Meghan And Harry Continue To Slam The British Government
You could never accuse Meghan Markle and Prince Harry of being afraid to speak their minds — even if what's on their minds doesn't exactly reflect kindly on Harry's family, the British royals, or the governments of either the U.K. or the U.S. While members of the royal family are, strictly speaking, forbidden from getting involved in politics, we suppose the fact that Harry and Meghan have officially resigned from royal life means they get to say and do whatever they'd like. Which they have.
Forget the secret-spilling Oprah interview. Prince Harry has actually sued the British government for the right to police protection for himself, Meghan, and their two children while they are in the United Kingdom. Harry and Meghan have also signed their names to a number of causes that might be seen as having a political bent, like their grant donations to organizations pushing for gender equality and to address climate change, according to the Archewell website. They have also been critical of some of the U.K.'s COVID-19 vaccination policies.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are trying to get the world vaccinated
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle joined over 130 others in signing an open letter from the organization The People's Vaccine — with whom they've worked before — which calls for wealthy nations to lift pharmaceutical companies' intellectual property rights over COVID-19 vaccines, allowing other nations to develop their own vaccines and get shots to more people across the world, per People.
The letter reads, "[T]he cruel reality is that self-defeating nationalism, pharmaceutical monopolies and inequality" stand in the way of making vaccines globally accessible which would help put an end to the pandemic. It also gets pretty specific in its condemnation, continuing, "The European Union, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland continue to block the lifting of intellectual property rules which would enable the redistribution and scale-up of COVID-19 vaccines, test and treatment manufacturing in the global south."
If anyone in the British government is surprised that Harry and Meghan would gladly put their names to this letter, then they probably haven't been paying attention. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been talking publicly about the need to get everyone in the world vaccinated for quite some time. In May 2021, they served as campaign chairs for Global Citizen's Vax Live, a charity concert aiming to expand vaccine access across the globe. Per BBC News, the couple said, "We will all benefit, we will all be safer, when everyone, everywhere has equal access to the vaccine."