How Nigel Farage became part of the Harry and Meghan television saga

The Brexiteer and the Sussexes reflect a nation still bickering on social media, says Sean O’Grady

The 2017 engagement photocall of Harry and Meghan (PA)

Never one to let things slide, Nigel Farage has hit back at the Harry and Meghan Netflix documentary in his usual rather clever and robust fashion.

In covering the strained atmosphere in Britain during the height of the Brexit debates, which came just as Harry and Meghan’s relationship was becoming public, the documentary-makers (styling themselves H and M) suggested that Brexit had fuelled racism, and thus the public reaction to their relationship. The film even included a clip of Farage declaring that “immigration is the number one issue”, with the historian David Olusoga pointing out, perfectly reasonably, that immigration is often a trigger for racism.

Naturally, Farage doesn’t take this lying down. On Twitter, he noted the Sussexes “choose to use Brexit as one of the causes of the terrible racism that was put against them”. (Interesting that he accepts racism was indeed “put against them”.) However, he twists their contention to make it look absurd, interpreting their stance to be that “52 per cent of Prince Harry’s country of birth are bad, racist people”. Which is, of course, not what they said at all. They were talking about a certain motivating political mood among some – acknowledged by Farage – and the general media reaction to his fiancée’s background.