The Duchess revealed yesterday she was looking forward to “using my voice in a way that I haven’t been able to of late”, as she spoke about voting to activist Gloria Steinem. She and husband Prince Harry moved to the US and stepped down from senior royal duties earlier this year.
However, other senior royals including Prince Charles and even the Queen have touched on politics before.
Members of the Royal Family do not tend to get involved with or comment on politics.
According to the Royal Family website, the Queen herself “has to remain strictly neutral with respect to political matters” as head of state.
This is despite her close working relationship with whoever is Prime Minister.
The Queen has in the past encouraged people to vote, though, just as Meghan recently did.
In 2003, the monarch expressed concern about the low voter turnout at an election in Wales.
She said encouraging people to use their vote was a “real challenge”, adding: “It is vital to the health, both of the United Kingdom and of Wales, that our democratic institutions flourish and adapt,” The Times reports.
Similarly, Meghan Markle recently said of the upcoming US election: “If we aren’t part of the solution, we are part of the problem. If you aren’t going out there and voting, then you’re complicit.”
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In a series of letters he wrote to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair between 2004 and 2005, Prince Charles called for “pressure” on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to cut back on red tape in the farming industry, according to the Independent.
The paper notes other letters revealed the Prince was able to influence government policy in terms of homeopathy – or alternative medicines – with which he is reportedly interested.
He also called on Mr Blair to introduce a badger cull to help prevent tuberculosis in cows, and criticised opponents of the controversial culls as “intellectually dishonest”.
The government said this year badger culls would be phased out in favour of vaccination instead, with one expert from the Zoological Society of London calling vaccination more promising as well as being “cheaper, more humane, and more environmentally friendly.”
Despite other royals approaching political matters in the past, Piers Morgan recently called on the Queen to “strip the Sussexes of their titles” because of recent US election comments.
He said: “They can’t remain as royals and spout off about foreign elections in such a brazenly partisan way.”
Observers say Meghan Markle did not appear to mention her personal political views in her recent comments about voting.
