SARAH VINE: Happy 40th Harry. But has all the pain been for nothing?

Turning 40 is a big moment for anyone. In many ways, it’s a point of reckoning, a time to stop and take stock – and set a path for the future.

By 40, there are no more excuses: whatever road you are on, whatever your successes or failures, they’re all down to you. Life at 40 is your own responsibility, your own making. No more blaming Mum or Dad for f***ing you up, as the poet once said, or hiding behind youthful inexperience.

Also, no more faffing around: you’re more than halfway through your three-score years and ten. Chop, chop: clock is ticking.

Princess Diana, Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry Princess Diana, Prince Charles and sons on holiday, Scilly Isles

Harry told the BBC that he is ‘excited’ about turning 40. I’ll say: he’s due to inherit a reported £8 million from a trust fund left to him by the late Queen Mother

For Prince Harry, his 40th birthday today comes at the end of a process that began when he and Meghan quit the UK for a new life in California.

It’s been a painful, protracted uncoupling. The bruising interviews have been given, the ­memoir’s been written, the dirty laundry has been aired. Bridges have been burned that may never be rebuilt. For better or for worse, Harry is now well and truly his own man.

Of course, not all his privileges have been left behind. Some of the less onerous, such as his share of a £19 million trust fund left by the late Queen Mother to her great-grandchildren, remain.

Bridges have been burned that may never be rebuilt. For better or for worse, Harry is now well and truly his own man

Though many sought to blame Meghan when the couple left the UK for California, I don’t believe it was ever really about her

Harry told the BBC that he is ‘excited’ about turning 40. I’ll say: he’s due to inherit a reported £8 million from that fund.

But it’s not just great-Granny’s money tying him to the auld country. A poll in today’s MoS suggests that a third of Britons support him returning to royal duties on a permanent basis. Interesting. To me, this shows that there are plenty of people who still have a soft spot for Princess Diana’s youngest boy.

I used to be one of them, but I’m not sure any more.

I always felt desperately sorry, not just for Harry but for William, too, after they lost their mother in such terrible circumstances.

And as much as I admire and respect Charles and Camilla, I can see the couple’s behaviour during the difficult years of Charles’s marriage to Diana can’t have been easy for the boys, to put it mildly.

Understandably, Harry is a wounded soul. But being in great pain does not confer the right to inflict the same on others – nor by doing so is your own suffering necessarily alleviated. Part of being a grown-up is realising this, and trying to end the cycle of unhappiness rather than perpetuate it.

Harry, though, has done the opposite. He has visited a terrible revenge on his father and the Queen, and turned on William and Kate for no obvious reason other than, perhaps, their decision to side with the King. 

No wonder ­neither William nor Charles want to see him. In particular, Harry’s behaviour has been utterly toxic in light of the King and the Princess of Wales being treated for cancer. If he really is the kind, thoughtful soul his supporters claim, in his heart he must know this to be true.

Prince Harry and Prince William at the unveiling of their mother’s statue in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace on what would have been her 60th birthday 

And yet, while I despair of his methods and actions, part of me understands why he wanted to leave. And though many sought to blame Meghan, I don’t believe it was ever really about her. It was about Harry and his damaged relationship with his family – and his desire to break his own generational curse. For that, I can’t help but grudgingly respect him.

It takes huge courage and determination to go against people’s expectations – and in Harry’s case, the nation’s. That he has done so is testament to his strength of character. That he did it so viciously and so vindictively, though, is not.

Should he be contemplating an ‘official’ return to the UK? I don’t think so. That would be a step backwards and mean all that pain was for nothing. He needs to find his own way forward. His decision not to update his autobiography, Spare, was a step in the right direction. But he’s got a long way to go to prove he has a new role to play without exploiting past capital.

Harry, I wish you the happiest of birthdays. May it mark the start of a new and more positive chapter in your life – and for all the royals.

Be yourself, not Cindy II

Why do so-called ‘nepo-babies’ (children of celebrities) seem to have no ambition of their own? For example, Kaia Gerber, 23, looks so much like her supermodel mum Cindy Crawford, 58, that it’s hard to tell them apart – especially when she dresses the same. It’s guaranteed to get Kaia noticed, of course. But also just a little bit sad. 

Dressed the same, Cindy Crawford in 1993 and, right, her daughter Kaia Gerber last week

● The abiding image of last week was the sight of leering lags leaving prison under Labour’s early release scheme, celebrating with bottles of bubbly, fast cars and vowing to vote Labour for ever more. All while Sir Keir Starmer removed the winter fuel allowance from almost ten million pensioners, many of them disabled. What a damning snapshot of this Government’s priorities. 

● Predictably, one prisoner let out early is due back in court – on a charge of sexually assaulting a prison officer who gave him a lift to the station. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished in this topsy-turvy world. 

Is this true love?

Eamonn Holmes, 64, is a charming and lovely man. But even the TV presenter’s closest friends might say he’s punching somewhat above his weight with his new 42-year-old girlfriend. Is there perhaps more than meets the eye going on here?

Our own Smelly Cat

Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has called No10’s cat Larry ‘the most miserable animal’. Wrong. That award goes to my moggie Cersei, who’s having to share space with my daughter’s new rescue kitten. Having only just got rid of one malodorous teenage boy, I now find myself saddled with the feline equivalent. The gasses he emits should be banned. He’s an Egyptian Mau, apparently the equivalent of a cat Lamborghini. We’ve renamed him Chairman Mau.