A Step Toward Reconciliation?

0:01Prince Harry and King Charles take a step towards peace as the Kings team announce dates for Trump's visit and Prince George as the star at Wimbledon. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. Now, King Charles and Prince Harry's aides have met at a private members club in London and it is the strongest sign yet of a step towards peace. Tobin Andrea, Charles' Director of Communications, sat down at the Royal Overseas Lodge last week with Meredith Maines and Liam Maguire, who are both new additions to the Sussex Press team.

0:38All this became public via a set of photos in the Mail on Sunday, which raises the prospect that this embryonic reconciliation might have been immediately shattered. It barely needs saying, but Harry has repeatedly accused his family of briefing against him and briefing against Meghan to the media, and the Mail has traditionally been his most hated title. Harry and Meghan have in fact sued the Mail on Sunday four times between them, So clearly there is no love lost. In fact, when Meghan won her case, she called them the daily fail. On the other hand, though, there have been repeated briefings from Palace about all the harm it has done that private conversations royal family members have had with Harry wound up being described in his book Spare or referenced on Netflix or so on and so on.

1:26So both sides had the potential to just blow up over the leak itself of what was obviously intended to be a private meeting. My understanding through my sources is that Harry's team were frustrated that it leaked, but the piece is holding. Both sides would rather it hadn't been splashed across the press, but are also philosophical about the fact it was, and trust has not actually been shattered. In short, there is still hope on both sides that they can work together more constructively. and actually there hasn't I'm not aware currently the noises coming from both camps that I'm hearing don't actually include very much finger pointing and blame so we'll see how long that lasts and it is always difficult to know exactly what goes on in the mind of Harry himself until he opens his mouth to talk about things so that we might have to wait months if he ever addresses it but you know I'm still optimistic basically that this hasn't been derailed yet so one key question is what does this all mean for long-term peace well in the first instance i think the goal was simply to try to just ensure greater cooperation between the staff on both sides for kind of pragmatic purposes so that can be you know in the past there's been attempts to coordinate coordinate all kinds of things and not sort of upstage each other by making announcements on the same day and stuff like that and there will no doubt be points in the future when Harry might be in Britain himself.

2:56And, you know, it would benefit both sides to have a joint collective messaging about whether there was going to be a meeting and so on and so on. So it's kind of practical, pragmatic stuff like that. And actually, you know, this used to happen very seamlessly at one stage when Harry and Meghan first moved to America, because they were represented in Britain by a guy who actually used to work at the palace. And so he already knew everybody. Those were all kind of personal connections that he already had. So that was all very simple. Then he moved over to Archwell. And so he hasn't been dealing with the press, you know, directly in that way, day to day, week by week for years.

3:31So working together is all very well and good, of course. But does that mean healing relations between the principals, i.e. between Harry and King Charles themselves? I wouldn't rule that out, but it would take a long time, I think, to get there. And I wouldn't rush into kind of imagining that everything has been patched up. Harry has made it clear that he does want a better relationship with his father. He said as much after he lost his high court case over his police protection back in, I think it was May. But he also, you know, even back then, he said he wanted to reconcile with his family, but he also had a bit of a dig at Charles in the same interview.

4:13So all of these things are very fragile. And, you know, there are insensitivities probably on both sides in reality that can derail it at any point. So it would be a long road, a long and fragile road with many bumps in that road that could knock everything out of whack. And I think the first test that we will have of whether the situation is actually improving is whether they see each other at some point. And Harry actually said last year that he hoped to see his father. He came to Britain and didn't see Charles and it kind of announced publicly that he hadn't seen Charles via his spokesperson at the time, different bloke, but then said, you know, he hoped to see him soon and hasn't.

4:58He hasn't seen him since. So that is really, that's the litmus test. Basically, that's the barometer for whether things are improving or not. And that's partly going to come down to schedules as well. So that's another thing where with this increased cooperation between the staff, there is a greater possibility that Harry, next time he comes to Britain, might be able to time his visit in such a way as to be able to get some time with his father. So that is a way that the teams cooperating can trigger reconciliation between the royals themselves. The next question, therefore, becomes, well, when will Harry be back in Britain?

5:35And one possibility is the Well Child Awards, so that the 2025 awards haven't happened yet, and Harry has flown in for them before, so it's entirely possible that he will again. We don't know for sure, but he may well choose to. He also may well come to Britain when his lawsuit against the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail comes into court, which I believe is November, and that's on historic allegations of phone hacking and other unlawful information-gathering techniques. So there will come points when Harry wants to come to Britain and all eyes will then be on whether he sees Charles and whether we get any confirmation either way.

6:12Now, if Harry can stay for a longer period of time than just a day or a couple of days, the longer he stays, the more likely it is that there'll be a window in which he can see Charles. And then we will get a real chance to see whether Charles can actually find himself to make time to see his son or not. Obviously, though, when it comes to reconciliation, we've been here before. Harry spoke to William and Charles after Prince Philip's funeral. They kind of walked out of St. George's Chapel and Kate was the peacemaker who kind of got Harry to speak to William and they had a bit of a chat. And then later on, Harry, William and Charles met in Frogmore Gardens and they had a bit of a conversation and tried to get things better again.

6:59And we all know this because it wound up in Harry's book in spare and that is one of the things that is continuing to drive a wedge between them all. But it didn't hold anyway. You know, it had already failed to bring about peace even before Harry's book came out. But there was also the kind of moment when the, you know, Harry and Meghan and William and Kate all appeared side by side, stood shoulder to shoulder in honour of Queen Elizabeth II after the Queen died. But there was at Windsor and they went up and inspected the tributes. And this must have brought back loads of memories for Harry and William, because, of course, they did the same thing for Diana.

7:33Stepping out and inspecting the tributes both, you know, in 1997. when she died the royals did that in fact the queen did it too but also harry and william did it when they marked 20 years since diana's death they did it back in 2017 so that must have brought back like a kind of mixture i would have thought a mixture of different memories for them nowadays william has completely cut harry off and you know we had thought charles was closer to harry until the king got cancer last year and um you know it was announced back in february he'd actually known for a couple of weeks by that point, but he announced it in February.

8:07And as soon as it was announced publicly, Harry jumped immediately on the next plane from California and went around to see Charles as soon as possible. And Charles only really managed to make 30 minutes for him, you know, less than an hour for him before getting a helicopter up to Sandringham and not seemingly inviting Harry to go with him. And that was the last time, you know, Harry saw his father in person. So, you know, we do think that the rift has become very, very deep. And so, you know, that brings us in a way back to this question of who did leak this story? Who leaked the meeting? And my sense is that it was like an actual kind of strategic leak as in, you know, somebody found out and told the media where to go and who to expect would arrive.

8:59And I think it's regarded that way on both sides. It does seem that both sides think someone deliberately leaked this. Obviously, some things can slip out by genuine accident. And, you know, they can come out either through the Palace or through the Sussex team, or they can come out, you know, through the, you know, the private members club, or they can come out through, you know, a leak in the police, or, you know, a leak can come hypothetically from anywhere. But it does seem like both sides think that there was a deliberate leak. however and one you know one point i would make is the mos actually appeared to have pictures of harry's team getting out of the car so the pictures in fact were very very clear you know they were really clear so uh the three of them sat out on the terrace where they were you know quite easily photographed um but who knows i mean who know you know they will obviously know who booked the table, why they sat out on the terrace, they will have that knowledge.

9:58And right now, I'm not detecting a lot of finger pointing between the two sides. So I try to think through all the different options for how this could have come out. It's interesting, because none of these people are household names, none of them have a huge amount of like recognition in Britain, they wouldn't be recognizable, their faces wouldn't be recognizable. And in fact, Liam McGuire and Meredith Maines have only been working for the Sussexes for about five minutes anyway. So I don't think your average waiter at the private members club would recognize any of those people. Maybe Tobin because the private members club is actually quite close to Clarence House but even then it's a bit of a stretch.

10:41So also none of them have police protection. It's worth remembering that. Some people get rumbled not because they've been spotted, not because the celebrity or the royal or the politician or the famous person has been spotted but actually because the security team is being spotted and so you know a roaming pap a roaming paparazzo will think well hold on a minute who's who's around here who's got security and go and check it out and then oh look oh goodness it's david beckham or whoever it is um but you know none of them have police protection none of them have security um escorts and um i guess tober might be known to some photographers if they've been covering royal engagements but also the mail and sunday doesn't do a lot of road jobs of that kind you know you'd expect that more from the Daily Mail.

11:24So it is all very puzzling and it does all point to a tip off to me. Somebody's ticked it, it does feel like someone has tipped them off and I think both the South Six camp and the Palace camp both are of that view too. And of course it should be said the private members club I'm sure would be fiercely defensive of the discretion of their staff because well it's a private members club that's kind of the whole point. But if we assume that it's a leak for argument's sake acknowledging we might be wrong there are also different types of leak sometimes people just are blabbing you know sometimes people are blabber mouths they want to impress their friends they go off and they say you know and they talk indiscreetly tell somebody a load of stuff not knowing that that person's going to turn around and tell the press and it's easy to assume that every leak has to be a product of deliberate strategy and it's you know Even for journalists, it's tempting to think that even though I've been involved in stories over the years or even learned where certain stories came from over the years and they have been genuine accidents, like somebody just talking indiscreetly and was at random, a thousand to one chance a journalist overheard them or something like that.

12:41so stuff does leak by total accident without it being leaked on purpose and we cannot just completely discount that that's what happened but let's look at some of the options so someone on harry and megan's side and it could be anybody it doesn't even have to be their press team but someone on harry and megan's side could hypothetically have been looking for a good PR hits, present them as peacemakers, show that, you know, they still have links to the monarchy, which makes them relevant. You know, somebody can make an argument that it's a boost to their PR to still be in the fold. But it's not just, you know, the suspicion doesn't just cast over them.

13:22You know, someone on the king's side could have thought it would play well for Charles to look like he wanted, you know, he was being diplomatic and that he wanted engagement. Or even, you know, you could swing the other way and say that maybe Charles just literally doesn't want to see Harry again, but they don't want to look like they're slamming the door in his face, so they could try to torpedo the whole thing by, you know, it gets leaked, Harry blows up about the leak, boom, that's the end of all the negotiations, would be the logic. Now, I'm not saying that any of these things actually happened, I'm just talking through what the various different options are.

13:56Alternatively, it could be someone on William's side got wind of it, and for the same reason you know william can't stop charles and from throwing the door open for harry um so this would be a means of trying to exercise some power and control over his father to for somebody in william's camp to think well you know i can't stop charles doing it or i can't stop charles's team from meeting harry's team but if we leak it to the media then harry might blow up and the whole thing might fall apart again not saying this is what's happened but there is another option or it could be that both sides agreed to leak it together you know it could be that harry's team and charles's team both had an interest in it being publicly known about but didn't want to make an official statement or even really an off-the-record statement because then people would come back in the future and say well you know you confirmed then that you had a meeting okay why aren't you confirming now and you know if you're not confirming that when harry and charles met when harry was in london then that means they must have not met whereas the palace would rather create some kind of mystery and ambiguity about that.

14:59So it could be that they both teamed up together and agreed to leak it. Or it could be none of the above. You know, it could be something else entirely that I haven't thought of. So there are loads of possible explanations and we will likely never know for certain exactly what happened. We might at some point get to know what Harry thinks about it because he does talk about a lot of stuff. But I think, you know, the key thing here, actually, also just to look at it for a moment from harry's point of view i think he does um need to have to show that he has slightly thicker skin than he has done in the past and that he's moved on from the era where any tiny little thing would cause him to blow up and become very angry about things i think he does need to show a more mature side to himself publicly and continuing to pursue peace in spite of this happening would do exactly that.

15:51So continuing down this road is in Harry's interests. Also, I think it's in the king's interests. You know, the king is the head of state in Britain. And, you know, the queen, Queen Elizabeth II, knew very well that there were times when she needed to put the national interest and the country's interests ahead of her own interests as a person, and sometimes even ahead of the interests of her family. And the, you know, the royals have certainly had to do that with Prince Andrew, where, you know, the Queen obviously adored Prince Andrew, but he is a disgrace in Britain, and it was very important that they showed him the door.

16:29So, you know, what is in the interest of the monarchy? Well, it's in the interest of the monarchy that the royals are able to resolve their own problems, because the royals are supposed to show leadership within Britain, and, you know, what do we think in general families should do about conflict? Well, they should resolve that conflict. They shouldn't just allow that conflict to escalate and escalate and escalate until they can't even talk to each other anymore. You know, that's not leadership, but it's not healthy. It's not positive and it's not what anyone would really advise anybody to do.

16:59And that was really what went wrong during Harry and Meghan's time in the royal family, is that there was a conflict developed between them and William and Kate, predominantly, less actually to do with Charles. But the conflict between them and William and Kate just escalated and escalated and escalated and escalated and nobody found a way to break that cycle and it escalated until it just ripped them to shreds and broke apart two brothers who you know they may have had their differences over the years but they they lost their mother and you know to both William and Harry the other brother is the only person in the world who really understands what they went through so it is a real sadness that that relationship was destroyed and it's a real sadness to see a father unable to see one of his sons.

17:43So I personally have always wanted to see this reconciliation happen. I'm going to choose to be optimistic. I don't think it's like even halfway there. I don't think it's even a quarter of the way there, but I'm going to choose to be optimistic that a change can come in time and that this could be a very, very tentative first step. And on that note, I'm going to take a quick break. But before I do, remember to rate and review The Royal Report on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your favourite shows. And when I'm back, what to expect when President Donald Trump visits Britain in September.

18:23Hello and welcome back to the show. Now Donald Trump has formally accepted King Charles' invitation for a second state visit to Britain. And as a result, we now have confirmed dates. And right after Emmanuel Macron's visit to the King and Queen, also at Windsor, it all felt like the perfect time to start actually thinking through what the choreography might be like in September when we have what Trump affectionately calls the second fest. So first off, Buckingham Palace said in a statement, the President of the United States of America, President Donald J. Trump, accompanied by the First Lady, Mrs.

18:59Melania Trump, has accepted an invitation from His Majesty the King to pay a state visit to the United Kingdom from 17 September to 19 September 2025. So those are the dates. His Majesty the King will host the President and Mrs. Trump at Windsor Castle. So Windsor confirmed as the location is probably actually in some ways the most significant part of the announcement because obviously, you know, we kind of expected it to be September. And I don't think anybody has particularly alighted on a major significance about the 17th to the 19th. So what does it all mean anyway? Well, it means Trump is probably going to do things kind of similar in certain respects to Macron and Bridget, but with certain major differences, partly driven by security, because Trump is, of course, a controversial figure in Britain.

19:52So he will most likely fly into RAF Northolt, which is a Royal Air Force base in West London. It's only about 14 miles or half an hour from Windsor Castle, so it's very convenient. In previous visits to Britain, he flew into Stansted Airport, which is my local airport, and it's also way better than Heathrow for what it's worth. Heathrow is an absolute hellscape, but if you're coming into Britain from America, you don't really have a choice. So that's where he'll fly in. He will probably be greeted on the runway. It's entirely possible by William and Kate, which is what happened with Macron. We know he really likes William as well and thinks he's very handsome.

20:31So that will probably all go very smoothly and then they'll bring him over to Windsor. But that is then when the first major decision comes into play, which will probably wind up taking things down a slightly different direction. So what they did with Macron was they had this big carriage procession through the town, through Windsor, taking Macron into Windsor Castle. And carriage processions are one thing that they haven't really done for Trump in the past, because obviously they're usually open top. There are some glass-enclosed carriages, but, you know, it's a long way from the beast. Let's put it that way.

21:10It's a long way from President Trump's presidential state car with all its kind of bulletproof panels and whatnot. So given, you know, this is a guy who had an actual attempt on his life about a year ago, probably virtually to the day. So yeah, I mean, I can't see it personally. And I think probably for the best, but it's the sort of thing Trump would absolutely love. And obviously, the reason Britain's doing this is to try and warm Trump up so that they can make sure they get a good trade deal out of him and hopefully keep him on side in the war with Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia rather, because Britain really wants Trump to send weapons to Ukraine and Trump's base really doesn't want him to do so.

21:56And so that is a kind of scary, it's one of two major schisms forming between Trump and MAGA at the moment. One is over arms for Ukraine, a little bit of Israel, but obviously massively Jeffrey Epstein. So unlikely to be the carriage procession, but if they can find a way to do it, Trump, I think, would love that. But what they will do is a guard of honour. And they'll do that in a place called the Quadrangle, which is like this big courtyard in Windsor Castle. It's actually the same place that Joe Biden visited in 2021. He came to see the Queen at Windsor Castle. He didn't fly into RAF Northrop because he went first to the G7 summit in Cornwall.

22:40He then flew in by helicopter from there, landed, and then they inspected this guard of honour together, Biden and the Queen. And so Trump and Charles will likely do exactly that. And it will run along very similar lines. And then with Biden, they had these posed photos in the Grand Corridor at Windsor Castle, which is this very old corridor. I think it was built by George IV. and it was where George IV hung all his most impressive, famous, expensive artworks. And it's really long, it's something like 130 metres long and it's still, it's virtually unchanged from when George IV built it and it's still full of these incredibly valuable works of art.

23:20So there'll probably be some good pictures there. And then the other aspect is protests, which absolutely guaranteed to happen. In fact, one has already been arranged, but it's been arranged in London And that's going to happen on September the 17th at 2pm. So that would be an opportunity for people to fill the streets of London in huge numbers and a real show of the scale and size of the opposition to Trump. and then there is some kind of chat about possibly another one in windsor but i kind of think they've spiked their own guns by doing something big in london i think they they probably know they would always have struggled to get the same volume of people out to windsor um not least of all you know windsor's kind of smaller but also um people just don't really want to get on the train and this is the thing that does kind of for me i mean i'm a londoner i was born and brought up in london But it does slightly undermine protests sometimes, even to me as a Londoner.

24:21I kind of know people who pop to the protest on their way home from work if it's midweek, if it's something I noticed during the Brexit era. And it does slightly undermine it. I mean, I grew up at school learning about something called the Jero Crusade, where these guys walked to London from the north of England. They walked virtually the length of England in order to protest for their employment rights. And popping to the protest on your way home from work, on your Oyster card, on your tube pass, is, yeah, it's not quite the same vibe. But maybe they'll still get some people out to Windsor, who knows.

24:58But I'm sure they will. They'll get some people. There'll be some kind of big protest statement made. and Trump will want to steer well clear of it. And I'm sure in Windsor, he has that option. They can do absolutely everything behind the castle walls and the protesters won't get anywhere near them. So that might well wind up being the strategy. But the protest is being organised by the Stop Trump Coalition. And I cannot possibly underestimate the extent to which Trump is unpopular in Britain, but I'm going to give you some numbers, some polling numbers anyway, and they are extremely striking.

25:40So he was, as recently as June 23rd, 57 % of British people think he has been a terrible president. And that is not me kind of opining. It is literally the phrase that was given to people. They had a choice between terrible president, 57%, poor president 13 that adds up to 70 in total didn't like his job the job he was doing basically and then good president was on a lowly nine percent and great president was just four percent with the rest going to either you know okay or don't know so you know he's a very very unpopular man and his kind of straightforward approval rating where it's just simply do you like him or do you don't like him?

26:28It actually winds up fairly similar. I think it's also about 70 % of people dislike him. So those are very, very high numbers. And, you know, there will be a lot of opposition. Another aspect to it was whether Trump was going to give a speech in Parliament, which Macron did. Now, Parliament is actually not in session at the time that the visit's taking place, but they could actually recall Parliament in order for him to give a speech. They're not going to. He's not going to speak to Parliament. Again, it's the same reason there are various backbench MPs, including for the Labour Party, who are in power, who would defy their party leader in order to try to basically, you know, stage a kind of in-person protest of sorts by speaking out against Trump in Parliament.

27:15You know, maybe you can imagine the kinds of things they might say. There would probably be USAID would get a mention. And, you know, his kind of war on DEI might well get a mention. But these are the kind of sticking points that people would see. From Keir Starmer, though, it was a point of view, though, the prime minister of bits. And he really wants to warm Trump up. And like I said, it's those key areas of trade, Ukraine, where he wants Trump on the same page. So, you know, he's gotten, it's not in his interest at all to recall Parliament. But from the royals, you know, going back to the royal perspective, there will also be a state banquet.

27:55And that will be, if Kate goes, you know, we might get another tiara moment from her and also from Camilla. And, you know, that will be a really great kind of fashion event. but it will also give Trump, you know, the role of the royal family in this whole thing is going to be to try and kind of give Trump all the adoration and, you know, celebration that he wants. That's what they're there to do, to fluff him, basically. It's the diplomatic equivalent of kind of scratching him behind the ear and tickling his chin and telling him he's been a good boy. But, you know, one other question, Trump didn't make it to Queen Elizabeth II's funeral.

28:32so he could go to her tomb at St George's Chapel in Windsor you know he's right there in Windsor Castle and he could lay some flowers or just pay his respects to Queen Elizabeth II obviously he talks a lot about how much respect he had for her and I think his mother too so that might be something he tries to do obviously Joe Brydon was president when she died and he went to her lying in state at Westminster Hall so he got his Queen Elizabeth II moment Biden did but Trump never really got that opportunity. So there we are. That's as much, I think, as we can kind of see approaching on the horizon right now.

29:08Obviously, as the time comes, we might get a more clear picture and there might be other things that present themselves. I'm sure they will throw more into the itinerary than that, but we just cannot see it coming currently. Right, I'm going to take one more quick break. But before I do, a reminder to follow me on X, formerly Twitter. I'm at Jack underscore Royston. You will find all my latest stories for Newsweek. And when I'm back, Prince George is looking a lot like a fan of the tennis player Alcaraz.