Meghan’s hypocrisy is now beyond parody

I for one have never doubted that the Duchess of Sussex has perfectly good reasons for not attending the Coronation. After all, she and her husband have two children. And every parent knows how hard it can be to find a reliable babysitter. This is why my wife and I always use my father-in-law. Unfortunately for the Duchess, her father-in-law is the King, and it seems that on this particular occasion he is unavailable.

I’m sure she would have loved to come otherwise. Doubtless she will be watching the ceremony live on TV like the rest of us, wishing with all her heart that she could have been there. By a cruel twist of fate, however, it happens to fall on the exact same day as Prince Archie’s fourth birthday, and the children must come first.

Still, I hope she’ll look on the bright side. By the time of the next Coronation, her children will presumably be adults. Which means she’ll be free to come and enjoy William and Kate’s big day.

A heartening thought. For now, though, it must be deeply frustrating for her to find some people daring to question her absence. Which is why she’s acted so swiftly to dismiss speculation that it has anything to do with a letter she wrote to her father-in-law in 2021, expressing her concerns about unconscious bias in the Royal family. The letter is believed to have been written shortly after her interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which the Duchess alleged that an unnamed member of the Royal family had asked about the colour of her unborn son’s skin.

Barely had news of this letter been published than her press secretary fired off the following statement.

“The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago,” it declared, coldly. “Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating.”

Quite right, too. Because, if there’s one thing the Duchess can’t stand, it’s people who spend all their time obsessively raking over the past. Nothing appals her more than those who endlessly harp on, purely for their own financial gain, about what may or may not have happened in the Royal family several years ago. Why do these people insist on flogging a dead horse in this sensationalist, attention-seeking way?

It must be very upsetting for her. I only hope she will let us know the full story, during the Sussexes’ next series for Netflix. Or perhaps her husband could reveal all in his next book.

Sir Humphrey for PM

When allegations of bullying were first made against Dominic Raab, I thought they sounded perfectly plausible. Well, he does look quite intimidating. In fact, I’ve always thought he looks strangely like a baseball bat: a baseball bat in a suit. So hard, so blunt, so brutal. His glare’s pretty unnerving, too. He never seems to blink. It’s as if he’s had a can of Red Bull injected into his eyeballs.

I was interested, therefore, to find out what precisely he’d done. But then, last week, we finally got to read the report into his alleged bullying of civil servants. And, in my humble opinion at least, it didn’t contain any clear evidence of bullying at all. Just a somewhat brusque boss telling his staff to pull their socks up.

It all seemed rather puzzling. Could it be that the report originally did contain clear evidence of bullying, but some hapless official forgot to attach the relevant pages? If so, I hope he or she wasn’t told off, and instructed to take more care with his or her work in future. Otherwise I fear there will have to be another bullying inquiry.

The day the report was released, incidentally, I received my postal ballot for next month’s local elections. In all honesty, though, I’m at a loss to know what to do with it. These days it’s getting harder and harder to work out which candidates, if any, are worth voting for. And this is only the locals. General elections are even worse. What a terrible, dreary nuisance it all is. Especially as, for whatever reason, politicians so frequently fail to deliver on their promises.

Happily, I have a solution. Let’s abolish elections in this country altogether, and simply ask the civil service which party it would prefer to be in office, and which of that party’s policies it would be willing to enact. That would save everyone a lot of time and bother.

Better yet, we could just ask the civil service itself to form a government. Then our poor, long-suffering civil servants would finally be free of these cruel, tyrannical ministers who are constantly telling them what to do, and, even worse, expecting them to actually do it.

Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday