Is Meghan already preparing a bid to be America’s f irst woman President?
MEGHAN MARKLE will use the furore over her interview with Oprah to launch a political career which could take her all the way to the White House, if rumours circulating around Westminster last week turn out to be accurate.
One senior Labour figure – a veteran of Tony Blair’s Downing Street administration with strong links to Washington – claimed to The Mail on Sunday that Ms Markle, 39, was networking among senior Democrats with a view to building a campaign and fundraising teams for a tilt at the US Presidency.
Last night, a source close to the Duchess of Sussex declined to comment, but the couple have made little secret of their political beliefs.
During the US election last year they levelled a thinly veiled attack on Donald Trump by urging voters to ‘reject hate speech’, which a spokesperson for the couple described as ‘a call for decency’. Trump himself declared that he was ‘not a fan’ of Meghan, 39.
A source said: ‘The Blairite, internationalist and Democratic party networks are buzzing with talk about Meghan’s political ambitions and potential backers.’ Last year, a friend of the Duchess told Vanity Fair magazine that one of the reasons she did not give up her American citizenship when she married into the Royal Family was to allow her to keep open the option of entering Washington politics.
US constitutional experts responded that she would have to renounce her title if she wanted to hold public office in the States, because it would cut across the US oath of allegiance. Buckingham Palace tried to distance the Royal Family from the remarks made during the US election by issuing a statement saying that ‘the Duke is not a working member of the Royal Family’ and describing his comments as ‘made in a personal capacity’.
The source added that the presumption was that the Duchess was eyeing 2024, when President Joe Biden will be 82 and deciding whether he wants to run for a second term.
If she made it to the White House, Meghan would be the first female US President – succeeding where Hillary Clinton narrowly failed four years ago – and the second non-white occupant of the Oval Office after Barack Obama.
She would also be following in the footsteps of President Ronald Reagan, who was a Hollywood actor for four decades before switching to politics. During the 2020 campaign, the Duchess addressed the When All Women Vote Couch Party, the organisation co-founded by Michelle Obama to encourage participation in elections.
Meghan’s friends have previously encouraged speculation about her political ambitions – describing her rise from modest beginnings as ‘the embodiment of the American dream’.