It says a lot about this country and our media that amid the acres of comment about Prince Harry there’s been effectively zero outrage over the fact he viewed the act of killing 25 Afghans suspected of being in the Taliban as a matter of no moral consequence.

To Harry Windsor, snuffing out the lives of others was morally equivalent to “chess pieces taken off the board”.

The people and press spout endless, passionate opinions about Harry having some pathetic dust-up with his equally cosseted brother, Prince William, or his drug-taking or losing his virginity. But his casual attitude to taking 25 human lives merits nothing. No response. No damns given.

The taking of life is the ultimate taboo, even during war. Nobody - who isn’t a psychopath - treats killing as something without meaning. Those 25 deaths, the prince says, weren’t “a statistic that filled me with pride but nor did it make me ashamed … I didn’t think about those as 25 people. You can’t kill people if you see them as people.” The military trained him to “other” those he killed, Harry said.

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The man is morally numb. This says something dreadful both about him as a human, and about the void at the heart of the military. The harsh truth that lives will be taken in war doesn’t mean that those who take life, while in uniform, should treat the act of killing as something abstract or without moral significance.

Every human life matters - even that of a Taliban fighter, tough as that may be to accept. If we discard that tenet, we’re no better than animals.

As someone avowedly anti-monarchist, I’ve tried to refrain from commenting on the Windsor family war. All families fall out, and why would I take a side in a dispute where I hold everyone in contempt? Am I expected to rah-rah for super-rich royals, whether it’s Harry and Meghan or William and Kate?

My view is this: a plague on all their houses. I’m republican. I want rid of them. Nor do I want to feed the dark, atavistic appetite of the British public when it comes to the Windsors. The public consume the royals as if they’re chocolates to fatten on. It’s depraved, primitive.

I have, however, held a certain sympathy for Meghan Markle...

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