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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Top PR Woman Has a New Boss: The Queen

Jeremy Selwyn
Jeremy Selwyn

The Queen has snapped up Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s former PR director, after she was fired by the couple when they moved overseas.

Sara Latham, who, The Daily Beast understands, was left frustrated in her role as the couple’s head of communications after major decisions were made without her input or knowledge, is among 15 staff members who will be officially made redundant Wednesday, when Harry and Meghan formally cease to be working royals and forfeit the use of their HRH titles.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Bid Farewell To Royal Life With Hideously Awkward Family Meeting

It was said at the time that efforts would be made to redeploy many of the staff due to lose their jobs and the Daily Mail reports that Latham, who has dual British and American nationality, has been “snapped up by the Queen’s private office to advise it on special projects.”

Latham worked for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama before moving to the U.K., where she worked for the government on the successful London 2012 Olympic bid.

She was a senior figure at London PR behemoth Freuds, from where she was hired by Harry and Meghan after their wedding in a blaze of publicity.

Latham was charged with bringing a professional and glamorous edge to normally staid royal PR, however she increasingly found herself undercut and outmaneuvered by the couple and the team of U.S. press advisers they hired.

The Mail reports that a palace insider said of Latham: “She has great vision and has been through a baptism of fire at the palace as a result of Megxit and come out the other side. She’ll be a breath of fresh air.”

News of Latham’s redeployment came as the couple on Sunday faced an embarrassing snub from President Donald Trump, who said that the U.S. would not pay for the couple’s protection or security following reports that they have relocated to Hollywood.

“I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom,” the president tweeted. “It was reported that Harry and Meghan, who left the Kingdom, would reside permanently in Canada. Now they have left Canada for the U.S. however, the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!”

A spokesperson for the couple said Sunday that “privately funded security arrangements” were being made, adding, “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have no plans to ask the U.S. government for security resources.”

The disclosure that their security arrangements are to be “privately funded” will now be picked over in detail in the U.K., where there is huge hostility to the notion that British taxpayer money could still be used to protect the couple.

The bill to protect them overseas has been estimated at $10m per year.

Norman Baker, former Home Office minister and expert on royal finances, told the Mail: “They’re going to Los Angeles in order to make packets of money. There will be waterfalls of dollars cascading their way. And they’re now private citizens. Why should we pay for them?

“We can’t have a situation in which members of the royal family can choose to live anywhere in the world, however dangerous, and expect us to pay. The dangers in L.A. are much more significant than in the backwoods of Windsor.”

As Harry and Meghan will no longer officially be royals, any decision to offer them state-funded protection would have rested with the White House.

The prospect of Trump offering them a sweetheart deal receded this month when excerpts of a prank call on Harry were published in which he said, “Unfortunately the world is being led by some very sick people... I think the mere fact that Donald Trump is pushing the coal industry is so big in America, he has blood on his hands.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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