The Sussexes’ ‘extinction burst’ is coming

From the point of view of New York City, where I live, everything is going Meghan and Harry’s way. News items about their folly vs the worthy Waleses are a standard trope of the US home page of the Daily Mail, but they are the wrong side of America’s zeitgeist. True, no one could have expected a weaponised lady-in-waiting to sink the strenuous efforts to update the House of Windsor brand, but it is also true that to anyone with a modicum of PR smarts, the where-are-you-really-from flap involving Lady Susan Hussey – a Cretaceous-era courtier often glimpsed beneath a flower-pot hat riding beside the late Queen in the car to church – was a debacle waiting to happen. Exhibit A was the roll-out of the news that the Queen Consort is replacing the mouldy concept of ladies-in-waiting with something new – unpaid ‘companions’ doing pretty much the same thing. It was glaring to American eyes that this bold new line-up from the ‘modernising’ monarchy featured six posh white women of a certain age.