Harry and Meghan are still giving Britons what they really want from royalty: cruel spectacle | Jonathan Freedland

You don't have to be a fan of the couple to see that monarchy exacts too high a price - and abolition would do the Windsors a favour

They're more royal than the royals. Detached they might be, but even in exile they are fulfilling their duties to the letter. For all their insistence that they had to break away from the system of monarchy, Harry and Meghan remain two of its most devoted servants. Because, for all the red-top fury aimed their way, they are doing the job from which they claimed to have stepped back" exactly as it has been prescribed for generations. Indeed, they continue to provide the service Britons have been demanding from the Windsors for a century or more.

And what is that service? At its simplest, it is entertainment - or, perhaps more accurately, diversion. At a time when the news is full of bleak tidings - nurses paid so poorly they are compelled to strike, migrants and refugees risking death to cross an icy Channel, Russian missiles raining down on Ukraine - H&M, as the couple call each other, have served up a welcome excuse to look the other way.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist