EDITOR AT LARGE
THEY haven’t quite ruined her summer, but it’s been close. Day after day, news of exasperating royal behaviour has thudded on to the nation’s breakfast tables to the despair of the Queen.
Prince Harry’s staggeringly misjudged swipe at the Commonwealth and his assertion that it must acknowledge past wrongs over empire and race.
His wife Meghan’s complaints about being ‘unprotected’ by the royals while making sly digs at other family members.
And then there is Prince Andrew, evoking the least public sympathy of all, as revelations about his friendships plumb fresh depths of tawdriness and embarrassment.
Every morning seems to bring a new piece of news about Andrew. Little of it brings good cheer. The shock over publication of a photograph of Andrew’s friends Ghislaine Maxwell and the disgraced Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey posing on the coronation thrones during a private tour of the Palace organised by the Duke of York, has ramped up the pressure.
Yesterday it even drew in the leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, who said the prince should co-operate with the FBI over his relationship with Maxwell and the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Sir Keir, a former lawyer and one-time director of public prosecutions, was unequivocal. ‘It doesn’t matter who you are,’ he said. ‘You cooperate with the law enforcement authorities when they ask you to do so.’
All this week at Buckingham Palace, while the family’s principal figures have been continuing to lead the nation’s response to the coronavirus, senior courtiers have been becoming more and more rattled by the distractions.
To the people whose lives are committed to the welfare of the monarchy, this has been one of the worst periods of public disapproval since the summer of 1992 when intrigue over Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage and the misbehaviour of the Duchess of York dominated the deadlines.
It is not a crisis as that summer was. Not quite. Or as one senior official muttered with distinct discomfort yesterday: ‘Not yet.’
BUT there is a fear that this stream of uncomfortable news will reopen the debate about the future direction of the monarchy. The Andrew story in particular is seen as a gift for republicans to exploit – and to enjoy.
In many ways the saga of the prince and the paedophile would be seen as a farce were it not so sordid or so serious.
Just take the past few days. There has been the theatrical behaviour of the New York attorney, Audrey Strauss playing to the gallery with her grandiose pleas for Andrew to come forward; the shouty claims of defence lawyers pressing for the duke’s head as a royal trophy; and even the involvement of a lobbying firm that specialises in taking on clients with an unsavoury reputation but declining to represent the Queen’s son implying that he was too toxic.
But over-arching all this sorry story is about Andrew and a question of truth. Is he guilty of evasion or is he a victim too of over-zealous prosecutors who, to Andrew’s thinking anyway, have ignored the high profile and pressing claims of figures linked to Epstein in the u.S. – namely President Trump and ex-president Bill Clinton – for the glory of a royal scalp?
Even so the duke has hardly helped himself. It is not just his appalling miscalculation in giving that interview to the BBC’s Emily Maitlis and his explanations about Pizza Huts and not sweating, but rather about how he has responded to the most serious accusations.
Over the weekend the phrase ‘no recollection’ was deployed again. He used it last to answer questions about that photograph of his arm around the bare midriff of 17-year-old Virginia Roberts, who claims they had sex three times –claims he denies.