A government minister has labeled the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as an irrelevance to the UK, as they face calls to have their royal titles stripped. Prince Harry, who moved to the US to life with his wife Meghan Markle, has received criticism for attacking important British institutions in the couple's Netflix Documentary 'Harry and Meghan'.
In the controversial docuseries Harry said the royals have a "huge level of unconscious bias" while Meghan said the media wanted to "destroy" her.
Conservative MP Bob Seely said there is a "political issue" with his comments, since he and his wife quit being a senior member of the royal family two years ago and has said that the couple should have their titles removed with plans to bring forward a bill to do so.
He said he had been thinking about bringing legislation forward even before the Netflix documentary emerged, telling the PA news agency: “There is a political issue. As well as trashing his family and monetising his misery for public consumption, he is also attacking some important institutions in this country.”
The couple's deals with Netflix and Spotify were reportedly worth more than £100 million, with the docuseries the first major output for them on the streaming service.
Employment minister Guy Opperman concurred with Seely, telling BBC's Question Time: “I think they are clearly a very troubled couple, which I think anybody looking at them can say is a sad state of affairs. That having been said, I agree that they are utterly irrelevant to this country and the progress of this country and the royal family that we all, I believe, support.”
In the documentary Harry said members of his family questioned why Meghan needed more protection from the media than their wives had been given, but he said they failed to grasp the “race element”.
“In this family, sometimes you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. There is a huge level of unconscious bias. The thing with unconscious bias, it is actually no-one’s fault. But once it has been pointed out, or identified within yourself, you then need to make it right."
The couple also took aim at the British press, with Meghan claiming “salacious stories” were “planted” in the lead-up to their wedding, and that the media would find a way to "destroy" her "no matter how good" she was.
After the documentary aired, a row broke out over whether the royal family and the palaces were given the right to reply to the couple’s controversial show, with a senior palace source saying that Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace and members of the family were not approached for comment on content in the series.
However a Netflix source said the communications offices for the King and the Prince of Wales were contacted in advance and given the chance to react to Harry and Meghan’s claims. Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace confirmed they received an email from a third-party production company with an unknown address before contacting Netflix to clarify its authenticity, but never received a response.
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