That interview: winners and losers

“Cui bono?” as Lenin used to say about royal TV interviews. It’s obvious who the winners are from that interview: Harry and Meghan, Oprah Winfrey (who casually slipped in a reference to a TV series she’s already signed up for with Harry for Apple TV), CBS and ITV. In other words, those who are hugely rich celebrities, those who would be hugely rich celebrities and the old TV networks making a comeback in the age of Netflix.  

What about the losers? Curiously, the two biggest losers both think they are winners. First, Labour just couldn’t wait to politicise this as fast as they could. At lunchtime on Tuesday Keir Starmer told BBC News, “It’s a reminder… that too many people still experience racism in 21st-century Britain.” Allegations of racism raised by the Duchess of Sussex, he said, “need to be taken very seriously”. The BBC interviewer forgot to say, only if they are true. Then this morning on the Today programme, Diane Abbott and Jonathan Ashworth expressed their concerns about racism in the Palace.

Clearly, they all thought this would be to Labour’s advantage. Like everything else they have done since they elected Corbyn, it isn’t. Labour’s key task is to win back the white working-class vote in the North of England. That’s it. Nothing else will get Labour back to Downing Street. Listening to the patronising tones of Diane Abbott implying that the Royal Family, and indeed Britain itself, are irredeemably racist is not going to win back patriotic (and largely white) Northern working class voters. 

The biggest loser of all, though, is, of course, the BBC. Not just because they didn’t buy the UK rights to the interview, so that this became the first dramatic royal interview not to be on the BBC (Diana was on Panorama, Prince Andrew on Newsnight) — though this didn’t help. 

But the real problem was the BBC’s shocking coverage from the very beginning of the story. Leading presenters and reporters on most of the top BBC news programmes forgot one little word: allegedly. Meghan alleged that someone made a nasty comment about the potential colour of her baby. Who? She didn’t say and Oprah apparently didn’t care because she didn’t ask. After all, speculation is good. If Oprah tackled Meghan to the ground till she admitted no one had actually said this, the phone lines to ITV and other TV networks around the globe would suddenly go dead. Better to just imply. Rule out the Queen and Prince Philip, of course, because they are old and will die soon and it wouldn’t look very good for brand Sussex to have called them racists just before they died. So just leave it hanging there. Someone, but we can’t say who. 

Back at the BBC, what are the odds that any one of their reporters will get to the truth of these allegations? Zero. Rather than try and do some journalism or use that key word “allegedly”, the BBC has decided to convict the Royal Family and Britain of racism. On Tuesday’s Today programme, just after the 8am news, they lined up three Black interviewees who all agreed that Britain and probably the Royal Family are racist and that’s the problem. To say otherwise, according to historian David Olusoga, would be to “gaslight” Meghan, not to believe the victim of racism, when we know she is telling the truth and is the victim. How does David Olusoga know? How does anyone know? No one knows because no one has been named. On the basis of an allegation, a whole nation and the monarchy (all those mysterious “aides” and “courtiers”) are convicted of racism. 

The BBC aren’t doing the research. They wheel out Nicholas Witchell, three leading Labour politicians and three leading Black critics of British racism, and a few appalled, posh, white royal biographers and journalists for balance, and that’s it. And they forgot to say “allegedly”, just to remind us all that no one knows whether any of this is remotely true. 

But isn’t that what the BBC News empire is for, to report facts and truth that they can back up with evidence? Apparently not. The Ten O’Clock News sends a Black reporter to Brixton to interview upset Black people on the street about this case of royal racism, the Today programme interview Labour politicians and Black critics of British racism, but no one tries to find out if any of there is any evidence for a story that has made a very small handful of people a very large amount of money.

Oprah did say the Sussexes weren’t receiving any money for the interview, but she let the cat out of the bag when she mentioned her series with Harry for Apple TV. Or is he not getting paid for that either? And now that those allegations have gone round the world, they can name their price for future interviews and TV projects. Not with the poor old BBC, because they can’t afford them, but Netflix, Apple, Amazon, will all be on the phone. I am sorry to contradict David Olusoga, Diane Abbott and the BBC, but this isn’t about racism (unless Nicholas Witchell can find any evidence at the Palace). It’s about money and celebrity. What is really disturbing about all of this is that some might think that Oprah and the Sussexes have monetised race, that Labour is politicising race and the BBC is obsessing about race and that this is really not good for anyone.

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