Here’s an extraordinary thought that comes to us via Newsweek’s Jack Royston.
This week we got new polling from YouGov UK about the good ship Windsor and Royston has worked out that, statistically, the entire number of Brits over the age of 65-years-old with a very positive view of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex (110,000 people) could fit into a large American sports stadium.
Jeepers.
It’s a shocking visual: That all the Boomers who are tried and true fans of the duchess could nearly be squished into Wembley.
Or, as Royston reported of this latest research, “Meghan Markle really is surprisingly hated in Britain.”
These new figures tell another story though, too, one about Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex and about Kate, the Princess of Wales and how she has managed to achieve something quite remarkable.
Every quarter YouGov puts out this polling which takes the temperature and sees which way the wind is blowing when it comes to Crown Inc.
This latest lot, out on Wednesday, is in line with recent releases, with King Charles plodding along and eking out small gains while Prince Andrew is viewed with the same degree of abject hatred as venereal disease.
The news about the Sussexes? Somehow in the space of only four weeks they have both fallen in the UK’s estimation, making them two people who are unlikely to ever be shouted a pint in any UK pub. Currently, the duke has a net position of -32 per cent and the duchess of -43 per cent.
(The net figure is worked out by adding by subtracting total negative support from total positive support.)
Yet, only six years ago it was a wildly, wildly different story. Back then, only days before Harry was set to marry his good lady wife, should he have wandered into any licensed establishment from Lands End to John O’Groats he would have had so many free drinks thrust in his hands his bodyguards would have had to cart him out, adorably legless, within a tight 30 minutes.
The people? Brits? They had loved him since they watched the shattered 12-year-old walk behind his mother’s coffin, an interesting sense of a collective national responsibility and care for this poor child, and then fell even more in love with him when he fell for Meghan.
In fact, in the YouGov survey carried out just after the couple announced their engagement in late 2017, Harry was sitting on a net figure of +70 points.
From +70 percent to -32 percent in only a handful of years is head spinning stuff.
That incredible volatility could not be further from the Kate story.
Like Harry, the peak of the princess’ support came around her 2011 wedding, when she was on +73, and in the 13 years since then, her approval has moved around a little but nothing even remotely like her brother-in-law.
Kate’s lowest moment came in January 2023, with her on +54, after the release of Harry’s memoir Spare and its claims that she and William thought Harry’s Nazi costume was a right larf and that she had been quite the icy pole towards newbie Meghan.
Currently, she is on +61 percent and overall, she has managed to maintain relative stability.
And it’s that consistency that it’s worth looking at.
Harry’s polling story is one of extremes; Kate’s is of incremental ups and downs.
For the Princess of Wales, to have largely withstood the natural cycles of public interest and then apathy and to have managed to not hugely piss off the tetchy masses, is quite the achievement.
Part of her success here lies in the fact that, at least until the last few years, the mother-of-three has remained largely the Arrowroot biscuit of the royal family. Inoffensive. Unprovocative. Dependable. A bit dry.
Whether consciously or not, this is exactly the template of public life that the late Queen pioneered.
Under Her late Majesty, boredom and predictability became admirable, virtuous qualities; her fixedness broadly interpreted as reflecting her steadfastness in her job.
There were no great swings of emotion, no great reactivity, no volte faces and no jolting cymbal clashes.
Whether on purpose or not, Kate has followed the late Queen’s example and the end result is this steady stream of nice, even-ish numbers.
Harry’s polling tells a diametrically opposed story — of a man and a nation falling in and out of love. The duke’s relationship with his homeland is an incredibly turbulent one.
For years on end, Brits were entranced by the outwardly chirpy chap who appeared to have made peace with his royal identity. Then came the third act in the Harry story, the part where he turned on his heel and decided he wanted a different life, far, far away from grey skies and stiff upper lips.
I’m not sure an entire nation’s feelings have ever been hurt in one fell swoop before but really, what else was the British reaction to Megxit but exactly that? Harry broke an unspoken contract with the people, one he had never been given a say over, and they have never, and I’m not sure will ever, forgive him.
Interestingly, this latest YouGov tracker has seen the inclusion, for the first time, of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie and their results would not be considered advisable Montecito breakfast reading.
The Sussexes’ combined favourability number (51 percent) is pretty much the same as Beatrice’s (50) and her greatest contribution to public life came in the form of a startling hat.
Meanwhile, in case (and somehow I doubt it) the Duchess of Sussex cares what the UK thinks about her, this week’s net favourability, of -43, is the lowest I have seen for her.
What is striking is that the duchess has fallen five points, from -38, in the space of only a month and yet she has not exactly done anything aside from supporting Harry and Invictus and announcing her forthcoming lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard.
Who knew that getting into the jam game would cause such a strong public reaction?
This all cuts both ways. If Britain is far from keen on the Sussexes then the couple hardly seems champing at the bit to spend time there either.
Meghan has not been back since the late Queen’s funeral in 2022 and I somehow doubt she will ever spend any sort of real time there unless Oprah Winfrey decides she fancies her own Scottish estate.
And Harry, having lost his UK home, his taxpayer-funded security, much of the homeland’s favour and with his father failing to make time to see him, really what is waiting for him back in Blighty?
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What the princess has done is to manage to keep the UK on her side and she has avoided having large chunks of the population suddenly take against her. The Sussexes have ended up stuck on the other side of this particular coin.
Finally, the moral of the story here is, should you ever find yourself suddenly a prince or princess, embrace the awesome power of benign boring. And never take chapeau advice from Beatrice.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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2024-05-15 05:03:45Z
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