Tea For Two

0:01King Charles meets Prince Harry for tea, Valentine Low talks about his new book and Prince William pays tribute to Queen Elizabeth II. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. King Charles and Prince Harry have met for tea and it's the strongest sign of reconciliation in more than a year. But actually, now that I think about it, you know, it's longer than that really. it's actually the strongest positive sign for reconciliation I think since the days after the Queen died three years ago really because when you think about it the last time Harry saw his father before this was February 2024 which was right after Charles was diagnosed with cancer but that felt kind of empty because Harry flew all the way to London from America just to see his father he didn't have anything else to do there and Harry only got about 30 or 40 minutes with the king before Charles then flew up to Sandringham by helicopter.

0:56So it kind of felt almost a little bit like a letdown for Harry, who then had to pretty much get straight back on the plane and fly for, I mean, who knows, 10 hours each way, something like that. I can't quite remember now. But this time, Harry actually still only got about an hour. So a similar amount of time, really. But his own schedule was so rampant. I mean, I don't think he really could have had much longer. he hadn't only come to see Charles he was doing engagements left, right and centre and in fact was actually wound up being late for his next event most likely because of the time he spent seeing Charles so in that respect it was actually all kind of quite dramatic in its own way because Charles had been up in Scotland and we always knew there was a good chance that he would come down to London midweek because he does have regular cancer treatment in London but he has it six weeks out of eight So it was never definitively certain.

1:51He can miss it in some weeks. So it only became certain that Charles was going to come down to London at a time when Harry was in London on Wednesday, when he was photographed getting on a plane to London from up in Scotland. Harry was there. It still wasn't certain even then that they would actually meet each other. That didn't become certain until Harry was then photographed arriving at Clarence House in a car. and Clarence House is where Charles and Camilla live. Obviously, the Queen spent most of her reign living at Buckingham Palace, but Charles and Camilla prefer Clarence House, so that's still where they live.

2:27So like I said, I mentioned the last time being the February in 2024, but actually, the reason why we know things have been difficult dates back to another meeting several months later in May of 2024, when Harry came back over again, this time to celebrate 10 years of the Invictus Games. And he tried to get a meeting with King Charles and failed. You know, his spokesperson actually released a statement at the time saying that he'd failed. And this is what it said. And unfortunately, it will not be possible due to His Majesty's full programme. The Duke, of course, is understanding of his father's diary commitments and various other priorities and hopes to see him soon.

3:13So the two key elements of that are various other priorities indicated that it wasn't just a diary clash that prevented the meeting and also hopes to see him soon kind of set this weird like ticking clock in the background of their relationship, which was, you know, Harry had said he wanted to see his father soon. And then he visited Britain several times and the meeting didn't happen. So first of all, I think the first one was actually a funeral for Robert Fellows, Harry's uncle, via a sister of Princess Diana's, via marriage. And then there was the Well Child Awards in September of 2024. And then he came over for a hearing in his lawsuit against the British government over his police protection in April of 2025.

4:02so that's three visits and still no meeting with the king. If things seemed bad then, they got even worse by May when Harry definitively lost that lawsuit against the British government after three years. He kind of took a failed swipe at Charles, saying all that needed to happen for him to get his bodyguards back was for Charles not to stand in the way. And he said, you know, his father won't speak to me because of this security stuff. so won't speak to me is quite a strong phrase and it almost kind of suggested that the relationship with Charles might have sunk so low that it was almost comparable to Harry's relationship with William but after that Harry you know there's a little bit of a cleaning out of staff at Archwell Harry got a new press team in people on both sides of the Atlantic and it brought a real energy back into the whole Sussex operation.

4:59And Harry hired this guy, Liam Maguire in Britain, who has brought real energy into his dealings with the UK press and the UK media, and including organisations who Harry doesn't like and has at points refused to deal with at all. And now there's a really communicative quality to the Sussex operation, which has enabled them, I think, to get their point, their perspective across much better. It also, there was a meeting that was photographed by the press between Harry's team and the King's team. And that was a real, like, positive sign for the future of relations. I think my understanding is that meeting was predominantly about the two teams working together, which is not quite the same as the actual principles, the royals themselves getting on with each other and reconciling and putting the past behind them.

5:51So that was the next missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle. And so then when Harry announced this trip, which wasn't necessarily a total surprise because we knew Wellchild was going to be coming up in September and Harry has been going to it. So it wasn't a total surprise. But when it did come up, that was obviously going to be a litmus test for where the relationship was between father and son. And, you know, had they put the past behind them, could there be some hope of reconciliation? But none of us really knew it was a total guessing game. Some people kind of speculate, well, loads of people were speculating about it, everybody really.

6:26And, you know, none of us definitively knew it was always going to come down to how things played out. I'm not even convinced that Charles and Harry themselves necessarily knew for sure whether they would be able to make it work until probably quite close to the time. So it is a big moment, really. And I think we can say it is no longer true that Charles isn't speaking to Harry, clearly. and that is kind of mega to be honest because that's a turnaround since May it's only really like what is that four months and so it's the first time in a long time that the Royal Rift has moved backwards in the opposite direction because things have been going steadily downhill since Harry released his memoir and you know thinking about the last time there was news as positive as this for reconciliation and for the relationship actually it's pretty much probably three years to the day since Harry and Meghan and William and Kate all stepped out side by side in the days after the Queen's death and went to inspect floral tributes outside Windsor Castle and that I reckon that that is probably and certainly the days afterwards probably the last big moment when there was a real hope for reconciliation and then following Netflix and following Spare it really was one-way traffic going downhill everything always getting worse.

7:49And the next big question for Harry, though, is can he build on this? Because obviously there have been glimmers of light before that have not turned into anything. And so part of making good on this and building on it and improving the relationship further is going to be about discipline. You know, can Harry now just kind of keep his mouth shut about all the things that have upset him over the years? And also specifically about whatever was discussed during this meeting and however he might feel about it. So hopefully no difficult stuff came up and they just caught up on family and news and what's going on in each other's lives and Charles' health.

8:26And hopefully Harry said, I said last week, just chalk up a successful meeting with no drama. And that in itself will go a long way to restoring trust and restoring Charles' belief that he can have a relationship with his son that isn't always completely exhausting. If anything difficult did come up, hopefully it now just stays private between them. Now, obviously, I would love to know all about what they discussed, especially anything messy and awkward and difficult. Because, well, partly, I guess, because I'm a journalist and it's my job to want to know. Also, just as a human being, you know, I do like to know about this stuff.

9:05You know, I can be a gossip about this kind of thing. But in terms of the future of the relationship, that would obviously be a bad outcome for everyone. So for the relationship, it's really important that it stays private. Harry was actually asked by a journalist how his father was at this Invictus Games visit and said, yes, he's great. Thank you. It was a shouted question, a shouted answer. But I don't think that level of commenting on it is going to cause any problems for anyone. what would go down terribly is if Harry then went off and gave a big interview to a US TV network about it or wound up talking about it all on a Netflix show and like his you know Megan's holiday special of her cooking show or something like that I don't think that will happen for what it's worth because I think there is a new attitude and a new strategy in the Sussex camp that I think they They understand now that they've got to stop doing this stuff.

10:06But I think Harry actually will leave the UK this time. He'll depart from this visit absolutely buzzing and with a kick in his step because he's looked like he's really enjoyed all the numerous visits that he's done as well. It's really been a throwback to his time as a working royal. He had the World Child Awards on Monday. That went really well. And it was an opportunity for him to spend some time with some kids who really deserved the spotlight shone on them and deserved support and help and their families, you know, and the people who look after them. And then, you know, he was up in Nottingham on Tuesday and I was actually up in Nottingham with him.

10:42He visited the community recording studios, which is a space where young people can, you know, they can pursue their love of music and record songs and sing and rap and all of this kind of stuff. It's a good way for them to stay out of trouble because, you know, Nottingham, And like many areas of both the UK and America and, you know, every country, it can have its social problems. There can be problems with violence, you know, knife crime, things like that. Same as anywhere. And so this is a really great resource for people to give them another outlet and another place to put their energy. And Harry seemed to love it up there.

11:17You know, the crowd up there loved him. The guys in the studios loved him. And it was a real throwback to those royal days. Like I said, I was up there and I spoke to some of the people there. And there was this guy, Yala, who is a 24-year-old. And he helped show Harry the ropes and show Harry what CRS does. And he told me we performed for him. We had him in the studio. I tried to get him in the booth. He was a little bit reluctant, didn't want to do it. But we all got in the booth and showed him what we do and what this place is about. And he looked like he really enjoyed it. It's nice to have him over here.

11:51You can see the love he has for this city and this place. And outside, I spoke to this woman, Michelle McNinn, who's 40 and from Nottingham. And she kind of called Harry over. He was trying to get in the car to leave. And she managed to kind of coax him over for some pictures. And she told me it was amazing. Absolutely amazing. I shouted him over. I said, can we have a photo? He said, I don't have time. I said, please, please, please. Can we get a photo? He ran over and we got a photo. I shook his hand and he was lovely. He said, are you local? And thank you for waiting. He was so nice. So, you know, there was a lot of that kind of thing.

12:24and everyone was very positive about Harry, which is interesting in and of itself because the British public is very negative about him. You know, he polls very badly nowadays, but there is still love for him in certain places. And, you know, this shows that he could hypothetically, you know, I cannot imagine it happening, but hypothetically he could walk back into the job and he would get a good reception, you know, revisiting the charities that he's worked with before. so not for a minute saying that he's going to go back to life as a working royal but it's just intriguing to think that he could without any real problem and you know I don't think Harry actually wanted to leave the work behind I think he wanted to leave the institution of the monarchy behind and he wanted to leave the rules behind and he wanted to kind of be free to do whatever he wanted but I think he actually liked the work I think he said that in his book in fact that you know he tried doing various drugs but the thing that helped the most with his mental health was actually work.

13:23So he wanted to get rid of the internal politics of the institution of monarchy but I don't actually think that he wanted to walk away from the life of charity work that the royals live. I think he enjoyed that. I think that's the bit he liked. It was the internal politics that he was trying to leave. And I think that's one thing that's really important to think about is, you know, the guy just went home to the country of his birth that he travels to maybe one, you know, two, three times a year. And he packed his entire schedule of work. Like he was doing stuff constantly from the moment he arrived.

14:00So he didn't really leave very much space in his diary for anything else. Like he did, he was doing on Wednesday, he did St. George, you know, he landed on Monday. So he did St. George's Chapel and Well Child and that's Monday dealt with. Tuesday he was up in Nottingham all day that was a whole day's worth of stuff then Wednesday he did he went to Imperial College London for a event about blast injuries a very good one in fact then went to meet the King and then straight afterwards he had an evening event for the Invictus Games and then he's got one more day Thursday which is another day of travel, he's going back to America and he's got an event in there that's going to take up the time he has left, which I will also be at, so I'll report back on it next week.

14:52So he's not left loads of time for seeing friends, for just enjoying being in Britain, for hanging out with other family members who he gets on with. It's work, work, work. Almost like his father in a weird sort of way. But it was also, the other aspect of it is that this was a massive charm offensive towards Britain And it really sent a message that Harry, whether he will be successful or not, he does want his relationship with Britain back. And this is also another thing that's been emerging this year because Harry's messaging has been complicated over the years. You know, his messaging about whether, you know, how he feels about Britain, what he thinks about Britain, how much of a relationship he wants with Britain.

15:35and one aspect of that is that um you know that's come out recently is that it really feels like he does they say he had for you know a good couple of years you know when he first when Harry and Meghan first moved out to America they had a guy who was UK based who was doing their press and dealing with all the UK media and then at some point he went over to America and then they didn't have anyone for a long time in britain dealing with the media um and so then in uh i think it was actually 2024 they hired a bloke called charlie who was uk based and dealing with the uk press um and they had him for about a year and then they partnered company with him and so that was a moment when they could have decided well look uh there's no point having a uk person let's just back to the way it was before but instead harry chose to hire um this new guy leon mcguire and um he's brought a lot of energy into it and that because he's uk based that really and knows his way around the uk press that really does show that harry still believes that it's possible to get that relationship back with the uk and that's a really interesting thing because the polling it does not look great.

16:48I mean, I'm sure I've probably gone through it all a thousand times on this show, because I do tend to like to rely on things that are objective, like data. But just to give a little recent snapshot, you know, in August, YouGov did some of his regular polling and recorded Harry being viewed positively by 28 % of Britain compared to 62 % who viewed him negatively. That's net approval rating of minus 34. Meghan, you know, 20 % positive, 67 % negative, putting her on minus 47. So it's a huge mountain to climb, huge, huge mountain to climb. And, you know, it's not one that they're going to, they're going to climb quickly, but it's, you know, this visits like this could start to move the dial.

17:31And I did start to notice some signs of some of the kind of hardened commentators who have been very critical of Harry just softening just a little bit, not necessarily entirely, but just a little bit. And that is one thing that Charles experienced, is that he didn't get to a point where suddenly everybody fell in love with him again. But he got to a point where some of the hostility towards him had softened to the point that people were basically fine with him, even if they did consider themselves to be Team Diana. He wasn't kind of a hate figure anymore. So Harry could well get to the point where he just softens the hard edge of people's attitudes towards him.

18:13That is something that could be on the table for him if he wants it. But this, I think he will go back to America feeling like he's taken one step. But in terms of what he needs to do next, he needs to understand just how long that road is going to be and not to get impatient and not particularly start getting impatient with the staff who are helping him to rebuild that relationship and to let it play its course even if it takes a very long time. and I'm talking years, not months. Right, 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.

18:51And when I'm back, Valentine Lowe has a new book out called Power and the Palace and is talking all about it.

19:03Hello and welcome to the show, Valentine Lowe, author of The Power and the Palace, a new royal book about the monarchy's relationship with the British government. Now, Val, before we get started, just a quick introduction. I think listeners of The Royal Report probably know you best from your story about Meghan being accused of bullying her staff. Of course, there's nothing about that in this book because that's not the subject matter. But that is who Val is, former royal correspondent for The Times. So let's just start, Val, in general terms. So simply, particularly for people living outside the UK, what is the relationship between the monarchy and the British government and the prime minister and that kind of centre of executive power in the country?

19:44The monarch is the sort of symbol of power in this country, even though they have no power. So it is, you know, his majesty's government. The sovereign reads the speech at the opening of parliament. The ministers are appointed, officially appointed by the sovereign. the prime minister is appointed by the sovereign the sovereign being the king currently just to be absolutely entry level I'm using the word sovereign because I keep thinking in terms of the queen, the late queen, queen is worth that so I wrote about all my career even though it's a couple of years down the line I'm still getting used to the idea of King Charles III Yeah.

20:30So I guess, you know, I want to get into the detail of what's in the book. But I guess my first overarching question to you is, do you think that this system is working? We've got Charles just, you know, like you said, come onto the throne in the last few years. You write about him in the book predominantly at the time that he was Prince of Wales, when he was not actually monarch. You write about him being political. And you write about, you know, some, I suppose, tensions that that caused here and there. Do you think that this system of having a ceremonial monarch and then an executive government is working?

21:01I think the system is working at the moment. I think it's partly working because Charles mended his ways. He was a very meddling prince. He used to have clashes with ministers, clashes with prime ministers. But, you know, before he became king, he realised he would have to change his ways. And he's been very well behaved. He's, you know, observed the constitutional proprieties. But, you know, the monarchy, it only exists with the permission of the people, with the permission of Parliament. So it works for the moment. But if people think it doesn't work at some point in the future, well, it could all change.

21:44Yeah, okay. So one really kind of eye-catching line from your book that I was invited on interviews about was this line about the Queen and Brexit. So this is, I suppose, a point when she was kind of dragged into politics in a way that she may not herself have wanted to. But the original story in The Sun way back in 2015, 2016 was that she backed Brexit, was their headline. They got Ipso'd over it. And Tony Gallagher, who was editor of the newspaper at the time, was very upset about the fact that Ipso ruled against them. That's the press regulator in Britain. And you say, actually, the opposite is true, that the Queen effectively was a Remainer, that if she had had a vote, she would have voted for Britain to remain in the EU.

22:30Quite a sensational thing to report. That's right. I mean, people always vaguely assumed she was a Brexiteer because of that Sun headline, even though the headline wasn't justified by the words in the article. There were occasional hints that she might not think that she once famously wore a hat in the colours of the European Union, which people thought was a hint about her feelings. The person who designed the hat vehemently denied it. That was Angela Kelly. and this is in a way a fascinating revelation because I got it from a minister who spoke to the Queen themselves and this minister who I'm not naming told me that the Queen said to them and this is only about three months before the referendum I don't think we should leave the EU and they went and said I think it's better to stick with the devil you know and this doesn't mean the Queen was a rampant pro-European.

23:31I think she was quite sceptical about the EU. I think she found some of the EU bureaucracy infuriating and some of the things they got up to exasperating. But on the whole, partly because she was a small C conservative, Elizabeth, she thought don't mess with the system. It's working okay for us at the moment and who knows what would happen if we change it. But the Queen played a very clever hand during her reign of never really giving her opinion away. Publicly. Publicly. So people didn't know what she thought. It means they could project onto her whatever they wanted. She was almost like a blank slate.

24:19But that didn't mean she didn't have opinions. Your book actually says that, in fact, privately, she was quite expressive with those opinions, which was one thing that I found quite fascinating, because she does have such a strong reputation for keeping her views to herself. But then you say that actually sometimes she could convey those opinions really quite strongly behind closed doors to politicians who she assumed would not tell. Yes, that's the key. She existed in a world where people didn't repeat what the Queen said to them. So she could say that she thought General Mishara of Pakistan was a complete crook, isn't he, completely corrupt.

25:00And no one would repeat it until years after she's dead. But that was fascinating to me, because obviously, we have a state visit coming up this month. Trump is going to be in London. And he has already had a moment, which also you talk about in the book, where he met William in Paris. And then he went and gave a load of interviews about it and said, you know, very positive things about William, said how handsome he was, for example, but it was an indiscreet moment. And Charles is going to have to obviously sit down for a state banquet with him, knowing presumably that anything Charles says could potentially get repeated by Trump at press conference.

25:37I mean, do you think Charles should be worried about this? I don't think Charles needs to be worried about that because I think he knows how to look after himself. I mean, I think he's prepared for indiscreet political leaders. and he's very intent Charles on behaving properly, he's very intent on doing the government's will I think there are many issues on which he disagrees strongly with Donald Trump, particularly about the environment, but he's going to knuckle down and give President Trump the warmest and most positive and charming welcome he can manage and he will just be a little careful he'll be very relaxed with Trump but he'll be a little careful not to say anything foolish that would look embarrassing if it was repeated in public and obviously we know very well that he'll have to put his political opinions to one side but there's been kind of personal issues between the royals and Trump in the past hasn't there do you think that will weigh on him or do you think that's all in the past I'm thinking partly about Trump's past comments on Kate at the point that she was photographed sunbathing topless in France I'm talking about some of his past comments about Diana.

26:48Yeah, I mean, I think Trump is perfectly capable of putting his past behind him. He can pivot on a sixpence. So there's no reason for anyone to bring that sort of stuff up. There's no reason for anyone to kind of hark on it. Trump certainly won't be harking on it, and neither with any members of the royal family, I think. They'll just treat him in the here and now. And there was a really interesting, I think, quote in your book about the British ambassador saying, look, the soft power that the monarchy brings to these situations is really valuable, but only up to a point, basically. And it's very difficult for Britain to actually win policy concessions out of Trump.

27:33Now, I don't know at what point you got that quote or did that interview, whether it was before or after the events of this year since Trump became president again. But I just wondered what you thought of how Charles and William have done. Because in a way, it did feel at one point like Britain was getting a better deal on tariffs than Europe and other countries. But at the same time, there are still heavy tariffs on things like steel. I think we should be very careful about not over-claiming about what Britain's soft power in terms of the influence of the monarchy can achieve. I think what it achieves is by setting the best possible atmosphere for the politicians to get on with it.

28:17So you start off with a positive atmosphere and go from there, but you're not going to get a better tariff deal because of the monarchy. but what they can do is make sure you don't get a worse one. And I think this was classically seen around the time of Brexit, before the Brexit referendum, when the government had embarked on this policy, they absolutely spelled it out to me, that they sent members of the royal family to every single member state of the EU. Some of this was before the referendum, some of it was afterwards. It had different purposes. But those who got visits before the referendum, while David Cameron was still trying to negotiate a better deal with the EU, we were extending Britain's love to our EU neighbours in an attempt to get a better deal.

29:20so it set a good context for the negotiations but in the end it achieved nothing because places like Germany countries like Germany weren't going to let a nice fuzzy feeling engendered by a royal visit trump their national self-interest Yes of course and it does definitely feel at this particular moment in time that we are very much in the era of hard power again where soft power perhaps struggles a little bit more. But another interesting thing that comes out in your book is this issue of the monarchy's public funding. And it just got me thinking, reading through some of the passages, that I seem to recall, you know, you talk about how much it's increased and the generosity, George Osborne, who was chancellor at the time that the new system was created, felt that it was too generous.

30:15And the government felt that it was too generous. But by the time they kind of cottoned on to that, And Penn had already been, or the Queen's agreement had already been achieved. And so they didn't feel they could row back on it. And obviously since then, the Crown Estate, which is the source effectively of the monarchy's public funding through complicated ratios and things, has seen its profits soar because of wind power, because of green energy. And you may remember, because you were still a royal correspondent at the time, I have a distinct memory of us being told that that system would be changed, that ratio would be changed in light of that.