I was once a royalist, but since the Queen’s death I would now vote to abolish the monarchy, here’s why…

I find the Meghan and Harry situation really complex and I wish that it hadn’t become such a beacon of the furiously divisive culture wars we are living through, as I can see both sides.

I find the vitriol levelled at them totally disproportionate to say, the odious Prince Andrew, stripped of his royal titles following that disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview and then forced to pay out a reported £12 million in an out of court settlement to Virginia Giuffre, the woman who accuses him of assaulting her while she was being sex trafficked by his pal Jeffrey Epstein, but whom he claims to have never met.

How Meghan and Harry get more flak is difficult to comprehend. Yet, I find how they’ve treated their respective families in public incredibly selfish and unkind.

Their sheer hypocrisy at times is staggering (private jets) – and how they can pocket millions of dollars from Netflix, the creators of The Crown – who have literally reinvented Harry’s family history and even plan to recreate his mother’s death in a car crash  – and then complain about invasions of privacy and sue the media is beyond me.

Also, if you hate the royal family so much, why keep your titles? But there’s no escaping the fact that James Holt has got a valid point.

And this brings me to perhaps the most affecting reason I have abandoned my affection for the monarchy: the sheer cruelty of it to those unfortunate enough to have been born into it.

If there was one resounding takeaway from Harry’s candid and at times, painful memoir, Spare (and I am not talking about descriptions of his frostbitten todger) is how utterly trapped he was and his family still are.

Yes, they live in palaces and have unbridled privilege, power and wealth, but they also do not have the basic human right of freedom. And whatsmore, unlike celebrities, it is not their choice to lead these lives, it’s their birthright.

When Harry describes his former royal life as like living in The Truman Show and says, “My father and my brother, they are trapped. They don’t get to leave. And I have huge compassion for that.”

He is right. And it is not right. It is very clear from everything Harry has spewed in public since leaving the UK that this is a man with serious mental health issues, still wrestling with the grief of losing his mother at such a young age and having to endure the barbaric public manner in which he was forced to mourn her.

The way in which his personal life – and all their personal lives – has been relentlessly, rapaciously reported on by the media, myself included, as fair game because we pay for their existence does not sit well with me. They have no choice in this bizarre circus they have been born into.

I can’t be alone in thinking that when you see images of Kate and William’s young children uncomfortably carrying out their royal roles, being forced to wave to crowds of millions and shake hands with strangers, it feels like looking at young zoo animals.