Will Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor bring down the monarchy? It may seem an absurd question to ask since the Royal Family has survived huge scandals in the past.
But the latest batch of allegations against the disgraced ex-prince will deepen the public’s perception that he is an entitled, sleazy, greedy and seemingly untruthful person. He epitomises what many republicans hate about the monarchy.
I expect further emails and photos will emerge showing Mountbatten-Windsor in a terrible light. King Charles must be wondering whether the torrent of allegations will ever cease.
As polls suggest that support for the monarchy is dwindling, republicans see an opportunity to strike. One of them, Labour MP Rachael Maskell, was on the radio yesterday morning calling for a police investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor’s activities.
Damning
What can the King do? Very little, I fear. He has already deprived his oafish brother of all his titles, served notice that he must leave Royal Lodge with its 30 rooms in Windsor Great Park, and banished him to a reasonably modest dwelling on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.
Charles might like to send his brother to the Tower but unfortunately that isn’t possible. Maybe there are some further practicable actions he could take, though it’s hard to think of any. The King can only wait for the next wave of damaging revelations.
Charles might like to send his brother to the Tower but unfortunately that isn’t possible. Maybe there are some further practicable actions he could take, though it’s hard to think of any. The King can only wait for the next wave of damaging revelations
The most recent lot – part of three million pages of documents concerning convicted paedophile and serial rapist Jeffrey Epstein, released by the US Department of Justice last Friday – is about as bad as it could be.
For my money, the widely published photograph of Mountbatten-Windsor on all fours over an unidentified woman – likely taken by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year jail sentence for child sex trafficking – isn’t the most shocking. They are both fully clothed, after all, and he may have been larking about.
More damning is an email sent by Epstein to the then Prince Andrew in August 2010 offering to set up a dinner for him with a ‘clever, beautiful and trustworthy’ 26-year-old Russian woman. The prince replied that he would be ‘delighted to see her’.
This could be the same woman who alleges that she was despatched to the UK by Epstein in 2010. According to US lawyer Bradley Edwards, an encounter took place at Royal Lodge.
The woman, who is not British and is said to have been in her 20s, was later given tea and a tour of Buckingham Palace. Her lawyer is now threatening to file a civil claim.
Fair-minded people may point out that Mountbatten-Windsor was single at the time, and it’s not obvious that anything illegal took place. That isn’t the case in respect of allegations made by the now deceased Virginia Giuffre, who asserted that in 2001 she was forced to have sex with Andrew.
For my money, the widely published photograph of Mountbatten-Windsor on all fours over an unidentified woman isn’t the most shocking. They are both fully clothed, after all, and he may have been larking about
More damning is an email sent by Epstein to the then Prince Andrew in August 2010 offering to set up a dinner for him with a ‘clever, beautiful and trustworthy’ 26-year-old Russian woman. The prince replied that he would be ‘delighted to see her’
Nonetheless, on the assumption that the 2010 incident took place as is claimed, this was sleazy and disreputable behaviour. Extending the visit with a tour of the Queen’s official residence was hardly seemly.
Worse still – in fact, much worse – is the confirmation among the three million documents that the prince maintained a cordial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after he was freed in August 2010 following imprisonment for soliciting a minor.
If Mountbatten-Windsor possessed a shred of judgment and good sense, he would never have got in contact again. In fact, it should have been obvious to him years earlier that Epstein was a deviant on an epic scale, and a very dangerous one.
Yet Epstein and Andrew were soon exchanging emails about the Russian woman. The following month they were discussing a visit by the American to London. The prince wrote: ‘We could have dinner at Buckingham Palace and lots of privacy.’
Not content with giving a strange woman a conducted tour of the royal residence, he wanted to do the same for his friend, and convicted sex abuser, Jeffrey Epstein.
Emails continued to go back and forth. On December 24, 2010, Andrew (who was still a trade envoy for the British Government) emailed Epstein about a ‘business opportunity’ in Afghanistan. The rest of the exchange has been redacted.
The date of this friendly email is particularly important. For in his disastrous 2019 interview on BBC’s Newsnight, the prince claimed he had gone to New York in 2010 to ‘end his friendship’ with the paedophile because that was ‘the right thing to do’.
That visit, when the two men were photographed conversing in New York’s Central Park, took place in early December – before the email about a business opportunity in Afghanistan. The prince was staying in his friend’s mansion.
No member of that family since Edward VIII (pictured with his wife in Germany in 1936) – who gave up his throne in 1936 and later hobnobbed and colluded with the Nazis – has done the monarchy more harm than Mountbatten-Windsor
Shame
In other words, Mountbatten-Windsor renewed his close relationship with Epstein as soon as he was released, and maintained it after he claimed to have severed it, even sending electronic Christmas cards to the financier featuring Beatrice and Eugenie that year.
Separate recently released documents also show that the two of them had an amiable email exchange the following February. ‘Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!’ said an email sent to Epstein by ‘a member of the British Royal Family’ who is believed to be Prince Andrew.
Mountbatten-Windsor misled Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis during that interview, in which he also claimed never to have set eyes on Virginia Giuffre, to whom he nonetheless made a settlement of £12million in a civil sex abuse case in 2022.
Who believes that the former prince is telling the truth? He is taking us for fools. He has never shown any contrition or the slightest sympathy for the hundreds of girls and young women abused by Epstein.
There are others who should hang their heads in shame. Evidence has been found among the three million documents that Epstein sent $75,000 (£55,000) to three accounts associated with Lord Mandelson between 2003 and 2004.
Mandelson says he has no recollection, and rather lamely questions the authenticity of the documents. Another shows that in December 2009 Epstein asked Mandelson, then Business Secretary, if there was ‘any real chance of making the tax only on the cash portion of the bankers’ bonus’.The Labour government had just announced a ‘super tax’ on bonuses.
Arrogant
Neither Mandelson’s nor the ex-prince’s association with Epstein is likely to surprise us. But Andrew matters more, not because he is of any significance himself, but as brother to the King and a senior member of our Royal Family, albeit recently disowned.
Sir Keir Starmer is urging Mountbatten-Windsor to give evidence before a US congressional committee investigating Epstein’s affairs. The Prime Minister can’t have the interests of the Royal Family very close to his heart.
For who can doubt that the arrogant and hapless ex-prince would dig a bigger hole for himself, and further damage the monarchy, if he appeared before American representatives with limited respect for the Royal Family?
No member of that family since Edward VIII – who gave up his throne in 1936 and later hobnobbed and colluded with the Nazis – has done the monarchy more harm than Mountbatten-Windsor.
I don’t know how it will end. More injurious allegations about the former prince Andrew will probably appear. Republicans will scheme and plot – and defenders of the monarchy are going to have their work cut out.
