SURRENDER THAT’S SAVED HER JUBILEE — AND EXILE TO SIBERIA THAT’S PERMANENT
As the last jubilee reached its crescendo – with vast crowds packed around Buckingham Palace to see the Queen on her balcony at the end of a long weekend of festivities – everyone was enjoying the happy scene.
Well, almost everyone. The Duke of York was incandescent that the balcony was off-limits to all except the Queen, the Prince of Wales, his sons and the Duchesses of Cornwall and Cambridge (Prince Philip was in hospital).
The duke made his views very clear, confronting the Queen’s officials and arguing that it was a snub to himself and his daughters – but to no avail.
Neither the Princess Royal nor the Earl of Wessex nor any other members of the family were included either.
The ‘optics’ were very clear. This was not a family party but a clear statement about the importance of the direct line of succession. The duke, however, refused to see it that way.
Come the Platinum Jubilee, he will not just be excluded from the balcony. It is questionable whether he will even be allowed inside the M25, thanks to the fearful shadow he has cast over this summer’s celebrations through his catastrophic attachment to the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
However, last night’s out-of-court settlement does, at least, go some way to clearing the air around the jubilee, if not around the duke himself. It is the leastworst case scenario.
In as much as anything about this tawdry business could be said to be good news for the Queen, it is the first development in months which is not bad news.
The broader questions about the duke’s links to Epstein and the more specific questions about his relationship with Virginia Roberts – now going by her married name Giuffre – will not go away.
Nor will the question of who will fund the very substantial pay-out by the duke to Miss Roberts.
Or, indeed, of how he proposes to ‘support’ victims of sex trafficking, as the court statement suggests.
The duke now remains indelibly tainted by association and it is very hard to see a way back to any sort of public role from here. Yet, this could have been very much worse for the monarchy.
Quite apart from the prospect of a vicious court case hanging over this summer’s jubilee celebrations, there would have been the relentless drip-drip of claim and counterclaim between now and then.
THE rules which govern pre-trial arrangements in the UK would have been immaterial. In the last few days, an entire sub-plot has hit the headlines over the veracity – and whereabouts – of the notorious photograph at the heart of this case. We could have expected more of the same on a weekly basis for months.
so the Queen and the rest of her family will be feeling a sense of relief that this is likely not to happen – though they will be mindful that nothing involving Epstein seems to stay settled for long, with the exception of his demise.
In the last few months, the Royal Family has had to endure the excruciating details of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, followed by the toe-curling debacle of the duke’s attempt to have the Roberts case thrown out by a New York judge – who was having none of it.
You can almost picture senior aides drawing lots in the Queen’s private office to decide whose turn it is to deliver that day’s dollop of abysmal tidings from America to our poor monarch. Well, for now, at least, that will no longer be necessary. No doubt, more lurid stories will continue to emerge – but the monarchy is well-used to dealing with unpleasant headlines and toxic media reports.
What makes it extremely nervous is anything with the imprimatur of a court of law. That this threat has now receded points very strongly to heavy pressure from the family and from the institution to come to this resolution.
The duke had recently made it clear, via intermediaries, that he was looking forward to ‘clearing his name’ in court. That is, of course, what defendants are expected to say.
Yet, the merest possibility of that was anathema to the Queen and her officials – and also to the Prince of Wales who has played an important role in supporting his mother in this matter.
They could all well recall what happened the last time the duke tried to ‘clear his name’ with that Newsnight interview – a catalogue of blunders on every possible level.
If the duke and his advisers thought that was a good idea, then perish the thought of him having his day in court. Amid the fallout from the Newsnight interview in 2019, the duke announced that he was ‘stepping back’ from public duties, only to start making plans – within hours – to attend an engagement in the Middle East.
It was the Prince of Wales who stepped in very firmly to quash any attempt at backsliding. And he has been helping the Queen to hold the line ever since.
The Duke of Cambridge is known to be wholly supportive of his father on this point, too.
Another key player will have been the new Lord Chamberlain, Lord Parker of Minsmere.
Formerly sir Andrew Parker, he was director-general of MI5 during the Cameron, May and Johnson premierships and joined the palace last year.
It falls to the Lord Chamberlain, the most senior figure in the Royal Household – and often likened to a non-executive chairman – to be the conduit between the monarch, the family and the Royal Household when matters of great sensitivity are involved.
He will doubtless have found his former security service training in furtive enforcement techniques invaluable in recent months.
It has, understandably, been immensely difficult and painful for the monarch to consign her second son to the royal siberia where he must now reside indefinitely.
However, seventy years on the throne has left the Queen anything but complacent.
In the earlier stages of the Epstein debacle, she was content to see the duke and his public role, in effect, mothballed on the basis that nothing had been proved and there was no case to answer, beyond a disastrous lack of judgment.
Yet the Queen recognised that this position could not hold as the duke was being drawn ever deeper into the Epstein quagmire while still giving the impression – rightly or wrongly – of somehow hiding behind a royal shield.
HE was no longer merely an embarrassment for the monarchy but a drag anchor. That had to change, first in relieving him of his honorary positions and, latterly, in making this court case go away.
Doubtless the saddest moment for the Queen was having to decide it was time for the duke to go as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards. It was her decision to appoint him following the Duke of Edinburgh’s retirement from public life in 2017.
This was a huge honour for Andrew, given that it was the very first public appointment which she herself enjoyed, shortly before her sixteenth birthday.
For that appointment to be ‘returned to the Queen’ will have pained her as much as the duke himself. However, there had clearly been rumblings in the ranks.
Furthermore, it was another issue hanging over the Platinum Jubilee with endless speculation about who would represent the Grenadier Guards at the special Jubilee Trooping the Colour in June.
For now, the duke remains a vice admiral in the Royal Navy, a rank which he received automatically on his 55th birthday in 2015.
He was due to be upgraded to admiral on his 60th birthday in 2020, though that was plainly unthinkable in the wake of the Newsnight saga.
The wording of the official statement at the time presented it as his own decision: ‘The Duke of York has asked the Ministry of Defence if this promotion might be deferred until such time as His Royal Highness returns to public duty.’
That is one present he will not be receiving as he marks his 62nd birthday this saturday. But he might be getting a slice of cake from the Queen up at the castle. ‘He is still her son and she still loves him dearly,’ says a source.
However, it is safe to say that this ‘deferral’ is now permanent.