Without warning, without fuss, without apology and, apparently, without consulting any of the multitudinous people they might have been expected to consult, Meghan and Harry (aka the Duke and Duchess of Sussex) have announced that they are “stepping back” as senior members of the royal family.

They intend to split their time between the UK and North America and “work to become financially independent” of what Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, always called “the firm”.

Of course it has brought the Meghan-haters out in droves, each one of them spitting poison even more virulently than before. She has isolated Harry from his family. She has brainwashed him. She has worked some kind of spell on him that has put him in her unbreakable thrall. Why? Because that’s what women do! Because that’s what happens if you let The Wrong Kind of People – divorced people, American people, children of single and (whisper it) black mothers – into Britain’s top family. They pollute it with new blood and new ideas.

Amazingly, the misogynists, racists and snobs seem unable to connect the dots between their own behaviour and their target’s desire to put an ocean between them and her newborn child and husband. Maybe they’ll work it out one day. Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.

Lucy Mangan: “I don’t blame Meghan Markle for stepping back”