Prince Harry has "got an obstacle course" to navigate if he wants to rebuild his relationship with Britain, but it is still possible, a PR expert has told Newsweek.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been deeply unpopular in the U.K. for years, yet Harry has chosen to take his Invictus Games tournament for wounded veterans to Birmingham, in England, rather than Washington D.C.
The decision may seem surprising after all the work Harry put in to creating a new life in the U.S., but Edward Coram James, a PR expert and chief executive of media agency Go Up, believes the move could help Harry restore his reputation in Britain.
He told Newsweek: "Through Invictus it's definitely possible. He's got an obstacle course. He's got a tightrope that he needs to walk and there's a very narrow path through for him reputationally, but that path is Invictus.
"His narrow path back into the good books of the British public is Invictus. I think having it in the U.K. is actually very sensible for that."
Harry was hugely popular in Britain before he quit the country for a new life in America and at his peak was liked by 81 percent of U.K. adults in November 2018, when he got engaged to Meghan Markle.
Polling by YouGov in September 2024 showed he was liked by 31 percent and disliked by 63 percent, giving him a net approval rating of minus 32.
In the same research, Meghan was liked by 24 percent and disliked by 68 percent giving her a net approval rating of minus 44.
"He stopped being popular because his name started to become associated with attacking the royal family," Coram James said. "The way to mitigate that is to have his name associated once again with the stuff that made him popular in the first place, like Invictus.
"From a reputational point of view that will have been taken into consideration by him.
"'Let's shift the narrative here, let's remind the British people of the thing that made me popular in the first place, let's reassociate my name with veterans with the military service, with duty and honor and all the stuff I'm basically being accused of not having anymore, and let's see if that moves the needle.' And my best bet is that it will do."
There may also be other reasons to not pick Washington D.C. at a point when it is not clear who the next president will be.
Harry and Meghan would likely welcome Kamala Harris, who Meghan has been positive about in the past, but are strongly opposed to Donald Trump.
"Of course when deciding the location of a major games you have to look at the prevailing political head winds," Coram James said.
"And so of course, they will have taken Trump into account and the uncertainty that a Trump presidency would bring is probably something that he will have considered.
"I would argue that from Trump's point of view, as much as he clearly dislikes Harry and Meghan and as much as they are very, very unpopular among conservative circles in the U.S., even they wouldn't mess with something like the Invictus Games.
"The fact that it caters to wounded veterans far outweighs the connotations that having Harry and Meghan involved in it would have.
"Trump probably wouldn't have chimed in there anyway because reputationally it would have been a very bad move for him to do that, but that being said he is very unpredictable and constantly does things that, reputationally, you would advise him against doing."
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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