Ipsos<\/a> shows support of the monarchy at the lowest level in more than 30 years with only 55 percent of Britons in favour, down from a high of 80 percent under the late Queen. <\/p>\nTo wit: The Duke of Kent. This is what Crown Inc circa 2026 looks like, literally and figuratively greying at an alarming rate and which seems as in touch with contemporary life and sentiment as the telex and Are You Being Served<\/i> re-runs. <\/p>\n
One of Queen Elizabeth\u2019s axioms was \u201cI have to be seen to be believed,\u201d but what Brits, and the world, are seeing of the monarchy is a rapidly ageing half dozen or so doers who generally have the pizzazz and fizzle of a few sodden sparklers in orthotic shoes. <\/p>\n
The royal family badly needs an injection of a bit of pep and sizzle, younger faces who have at least once in their life used Uber Eats and don\u2019t fondly remember the penny farthing. <\/p>\n
And Harry? Look at photos of him at any charity engagement and he emits enough glow and energy to power several AI data centres. The man has the same je ne sais quoi, It-ish-ness that his mother Diana, Princess of Wales had in absolute spades, that marvellous ability to walk into rooms full of nervously perspiring strangers and charm the parents off them. Clearly this is his milieu and where he truly shines. <\/p>\n
Yes, as a son and brother Harry\u2019s track record in recent years might be a complicated, emotional one, but as a card-carrying, clocking-on-royal, the 41-year-old is hard to beat. <\/p>\n
The exceptions to the Palace\u2019s workforce woes are, of course, Prince WIlliam and Kate, The Prince and Princess of Wales but no matter how slick their Insta videos are getting, they are still just two people – and two people who have made abundantly clear they will not ploddingly log small potatoes official engagements in Yorkshire market towns. <\/p>\n
Of the current working royals, what happens when the close to 80-year-olds – the King, Queen Camilla and Princess Anne – and the 60-somethings – Prince Edward and Sophie, The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh – are no longer able to shoulder the thousands of engagements they currently do? Someone has to do at least some of them. <\/p>\n
What about roughly 30 investitures, held at both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and the garden parties attended by more than 30,000 chosen members of the public? <\/p>\n
Then you have to add on the Downing Street-demanded overseas visits when the government du jour desperately needs a few big name royals to pack their travel neck pillows and to jet off to do their unique softpower, geopolitical jazz hands. <\/p>\n
There is only so much William and Kate can do, even before we consider their current crop of large-scale personal projects (Earthshot, Howewards, The Foundation for Early Childhood), having to run a 60-odd staff member strong office, and being the devoted school-run parents we are always hearing about.<\/p>\n
What the monarchy has in Harry is a readymade, fully-trained, turnkey duke who knows the ropes, who was once routinely voted the most popular member of the royal family and who could help pick up the slack. <\/p>\n
The ruthlessly unemotional and smart decision would be to slowly reintegrate the duke into British public life and, gently-gently, re-introduced as a Palace staffer. <\/p>\n
William and Kate don\u2019t have to have any intention of ever cracking a Friday 5pm bottle of fizz with him to toast a bang-up week at the crown coalface, but the reality is they need him. <\/p>\n
And vice versa because he needs them. The images and videos shared by Meghan on Instagram show a glowingly happy father and husband but he has made clear over the last year that he misses his home and the role he used to play. <\/p>\n
So, the answer is simple – give him back his old job, at least on a casual or part-time basis. It would be a mutually beneficial arrangement, even if hurt feelings needed to be parked and deep breaths and cool heads were required to prevail on both sides of the Atlantic. <\/p>\n
This might seem far-fetched now but remember, there was a time when, apocryphally, stories were being told of strangers in the 90s hating Camilla Parker-Bowles so much she had bread rolls chucked at her in the supermarket. Talk about a pain au ouch. <\/p>\n
Attitudes can change, especially if the world started to see images of a charm-a-rama Harry out visiting hospitals and the like. <\/p>\n
To paraphrase Edward III\u2019s at the Battle of Cr\u00e9cy talking about his champing-at-the-bit son the Black Prince, \u2018let the boy win his spurs\u2026back\u2019. <\/p>\n
Daniela Elser is an editor and commentator with more than 15 years\u2019 experience working with a number of Australia\u2019s leading media titles.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news.com.au \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everything\u2019s fine. Absolutely fine. The monarchy is in tip top condition and in the very ruddiest of health. Just don\u2019t look at this photo. If you can\u2019t name the gentleman below, don\u2019t worry, it\u2019s unlikely anyone not perma-plugged into the royal mains power grid would recognise the 90-year-old Duke of Kent, a still working member […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2487520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2487519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Drastic-action-needed-after-shock-royal-photo.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2487519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487521,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2487519\/revisions\/2487521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2487520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2487519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2487519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2487519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}