Instant Opinion: ‘Harry and Meghan are playing a risky game with the monarchy’s social contract’

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Angela Epstein in The Daily Telegraph

on the royal right to privacy

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Harry and Meghan are playing a risky game with the monarchy’s ‘social contract’

“Harry and Megan may not feel entirely comfortable with the fact that in the modern era, their relationship with the public is essentially transactional – we pay through our taxes, and they deliver. But they do enjoy the fabled fruits of a pampered existence. I fear that Harry and Meghan’s attempt to redraft the monarchy’s lines of engagement could well end in tears. For in imposing an air exclusion zone around their lives the couple risk demolishing the enormous good will which sprang forth the moment the Prince started squiring his Hollywood queen.”

2. Owen Jones in The Guardian

on double standards

Where is the outrage about the Tory party’s Islamophobia?

“More Tory members than not believe that the very presence of minorities has damaged our society. These are far-right beliefs and yet they are mainstream in the party of government. This should be a national scandal, and yet it is not. It is not splashed on all the front pages; it is not topping news bulletins; it is not the relentless topic of TV pundit debates; it is not leading to disgusted resignations from the Tory party; it is not provoking frenzied warnings that the Tory party is not fit for power. Let me conduct a thought experiment: imagine a poll that found that 60% of Labour members agreed that Judaism is ‘generally a threat to western civilisation’, or that 43% did not want a Jewish prime minister, or 40% wanted to limit the number of Jews entering Britain. Such findings would quite rightly cause an explosion of outrage, as well as passionate warnings, including from me, that Labour must be kept from winning office.”

3. Gerard Baker in The Times

on the lessons of the Kim Darroch affair

Our ambassadors should be more partisan

“Britain’s executive still labours under the notion that senior civil servants can be neutral, highly educated and super-articulate automatons, reprogrammed every five years to go off and do what the latest here-today, sacked-tomorrow minister tells them. It was always improbable but surely Brexit has blown that myth apart.”

4. Grace Blakey in the New Statesman

on the future of finance

Making banking boring again: the decline of Deutsche Bank

“One can imagine huge, unaccountable technology corporations coming to dominate the international financial system – by developing their own payment systems, or by buying up the bonds of other corporations. Alternatively, we may see the growth of public investment and retail banking, alongside the emergence of new, democratic models of public ownership. Which option wins out – corporate monopoly finance or democratic public finance – will depend upon politics.”

5. Sahil Mahtani in The Spectator

on reparations

Anglo-Saxons deserve reparations for the Norman Conquest

“To those who suggest we might be better spending our time righting the injustices of today rather than of the distant past I say: shame on you. If these wrongs are not righted through compensation they will live on in our collective shame and the descendants of the victims will continue to suffer. Far from abandoning the principle of restorative justice we should be expanding it and exploring what other injustices might be put right through financial compensation.”