool over their offspring.

It’s part of the deal, I’m afraid, and it’s something that Harry had every opportunity to get used to and which any future wife should have gone into with her eyes wide open – just like Kate Middleton did.

All this was compounded, of course, by Harry’s appalling handling of his and Meghan’s decision to go their own way. While we’ll never know exactly how matters unfolded, at Harry’s last formal engagement he made a speech that left me breathless.

He told us talks within the Royal Family had been going on for “so many months”.

Well, if that was the case, why could he not finesse his announcement to leave the Firm rather better?

How on earth could Meghan and he let such a thing come as a surprise to the Queen?

It smacks of petulance, almost of a desire to hurt, and is wholly at odds with his statement: “What I want to make clear is that we’re not walking away and we certainly aren’t walking away from you.”

Well, if clearing off to the far reaches of Canada isn’t walking away, then I don’t know what is.

And hand in hand with this disaster for our monarchy comes the wholly predictable shrieks from the ‘liberatti’ that Meghan’s been driven out by racism.

Strange, then, that in the same speech Harry said he watched as Britain welcomed Meghan “with open arms”.

Unless I’m mistaken, the Duchess of Sussex has made no such suggestion while the Nottingham couple mentioned earlier seemed to me to be hesitant about criticising someone whose manner they simply didn’t like in case they sounded just that – racist.

For the moment, though, our excellent young prince and his wife have been reduced to the status of a latter-day Edward VIII and Wallace Simpson, self-condemned to an exile spent touting for voice overs in Disney cartoons. I hope they rethink this decision.

I hope we get this much-needed young family back to enliven and lighten the Windsors, who have already had more than their share of misfortunes.

While I’m not holding my breath, there’s one thing I know: if they do change their minds they’ll be treated with the same love, dignity and generosity by the Queen that she has shown them in everything they have done so far.

Patrick Mercer OBE is a former soldier and ex-Conservative MP.