HE Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s trip to Europe next month will be about ‘having their cake and eating it’, believes Sarah Vine. The Mail columnist told our royal talkshow Palace Confidential that the trip will be a chance for the pair to fulfil their dream of picking and choosing their duties.
‘The working royals are on quite a punishing schedule of day-to-day stuff, most of which doesn’t get any coverage, most of which isn’t very glamorous, most of which doesn’t involve wearing very expensive earrings and necklaces and saying very meaningful things about poor people, which is what Meghan likes to do,’ she tells the programme.
‘They don’t have to do that any more: They can come in, sweep in, get lots of coverage and then they can go home.’
Royal correspondent and author Victoria Murphy says it marks a step on the road to the new life that they have planned.
‘Despite the criticism that they get, they have kind of achieved what they want, because they are now doing the things they want to do in the way that they want to do them and they have that control,’ she says. ‘And because of their past roles and their links to the Royal Family they will always be relevant.’
This week social media has been awash with rumours that the Sussexes will renew their vows as part of a new Netflix reality show. Charlotte Griffiths, The Mail on Sunday’s editor at large, says it’s so outlandish that it just might be true.
‘It sounds so unrealistic, but the truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to these two,’ she says. ‘They probably have a lot of resentment around the wedding time, because of course there were all these dramas going on backstage, plus they need some interesting Netflix content, because footage of them at the WellChild awards is all very well, but they’ve got to have that Kardashian thing, that set-piece.’
Later in the show, our panel examine royal security in the wake of the news that Prince Andrew will keep his 24-hour police protection, despite Harry losing his. Plus, they look at how Prince Charles is combating his perceived negative portrayal on The Crown by tackling it head-on.

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AS he fought in vain to hold together his Cabinet, Boris Johnson managed to find time for his weekly audience with HM the Queen – we asked our panel of royal experts how that conversation would have gone down.
The Daily Mail’s Diary Editor Richard Eden says that if the Queen had an opinion, she would have got it across.
‘We certainly know that they do listen to her. Prime Ministers including Tony Blair have said that she has a very persistent way with them, and she asks probing questions, difficult questions. And he felt that he was often being jogged to maybe think again about something.’
Some have drawn parallels between the departure of Margaret Thatcher and this week’s events. But Dickie Arbiter, the Queen’s former press secretary, says the Queen will feel far different about the departure of Johnson to that of Thatcher.
‘I don’t think there would be parallels with them, because with Mrs Thatcher there would have been an element of sympathy in the way that it happened,’ he tells the programme. ‘This is something that’s completely different from what’s happening now and the Queen has never experienced that… the Queen admired Mrs Thatcher for having been so long the first female Prime Minister.’
The Daily Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English discusses a new set of unwanted headlines around the charities run by the Prince of Wales and the access given to wealthy philanthropists.
While there is no accusation of wrongdoing by the prince, she points out that ‘it does shine yet another unwelcome spotlight on the way that some of Prince Charles’s charities have been run in the past’.
Any criticism being levelled towards Charles is unfair, argues Dickie Arbiter, who questions why these stories are emerging now: ‘It seems that someone with an axe to grind is trying to create a bit of mischief.’
PLUS on the 40th anniversary of the day an intruder broke in to Buckingham Palace and made it into the Queen’s bedroom, the Daily Mail’s Editor at Large Richard Kay takes us on a fascinating trip down memory lane to the extraordinary summer of 1982.

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BUCKINGHAM Palace’s decision to bury a report into allegations of bullying by the Duchess of Sussex could be down to a desire not to ‘poke the bear that is Harry and Meghan’, says the Daily Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English.
Officials announced this week that the result of the investigation into the allegations – firmly denied by lawyers for Meghan – will never be made public
‘There’s been a suggestion made to me that the palace have really done this because they don’t want to poke the bear that is Harry and Meghan,’ Rebecca tells Palace Confidential. ‘And they seem to want to keep the peace with them, possibly at the expense of their workforce.
‘I suspect the Palace are willing to take a flurry of bad headlines and television reports on the chin over the next few days in the hope that after that, the whole issue will quietly wither away.’
The Firm’s decision to ‘sweep things under the carpet’ has created an ‘extraordinary’ situation, argues The Mail on Sunday’s assistant editor Kate Mansey.
‘I’ve never been at a briefing in my 20-plus years of reporting experience where something has been so comprehensively swept under the carpet,’ she says. ‘It’s extraordinary that these allegations can be made at such a high level and the public might never know the result of the review that’s been carried out.’
It’s the wrong move, says the Daily Mail’s Diary Editor, Richard Eden, as now even Meghan doesn’t get a chance to properly clear her name.
‘I think it’s terrible for everyone that’s been left hanging. You could argue that it’s very unfair to Meghan,’ he says. ‘What worries me greatly is it just seems like the Palace are falling over themselves not to upset Harry and Meghan. They seem desperate not to upset them and I think that’s a mistake.’
The panel also discuss the revelations that Prince Charles accepted carrier bags of cash totalling £2.5million in donations to his charities. And while there is no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of the prince, we ask whether the family should change their approach to charitable activities following a number of negative headlines and the cash-for-access scandal.

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