SARAH VINE: Happy 40th birthday, Harry. But has all the pain been in vain?

Turning 40 is a significant time for anyone. In many ways, it is a time of reflection, a time to pause and take stock, and chart a course for the future.

At 40, there are no more excuses: whatever path you take, whatever your successes or failures, it’s all up to you. Life at 40 is your own responsibility, your own creation. There’s no more blaming mom or dad for screwing you over, as the poet once said, or hiding behind youthful inexperience.

And enough of this nonsense: you’re more than halfway through your eighty years. Chop, chop! Time is moving forward.

For Prince Harry, his 40th birthday today marks the end of a process that began when he and Meghan left the UK to start a new life in California.

It has been a painful and prolonged separation. Painful interviews have been given, memoirs have been written, dirty laundry has been aired. Bridges have been burned that may never be rebuilt. For better or worse, Harry is now a man on his own.

Of course, he has not lost all his privileges. Some of the less onerous ones, such as his share of a £19m trust fund left to her great-grandchildren by the late Queen Mother, are still there.

Harry told the BBC he is “excited” to be turning 40. I will say: he is set to inherit around £8m from that pot.

But it’s not just money that ties the grandmother to her former country. A poll published today in the MoS suggests that a third of Britons support her return 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 son.

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

I always felt desperately sorry, not only for Harry but also for William, after losing his mother in such terrible circumstances.

And as much as I admire and respect Charles and Camilla, I can see that the couple’s behaviour during the difficult years of Charles’s marriage to Diana must not have been easy on the children, to put it mildly.

It’s understandable that Harry’s soul is wounded, but the fact that he’s suffered greatly doesn’t give him the right to inflict the same suffering on others, nor does doing so necessarily alleviate his own suffering. Part of being an adult is realizing this and trying to end the cycle of unhappiness rather than perpetuating it.

But Harry has done the opposite: he has taken terrible revenge on his father and the Queen, and has turned against William and Kate for no apparent reason, except, perhaps, their decision to side with the King.

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

And yet, while I despair at his methods and actions, part of me understands why he wanted to leave. And while many tried to blame Meghan, I don’t think it was 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 a lot of courage and determination to go against people’s – and in Harry’s case, the nation’s – expectations. The fact that he did it is a testament to his strength of character, but the fact that he did it with such cruelty and vengeance is not.

Should he be thinking of an “official” return to the UK? I don’t think so. That would be a step backwards and would mean all that pain was for naught. 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 has a long way to go to prove he has a new role to play without exploiting the capital of the past.

Harry, I wish you a very happy birthday. May it mark the beginning of a new and more positive chapter in your life and that of all the royals.

Be yourself, not Cindy II

Why don’t so-called “nepo-babies” seem to have any ambitions of their own? For example, Kaia Gerber, 23, looks so much like her mother, supermodel Cindy Crawford, 58, that it’s hard to tell them apart, especially when they dress alike. Kaia will be noticed, of course. But it will also be a little sad.

● The image that lingers over the past week is of prisoners leaving prison with leering faces on the back of Labour’s early release scheme, celebrating with bottles of champagne, fast cars and vowing to vote Labour forever. All this while Sir Keir Starmer was scrapping winter fuel benefit for almost ten million pensioners, many of them disabled. What a damning image of this Government’s priorities.

● Unsurprisingly, a prisoner who was released early will have to appear in court again, accused of sexually assaulting a prison officer who took him to the police station. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished in this unstable world.

Is this true love?

Eamonn Holmes, 64, is a charming and lovable man. But even the TV presenter’s closest friends might say he’s over-performing with his new 42-year-old girlfriend. Maybe there’s more going on than meets the eye?

Our own smelly cat

The Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray, has called Number 10’s cat Larry “the most miserable animal”. He is wrong. That award goes to my cat Cersei, who has to share space with my daughter’s new rescue kitten. Having got rid of a smelly teenager, I now find myself saddled with the feline equivalent. The fumes it emits should be banned. It’s an Egyptian Mau, apparently the equivalent of a feline Lamborghini. We’ve renamed it President Mau.