RICHARD EDEN: The ‘Meghan problem’ and the overlooked reasons courtiers and friends tell me why William and Kate won’t welcome back Harry
The much-heralded reunion of Oasis rock stars Noel and Liam Gallagher has led to numerous calls for an even more prominent pair of estranged brothers to ‘get the band back together’.
While the Mancunian musicians are due to play for the money, Princes William and Harry would be performing together on the world stage for the good of the Monarchy, or so the argument goes.
Those calling for King Charles’s sons to use the Gallaghers as a model for fraternal reconciliation, have, however, conveniently overlooked two key factors that have been stressed to me during conversations over the past week with courtiers and royal pals.
Firstly, the Gallagher rapprochement was agreed only, it is said, because of Noel’s separation from his second wife, Sara MacDonald. The PR executive was widely thought to have stood in the way of any Oasis reunion. She and irascible Liam had clashed repeatedly over the years, with Liam even comparing her and his brother, at one point, to being ‘like Fred and Rose West’.
Harry, by contrast, remains happily married to Meghan. Although the American former actress has not compared William and the Princess of Wales to serial killers, she has publicly claimed Catherine made her cry and accused unnamed royals of being racists. The accused were later identified by Meghan’s cheerleader Omid Scobie as Catherine and the King.
The second overlooked factor is that Noel publicly traded insults with his brother for years, calling him, for example, ‘the angriest man you’ll ever meet’. Noel added of the singer: ‘He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.’
By contrast, William, like his wife, has refused to be drawn into a slanging match with his brother that would be unbecoming of a future King. We have only caught glimpses of his anger at the insults to which he has been subjected from across the Atlantic.
Who can forget the Prince of Wales declaring forcefully, ‘We are very much not a racist family’, when a reporter shouted a question to him on his first public engagement after Harry and Meghan’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021?
Harry’s attendance at the memorial service in Norfolk for his uncle Lord (Robert) Fellowes last week, who died in July aged 82, was the first time that he has been at the same event as his brother since 2022. Then, they took part in an awkward walkabout at Windsor with their wives after the death of their grandmother Queen Elizabeth.
Although fellow mourners said the brothers did not speak to each other at St Mary’s Church in Snettisham, their attendance has provoked much speculation about a reconciliation between the pair.
However, not one of the friends or courtiers I spoke to this week thought that would happen, at least not in the near future.
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As his wife has treatment for cancer, a friend of William says there is one member of the family the prince is keen to see returning to public engagements – and it’s not Harry
‘There will be no reunion until Harry and Meghan apologise to their Royal Highnesses for everything they have said,’ one former courtier told me. ‘And there is no sign that is likely.’
A friend of the royals told me: ‘It’s hard to see a reconciliation. How could there be when William and Catherine have the justifiable fear that anything they say could appear in a future book or be repeated in a TV programme.’
In a reference to Catherine, who has been undergoing treatment for an unnamed form of cancer, a pal of William told me: ‘There is one member of the family who William is keen to see returning to public engagements – and it’s not Harry.’
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