Celebrity
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle popularity drops as new YouGov poll reveals most favourable members of British royal family as Prince William Kate Middleton
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have plummeted in the popularity stakes despite a plea from Prince Harry to reconcile with his family and a major image rebrand by Meghan.
It’s a very different story for the Prince and Princess of Wales, who are the UK’s favourite royals.
Latest polling in the UK suggests members of the public are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Sussexes, five years after their royal exit.
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Not surprisingly, Prince Andrew is the least popular of all the British royals with just five per cent of the population surveyed viewing him positively.
The Duke of York is rarely seen in public nowadays, after stepping back from official duties in 2019 after his disastrous interview with the BBC where he failed to express any remorse for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.
Prince Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing and last month his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, died by suicide at her home in Western Australia aged 41.
In good news for the monarchy, King Charles and Princess Anne and the royal family “in general” all scored above 60 per cent, in line with support for the House of Windsor when the late Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne.
But the situation is not looking good for Prince Harry and Meghan.
Harry’s favourability rating has dropped to 27 per cent, its lowest for more than two years.
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The survey was done between May 6 – 7, days after the Duke of Sussex spoke to the BBC about losing a legal battle with the UK government over his security arrangements.
In that interview, Harry described the court’s decision as a “good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up”.
He also said it “would be nice to reconcile” with his family but in comments likely to further the long-running rift, the duke said he doesn’t “know how much longer my father has”, in reference to the monarch’s cancer battle, adding “he won’t speak to me because of this security stuff”.
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Once one of the most popular members of the royal family, with an approval rating of 80 per cent in 2011, Prince Harry has fallen out of favour with the public since stepping away from official duties in 2020.
Days after the publication of his memoir Spare, Harry’s popularity dropped to its lowest ever at just 24 per cent.
As for Meghan, her popularity is now at 20 per cent – the lowest since YouGov began tracking it in 2017, the year she and Prince Harry announced their engagement.
The Duchess of Sussex reached an all-time high in the popularity stakes in 2019, months after the birth of Prince Archie and just after the couple’s tour of southern Africa.
But since then, Meghan’s approval ratings have plunged.
In January this year, the duchess relaunched herself into the public sphere with the release of a new lifestyle cooking show on Netflix, a food and homewares brand As ever and a podcast about female business founders.
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Prince William and Catherine are the most loved members of the royal family in the UK, with 75 per cent of the 2,222 adults surveyed reporting a positive opinion of the prince and 72 per cent of his wife.
Last week the couple and their three children joined the King and Queen on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for VE Day commemorations and will take part in a state visit by France’s president, and his wife, in July.
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