To Harry and Meghan, or should I say Meghan and Harry, but first – does anyone else remember a hilarious beer ad screened about 15 years ago featuring the “woman whisperer”, a mysterious character who hypnotises an overbearing wife into allowing her timid husband to stay with his mates for another round?
This came to mind when seeing the Sussexes’ so-called tell-all interview with television host Oprah Winfrey. This time the bar is Britain, the timid husband is Harry, and Meghan the demanding wife. Sadly for Harry, there is no woman whisperer to come to his rescue. It confirmed the duchess well and truly has custody of the duke’s two most-prized possessions, and I am not talking about the kids.
In all only two hours were given to airing the couple’s grievances, which is perhaps due to unusual restraint on their part or more likely herculean editing by the producers. Terrible tales were told of Markle’s treatment at the hands of the royals, including the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. “A few days before the wedding she was upset about something, pertaining to ... the flower girl dresses, and it made me cry,” a plaintive Markle told Winfrey. “And it really hurt my feelings.”
Contrast that bombshell revelation with that of another outsider who married into the British royal family. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother and wife of King George VI, refused to leave Britain during The Blitz, saying “The children will not leave unless I do. I shall not leave unless their father does, and the king will not leave the country in any circumstances, whatever.”
She remained resolute even when the Luftwaffe targeted Buckingham Palace. “I am glad we have been bombed,” she publicly stated. “Now we can look the East End in the eye.” Writing privately to her mother-in-law, she admitted when she heard the bombs that her “knees trembled a little bit”.
Markle’s real issue with the royal family has nothing to do with not being accepted. It is her dissatisfaction with playing second fiddle to a second fiddle. But marrying into the world’s most prestigious royal household has always been conditional on the consort subordinating him or herself to the greater good of that institution. It is a role Prince Phillip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, has performed for more than 70 years.
Her response to this is to play the ingénue. “I went into it naively … I didn’t fully understand what the job was,” she told Winfrey.
That was a credible excuse for Harry’s mother, Diana, who married at 20. Markle, however, was 36 when she became duchess. Fortunately for her, this supposed naivety does not extend to her business acumen, the couple signing deals with Netflix and Spotify worth US$130 million.
Claims of racism and royalty make for fantastic television ratings, especially the insinuation the couple’s son, Archie, was denied the title of prince because of his ethnicity. There were, claimed Meghan, “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born”.
We were not told the context of these remarks. Asked by Winfrey who had made them, Markle declined to say. “I think that would be very damaging to them,” while Harry said, “That conversation I’m never going to share”. This is obscurant. By not elaborating or naming the person who supposedly made those remarks, the Sussexes would have known this issue could only fester, as well as raise questions about the integrity of every member of the royal family.
Nonetheless these unverified claims have been accepted unquestionably by many. Why, wrote Nine entertainment reporter Brooke Boney yesterday, do we “find it so difficult to believe the stories of women of colour”?
Never mind that women of colour are just as inclined as anyone else to exaggerate, embellish, play the victim, or tell porkies. “Remember Britain is the nation (with its royals at its head) that went out into the world and said to Indigenous populations, our ideas, values, way of being is superior to yours,” Boney continued, thus inadvertently proving reductionist fallacies, and not the royal family, rule.
Harry’s actions in this matter range from the regrettable to the unconscionable. At some point he must have realised the woman he married is inherently self-centred. A man in this situation has two options, the first of which involves considerably less humiliation and angst. He can admit to himself he has been a fool and end the marriage.
If he chooses to remain, he must unceasingly parrot her narrative. There is no middle ground. It is only by acceding entirely to her demands, no matter how ludicrous, that the marriage will survive. As Harry has demonstrated, a man will even trash his heritage and sever his ties with his blood relatives if it means placating such a wife.
Admittedly what Markle has done is not unique. Another American divorcee, Wallis Simpson – a proto-Yoko Ono if you like – was the original commoner-come-homewrecker, Edward VIII abdicating the throne in 1936 to marry her. Give both women their due, for at least their egotistical obsessions ensured the departure of weak men from the Windsor household.
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Speaking of departures from hallowed institutions, we must bid farewell to the longstanding rule in the common law known as the Woolmington Principle. To quote Viscount Sankey of the House of Lords who in 1935 delivered a unanimous judgment in the case of Woolmington v DPP:
“Throughout the web of the English criminal law one golden thread is always to be seen that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt,” the court proclaimed. “No matter what the charge or where the trial, the principle that the prosecution must prove the guilt of the prisoner is part of the common law of England and no attempt to whittle it down can be entertained.”
No attempt at whittling it down can be entertained, but felling it entirely is another matter. As the great revolutionary and visionary Che Guevara stated, “judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail”. Now there was a man who knew how to deliver justice.
Henceforth the rule in Woolmington will be replaced by the Wokeington Principle. In certain cases, people will still enjoy the presumption of innocence and the entitlement to legal representation, but only at the say so of the virtuous. The catalyst for this is MinterEllison chief executive Annette Kimmitt AM, who, as the AFR’s Rear Window column reported recently, sent an email to all staff last week bemoaning that a certain client had engaged an eminent defamation practitioner and firm partner. Although she did not provide names, it was clear the client was Attorney-General Christian Porter, who has been accused of raping a woman in 1988 – a claim he strenuously denies.
“The acceptance of this matter,” Kimmitt wrote, “did not go through the firm’s due consultation or approval processes. Had it done so, we would have considered the matter through the lens of our Purposes and Values.” The implication was not subtle. Kimmitt was all but saying the firm should have refused to represent Porter given the allegation. “The nature of this matter is clearly causing hurt to some of you, and it has certainly triggered hurt for me,” she wrote.
You do not need a law degree to know that a legal firm can refuse representation only in accordance with limited reasons as outlined by the profession. The progressive vibe is not one of them. As for the “Purposes and Values” test, one can only guess what that entails. The Twitter zeitgeist, a random poll of Fitzroy residents, asking panellists on The Drum, perhaps?
Not surprisingly, MinterEllison chairman David O’Brien, following a board meeting on Tuesday, reportedly told Kimmitt her services are no longer required.
Writing in 2017 regarding the same sex marriage plebiscite, Kimmitt was adamant that the law should not discriminate. “Legalised discrimination in one area allows discrimination to flourish in others,” she serenely proclaimed. “We must do all that we can to ensure an inclusive culture that sees all Australians … treated as equals under the law.” How ironic.
Interviewed by the AFR in 2019, Kimmitt talked of her plans to transform MinterEllison. “We are a law firm, and what we are doing is redefining the boundaries of what that means,” she said.
You can say that again.
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