A conservative comedy writer on the Isle of Man reads about Harry and Meghan’s very public privacy and asks the question every taxpayer wants answered
Friday, 23 October 2026. Peel, Isle of Man. Sitting on the harbour wall eating kippers from a paper bag, the castle across the water looking unimpressed, 12.40pm.
A Conservative Monarchist Has Questions
I am a monarchist. I think the Crown is a useful, inexpensive way of keeping politicians from becoming head of state, which is the single most important reason to have one. On the Isle of Man, the King is Lord of Mann, and the title is older and stranger than anything on the mainland. I love it. I would defend it. And I still had a few questions after reading the report on how Harry and Meghan insist they are private citizens.
The piece describes the couple arriving in Nottingham at what it calls the unofficial official royal engagement: barriers, pooled press, cheering crowds, a commentator logging a belt from Marks and Spencer, and a schedule that looked like a Buckingham Palace itinerary with better tailoring. A constitutional expert in the piece needs three cups of tea and an aspirin to explain the arrangement.
The Four Categories
The expert’s conclusion is the line I will be quoting in pubs all winter. The couple are private citizens when the subject is institutional obligation, public figures when the subject is security, royal celebrities when conducting engagements and ordinary parents when asking photographers to leave their children alone. All four descriptions can be correct provided nobody asks which one applies at a given moment.
As a conservative, I would like to ask which one applies when the bill arrives. The report is fair about it: on the Nottingham trip, the couple used a private security team rather than police convoys, and the question of taxpayer-funded protection is the subject of a review. That is the honest position. It should be decided properly, on risk, not on tabloid fury. But it should be decided. Someone, at some point, will have to tick one of the boxes.
The Form With Three Boxes
The report imagines a Home Office department of six hundred civil servants administering a new category called privately public, with a two hundred page application form asking whether the applicant currently considers themselves royal. Three boxes: Yes. No. Depends who is paying.
That third box is the most conservative sentence ever written by a London humour site. It is exactly what every taxpayer in Britain is thinking about everything: royal security, public projects, foreign aid, council consultants and the subcommittee on lunch. Depends who is paying. In Tynwald, they would put that on the wall in Manx Gaelic and carve it into the benches.
To Be Fair To Them
I want to be fair, because the companion piece on their return makes a good point: the charities in Nottingham were doing real work, and a famous visit can bring them attention and donations. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with Harry and Meghan earning their own money either, which is, after all, what conservatives want everyone to do. My only problem is with having it both ways. If you are private, be private. If you are public, accept public scrutiny. The rest of us do not get to pick a category depending on the weather.
The Manx Approach To Royalty
On the Isle of Man, our relationship with royalty is admirably practical. The King is Lord of Mann. He visits now and then. When he does, people turn out, wave flags with three legs on them, and then go back to work. Nobody logs anybody’s belt. Nobody needs a barrier. When the late Queen came, my landlady tells me, people stood on the roadside in the rain, cheered politely and then went for tea. That is the correct amount of royal enthusiasm. Enough to be respectful, not so much that you forget to get the shopping.
My landlady, a formidable woman of seventy-eight called Mrs Quayle, read the piece on my phone and said, they should come here. We would leave them alone, and they would hate it. I said that might be the most accurate thing anyone has said about the Sussexes. She said she knew. She said she has been leaving people alone on purpose for fifty years and it has never once failed.
Kippers And Constitutional Theory
Peel Castle sits across the harbour, a ruin that has seen Vikings, lords, bishops and several hundred thousand tourists with selfie sticks. It does not have a press office. It does not need one. It just sits there being old and important and occasionally getting rained on, which is, now I think about it, the ideal model for a modern monarchy. Be ancient. Be present. Say very little. Charge a modest admission fee. Let the people decide whether you were worth it.
My kippers are finished. A gull is eyeing the paper. In Nottingham, a couple are discussing privacy in front of a television crew. On the Isle of Man, a woman is eating fish on a wall and nobody knows or cares. That, I think, is what real privacy looks like. It smells of kippers. It is free. And it is available to anybody willing to live where nobody is watching.