Queen Elizabeth 'Very Keen' Andrew Got Trade Job Linked to Epstein

25:32So she dropped down to popularity 29%. So that is then compared to disliked by 27%. So that gives her a net approval rating of about plus two. So still more liked than disliked by the American public, according to this data. But obviously, that's quite close. And really, Megan would hope to be liked most in America. It's her country. It's where she was brought up. But it's also right now, as of this moment, her lifestyle business, as ever, only ships to America. So she can't actually sell to any other country for now. She is, of course, hoping to change that. You have 24 % of people who were neutral, who I guess they just didn't really care either way.

26:15And her score for fame was 80%. So that means 80 % of Americans feel that they know who she is and have a sense of who Meghan is. And for the US market, that is reasonably high. In Britain, the royals tend to punch higher than that. But for the US market, that's pretty decent. So what does it all mean? Well, look, let's compare, first of all, to what her data used to be like, because I suppose that really is the biggest tell. So the last time I did one of these kind of deep dives into the U.S. YouGov ratings data was back in November. And back then, Megan was liked by 37 % of American adults and disliked by 22%.

26:55That gave her a net rating of plus 15, which is significantly more healthy. the kind of fame figure hasn't changed it was 80 percent back then but she's hemorrhaged about 13 points in her net approval rating which is a significant chunk taken out of that popularity it's important to note that other members of the royal family have seen a dip at the same time so it might be people just briefly feeling a little bit sick with the royals or maybe there's a season sometimes there can be a seasonal trend downwards at certain points in the year but i was trying to get my head around what I thought about it.

27:30And, you know, does this really matter? Or is this something that Megan can just weather the storm and then move on? And what it left me thinking was basically that it's so much easier to weather the storm of these dips in popularity if you're the royal family, because they're part of this hereditary institution that has existed for hundreds of years. And it doesn't, they don't need to turn a profit, particularly as long as their property portfolios are still bringing in money for them. And they can dip, the volatility is fine for them. They can weather the storm of the volatility. They have their own other problems, which is the long-term, slow decline in their popularity that takes place over decades rather than years.

28:10But they don't need to worry about short-term volatility at all because they are publicly funded and funded by these historic property portfolios. But Megan is in the early stages of trying to launch as ever. And it's very difficult to say exactly what the health of the company is because we don't have their full financial data, but there are significant signs that she is experiencing some trouble, some struggles, some turbulence. And so having periods of popularity volatility is potentially troubling. And so what I wanted to do, I want to talk about the way that the popularity has changed for other members of the royal family too.

28:50But first of all, I want to compare this period in popularity to Megan's as-ever website traffic, because it does seem like this dip in popularity has coincided with a dip in the number of people visiting the as-ever website, which suggests that there has potentially been a connection between the two. Although I should stress that correlation is not causation. In other words, lots of things appear to happen at the same time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that one causes the other. There's actually a fantastic website, the name of which I forget, which shows the way that different charts can look the same as each other, even though they're completely absurdly unrelated things.

29:32So correlation is not causation, but it is very interesting to observe that this dip that's been recorded by YouGovRatings in the first three months of the year does appear to coincide with a dip in audience on her website. So let's look at, we have explained the dip in popularity. Let's look at the changes on as ever. So this means going back and looking at what Megan's as ever traffic was like over the first few months for, I've actually done four months of 2026. So back in January, she had 268 ,000 visits to the as ever websites. That's, you know, It's not the highest she's ever had, but it's a decent chunk.

30:12Then going through to February, that dropped to 213 ,000. Now, actually, in March, it picked up slightly to 226 ,000, but it did also come back down again in April by quite a significant chunk again to 178 ,000. So if you actually look at it from January to April, that's quite a big drop, 268 ,000 down to 178. So if those two things are connected, it's not guaranteed that they are. This is going to be something I want to watch over time to see if it continues to go up and down in accordance with her popularity. But if they are connected, then that does suggest some quite worrying things for Megan because she is struggling with her popularity.

30:55We know that she's not very liked in Britain. I've done previous segments for this podcast showing that when she went to Australia and in the build up to following the announcement of a visit to Australia, her Australian audience actually went down, not up. So if we do wind up in a position where there's a growing body of evidence that this is not simply a coincidental or accidental correlation, but, you know, that dips in her capacity to make money through her lifestyle brand are tied to declines in her popularity, then that really means that Meghan has to find a way to be liked by people again in order to fix this problem.

31:34and it's just so many times now I just come back to the fact that if Meghan and Harry could have made the interpersonal could have smoothed over the interpersonal relations with members of the royal family just put any grievances to one side life would actually be so much easier for them like even if they had taken a lot longer to try to negotiate a more relaxed comfortable version of quitting. So let's say, for example, that Harry had managed to persuade, taken a year, let's say taken a whole year and persuaded the Queen that he should be governor of Australia or something. That's an idea that was bandied about as a potential career path for Charles back in the 1970s before he redefined the role of the heir to the throne.

32:22Let's say Harry had done that and he managed to just go out and, you know, be governor of Australia or Canada or something like that. And then just do some goods for the charities he loves, keep going with Invictus and all of that kind of stuff. And they wouldn't have had to earn any money in the private sector. Imagine how much easier life would be now. Like Megan probably felt in that moment back in 2019 before she quit, that, you know, the world was her oyster and she would make gargantuan sums of money and everything would be brilliant. And the monarchy was holding her back from achieving her full potential based on all the deals that she would be able to strike post-royal life.

33:02But I'd imagine it was very difficult in that time, during that period when all the big streaming giants were kind of clamouring to try to sign up Harry and Meghan. It was probably very difficult to imagine that at some point in the future it would all fall apart and it would all cave in on her and she'd be in this position she is now, where she's trying desperately to flog. She went from selling this version of herself that was against women being viewed as stuck in the kitchen all the time in the ivory clear dishwasher soap advert that we hear so much about. And, you know, presenting and building herself up as this feminist icon to basically doing a, you know, royal exile version of the gift shop at Highgrove, you know, where the king sells his jam.

33:43So it's a crazy thing, but life would just have been so, so, so different. And it is, I suppose, a victory for being boring, really, for the long, slow success, the long, slow growth, but also most importantly, the long, slow security of being connected to an institution that the public really believes in beats the dizzying highs of kind of crashing out, you know, being your true authentic self, achieving, trying to achieve your full potential, you know, breaking thing, being a bull in a China shop and breaking things everywhere you go. And then eventually winding up kind of shattered in a heap on the floor, having built something huge and then destroyed it in as little as about five or six years.

34:32So that's probably the overarching lesson. But I did say that I would talk through some of the various changes for other members of the royal family too. So let's just do that. And the most important piece of balance because balance is super important. I don't like to just tell one story, but I like to give an impression of the whole picture. I think the most important piece of balance is that Charles has also similarly seen a bit of a dent in his US popularity over this period of time. Bear in mind, it is the first quarter of 2026, which is January, February, March. So the King of Charles popularity was 28 % and disliked by 29%, giving him a net approval rating of minus one, which is really interesting because obviously he did kind of go down brilliantly when he went to America in April.

35:19That net approval rating that YouGov Ratings has recorded did not stop him from kind of, you know, knocking it out of the park in US Congress and winning some support across the political divide. And so, you know, part one thing that's important to remember with all of this stuff is that sometimes people aren't plugged in to every single news story that gets written, but they give their opinion based on their general attitude to stuff. So you ask an American who doesn't read royal stories, who literally doesn't care whether Meghan's better than Kate or Kate's better than Meghan or any of this stuff, and you ask them what they think of King Charles, they'll probably formulate that opinion based on their understanding of themselves as an American citizen and America becoming a republic and all of this kind of thing.

36:13What do they think about the concept of monarchy in general and kings in general? But also, we have also some dips for other members of the royal family, but with overall much healthier ratings. So William is now popularity 37 % disliked by 20 % of Americans. So that still leaves him on plus 17, which is perfectly healthy. Harry's not doing too badly. His popularity 37 % disliked by 28%. I think partly that's the Diana effect. His fame score, 90%, is a bit higher than Meghan's. So I think you can account for some of that by people have a much more concrete sense of who William and Harry are and what they think of them, which is devised or cemented over decades by the fact that a lot of Americans watched Harry and William grow up.

37:09They loved Princess Diana, and so they have this residual positive feeling towards Diana's children that can kind of ground the opinion beyond the storms of recent years. But William came in highest for popularity rating. Kate actually is, her approval rating is very slightly behind Harry's on 36%, but she is only disliked by 8 % of Americans. So that actually gives her the highest net approval rating of the kind of top five living royal family members. Her net approval rating is plus 28. And then, so then Meghan comes fourth, slightly ahead of the king, basically. So in some ways, you know, that's something for her to feel a little bit better about.

37:57but it does, like I said, I mean, part of the reason I wanted to talk about this is not just that it's a bit of a kick in the teeth for Megan to see her popularity dip. It might, you know, this might be volatility. It might go up again in a few months' time. But if there is a genuine link between the decline in visits to her as-ever website and this dip in popularity, that would be really, really worrying for Megan. And it would show that she really does need to rebuild her public opinion, her public profile, if she wants as ever to be a success. So I would just go, it's a point I've made 100 times in this podcast, but I will briefly say it again.

38:36That means visibly helping American charities in America on a much more regular basis and trying to kind of really demonstrate value to Americans. And I think the Royal Playbook is better for doing that, you know, visiting in-person charities and meeting people. And the kind of stuff they do when they go abroad is better than giving big, long speeches. And Megan, I think, quite likes giving big, long speeches where she can put across an argument. But it doesn't seem to create as much of a reputational boost as like serving soup in a soup kitchen being your archetypal, stereotypical example of a kind of celebrity visit to a charity.

39:20So that is, I think, where she should focus her efforts on just trying to show American people that she can do something that is purely geared towards charity and doesn't have this additional component that we saw when they visited Australia, which is making money alongside the charity visit. just do good in America in visible ways when you're on the ground talking to real people, not speaking to the global elite in healthcare and not speaking to other rich people in California at a kind of fundraiser or whatever, but get on the ground with real people. And, you know, I think that could make a real difference.

40:00I'm going to take one more quick break, but before I do, a reminder to follow me on X. I'm at Jack underscore Royston. You will find all my latest stories for Newsweek. When I'm back, cops have expanded their investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

40:17Hello listeners and welcome back to the show. So we have had a major recent update from Thames Valley Police about their investigation into Andrew, but we have also separately had reports in the UK press and the Times in particular giving some insight into some of the new claims that the police are looking at. So this is all very interesting. It shows continued activity by the British police. They are still pushing. They are also actively appealing for witnesses, but they also, at the Times report, still have a problem, which is that they need to get the Epstein files, the originals of all those documents, from the American authorities.

40:59So let's go through this step by step. And I want to talk about that specific allegation against Andrew, which relates to the Queen's Jubilee. That was in the Times in Britain. And it was related to Royal Ascot, which is, for those who don't know, it's like a massive horse racing event in Britain where the royals always go. And Queen Elizabeth II obviously loved horses. She loved the races. And Ascot was hugely important to her. But to start, let's talk about the actual official update that came from the police themselves. So they presented this as a kind of significant update in their investigation into misconduct in a public office in relation to Andrew.

41:40but they kind of buried the new information quite low down their press release about this which is that actually they've expanded from purely misconduct in public office to wider allegations of sexual misconduct. Now there are I think two options for what the police do with that. So if they feel that they have an allegation of sexual assault or some other sexual allegation against Andrew and they feel they've got it strong enough that they can present that as a charge in court. It could be that Andrew winds up being charged with sexual assault or trafficking or something like that. Now, we don't know whether the CPS will ever get to that point.

42:20I should say also that Andrew has always denied wrongdoing related to Jeffrey Epstein, which is what this is all about. This is all about his friendship with Epstein. But the other option for the police is that things that may not fit easily within an allegation of trafficking or sexual assault could still be included within their investigation into misconduct in public office. Because if Andrew was sexually harassing people, he may well deny that, but if he was, it could be that that forms part of that misconduct. So the way that misconduct in public office works is that an offence is committed if a public official willfully misconducts themselves without reasonable excuse in a manner that represents a serious breach of the trust placed in them by the public.

43:09So in other words, it's quite a broad ranging thing. It doesn't have to be one specific type of misconduct. There can be many different types of misconduct. And that's something that police actually pointed out in their update. They said, you know, this is a very complicated area of law, but they issued an appeal for information and witness testimony from people. And they kind of, I think, reading between the lines, part of what they're trying to say to members of the public is don't question yourself over whether you've been the victim of a crime. If you have had a bad experience with Andrew, then just come and speak to us and we can work out whether it's crime or not.

43:49And, you know, it might be that something doesn't necessarily fall, you know, it doesn't necessarily fall within a trafficking offense or it doesn't necessarily fall within something as concrete as sexual assault, for example, but it might form part, therefore, of their investigation into misconduct in public office. So I'm going to read you a little bit about what they actually said. So I'm going to start with Thames Valley Police Assistant Chief Constable Oliver Wright, who said, Our misconduct in public office investigation is continuing. Misconduct in public office is a crime that can take different forms, making this a complex investigation.

44:25Our team of very experienced detectives are working meticulously through a significant amount of information that has come in from the public and other sources. We are committed to conducting a thorough investigation into all reasonable lines of inquiry, wherever they may lead. We encourage anyone with information to get in touch with us through the normal non-urgent contact channels, such as the Thames Valley Police online portal. I understand high level of interest in this work, but please do be patient as we continue to actively progress our investigation. We will provide further updates to the public and media when appropriate.

45:00So the other message that's been communicated here is we are still working on this. Do not think, just because Andrew hasn't been rearrested again or hasn't been charged, do not think that we're just doing nothing, sitting on our laurels, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for time to pass, and then we'll push it all under the carpet. They're saying, you know, we are still actively going on with this. We have had reports from the public. We've had people get in touch to tell us their stories, and we want more of that. And we are working very hard on this. That's the other message here. But, as I said, there is another aspect to this.

45:36So they then give this general update on their assessment and their investigation and where it's focused, and that identifies the fact that police have now spoken to a lawyer representing a woman who said she was flown to Britain for a section in council with Andrew in Windsor at his home in 2010. Now, we already knew that woman existed. I've spoken about her previously on this podcast. She has not spoken publicly, but her lawyer spoke to the media, spoke to, I think it was the BBC, and said that she'd had this experience, and she was flown by Epstein to Britain for that purpose. So that potentially suggests trafficking.

46:17I said originally at the time that this is particularly interesting because by 2010, a whole different tranche of trafficking laws had actually been introduced in Britain, which weren't in play back in 2001 when Virginia said that she was sexually assaulted by Andrew. Now, obviously, Andrew denies ever having had sex with any woman linked to Epstein, in particular Virginia Jeffries' allegations that she was trafficked at age 17 for sex with him in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands in 2001. So he said that didn't happen, but she, of course, said it did. So this now expands that investigation out of the misconduct claim that it began with, which related to Andrew leaking confidential government documents to Epstein, allegedly.

47:04Again, he denies all Epstein-related wrongdoing, but that's where it began. So it began with this situation that was about emails and it was about documents. And now the police are actively taking that more broad, taking it outward to also capture some of the experiences of women who have said either, you know, either made kind of quite specific allegations related to Epstein against Andrew in the case of this woman from 2010. but also they seem to be casting the net more widely and saying just anyone who has had an experience with Andrew that they want to talk to the police about should get in touch and that takes us nicely to this article in The Times.

47:47So there is this very specific allegation that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the wording in the British press has been that he behaved inappropriately towards a woman at Royal Ascot back in 2002. So that was the Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee She did, in fact, attend Ascot that year. The allegation is dated between June 18 and 22. So what that usually means is perhaps the woman who's come forward says that she can't quite remember exactly which day of Ascot it was. So I don't think we can confidently say whether the Queen was there when this allegedly happened or not, but it's certainly a strong possibility.

48:29And no doubt Andrew would deny it. I mean, he hasn't made any public statement, but I'm sure we can infer from his past denials that he would say that this didn't happen. But the police, we're told, are looking at this now. And the wording is quite interesting. It's, you know, the British press, we've not had anything on the record, I don't think, from the police. But the British press is saying that the allegation is he behaved inappropriately towards a woman at Royal Ascot. So they've stopped short of saying, you know, something like sexually assaulted. So it sounds like that's not what's been alleged, that it was a sexual assault.

49:04Of course, that could change once we know more about the allegation. But at this point in time, that's not what's being reported. What's being reported is that he behaved inappropriately. So that could come under the heading of misconduct in public office rather than an actual, you know, an offence under sexual assault legislation. if indeed they get to the point where they charge, which obviously they might not. But it's very interesting that they are clearly getting now specific accounts, specific witness testimony from people in Britain. You know, this all started off as being focused squarely on Epstein and the Epstein files and this question of whether the FBI in America might have been sitting on some piece of bombshell evidence.

49:50I mean, a lot of the emails they were sitting on were certainly bombshell and what that would do to Andrew's reputation. But now the whole thing appears to be expanding. And this is one of the things that Andrew Loney, a past guest on several different episodes of the Royal Report, has been saying is that, you know, Epstein was only part of this. Andrew was traveling around the world doing awful things as a trade envoy and in his wider capacity as a royal. You know, Epstein is the beginning of this, not the end. and the police are saying that they have received a significant number of ring-ins, of call-ins or contacts from the public.

50:27So if that's the case, then it could be that Andrew is the subject of a much bigger case that is less dependent on these Epstein files that the British police are struggling to get their hands on. The American DOJ may simply refuse to give us, may simply refuse to give British detectives. So it could wind up being that Andrew might be charged or prosecuted with a crime that is not dependent on the files that the FBI had or emails in Jeffrey Epstein's inbox, but actually is dependent on the witness testimony of people in Britain who can personally shed light with live witness testimony from their own experiences.

51:09And that is relevant because this is, you know, obviously I try and speak to a lot of people who know about these kinds of things. And another one of my past guests was Nima Rahmani, the lawyer at West Coast, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers in America, has said that these kind of cases work infinitely better if they're not purely based on documentary evidence. They're not purely based on emails and documents. You know, what these cases really need is live witness testimony. And so this is a significant update because it hints at the fact that it may still be possible to get live witness testimony.

51:45And we kind of thought that that door might potentially have closed when Virginia tragically took her life, as her family described it, in Australia back in April 2025. So when she died, it felt at the time like that window for having live testimony against Andrew had closed and it wouldn't be possible anymore. but now it seems like it might still be a possibility. So it's a very significant update. Two parts to it. One, the official lines from the police and two, this leak to the Times suggesting that there is this specific claim being made about Ascot and that may well just be the beginning.

52:26Who knows what other people might come forwards but we will have to see where it takes the police and that will take time. and that's it for this episode of the royal report be sure to join me every show when i visit the latest royal headlines embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal until next time i'm jack royston thank you for listening everyone and a curtsy to you all

52:51the royal report with jack royston is a member of the trust project