The arrests of Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have shone a spotlight on the centuries-old common-law offence of misconduct in public office. Neither man has yet been charged, and both deny wrongdoing, but should police investigations proceed to prosecution, this vague and complex offence could be challenging for lawyers to prove.

“Securing a conviction for misconduct in public office is a notoriously difficult task,” said The Telegraph. There are fewer than 50 convictions a year and none of those have involved “high-profile individuals”.

What is it?

The offence of misconduct in public office has been dated back to 1599. It’s a common-law offence, which means it was established by judicial precedent, rather than a specific Act of Parliament. It had fallen into disuse but was revived in recent times to catch corrupt police officers whose misconduct didn’t fall easily into other well-established offences. It carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The offence has four main elements, all of which must be proved:

· The individual is a public officer acting as such.

· The individual wilfully neglects to perform his or her duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself or herself.

· The conduct is to such a degree that it amounts to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder.

· The conduct is without reasonable excuse or justification.

The widely acknowledged problem with these elements is their vagueness. What constitutes a public duty is not defined and “the meaning of public trust is fairly elastic”, said The New Statesman. “Few would say it’s a satisfactory area of law.”

The Law Commission “has proposed that the offence be abolished”, and the government has included “some replacement offences” in the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, also known as the Hillsborough Law. But that bill is currently “stalled” in Parliament and “is not yet law (and may never be)”.

Who has been convicted for it?

The offence is clearly intended for charging those in trusted public office who have betrayed that trust. It was described by legal scholar Sir William Blackstone, way back in 1765, as “a crime of deep malignity”. In its modern incarnation, it has mainly been used to punish misconduct by junior and mid-ranking public officials, with police and prison officers accounting for 92% of convictions between 2014 and 2024, according to the Institute For Government.

In 2009, former MP Damian Green was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office but he was not charged. In 2016, former MEP Nikki Sinclaire was charged and tried but acquitted. Last year, independent MP Dan Norris was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, as well as sexual assault and rape, and investigations are still ongoing.

In 2019, former prime minister Boris Johnson was summoned to face a private prosecution for misconduct in a public office – over allegations that he has misled the British public about the cost of European Union membership in the run-up to Brexit. The High Court dismissed the case and the summons was overturned.

What could happen now?

As the law around the offence that both Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor are being investigated for is “famously vague”, it “complicates the task”, said Robert Hazell, a professor of politics and government at University College London, on The Conversation. If any charges are brought, lawyers “will have to devote more time and effort to understanding the elements of the offence, and then ensuring that they can prove each element.”

There are allegations that both men shared confidential government information with Jeffrey Epstein. Under this law, “if sensitive government material was shared without proper authority, the question would be whether that amounted to a deliberate breach of official duty”, said Simarjot Singh Judge, a managing partner at Judge Law. “Prosecutors would need to establish intent, seriousness, and whether the conduct crossed the threshold into criminal wrongdoing.”

Given the seriousness of this offence, convictions “typically result in an immediate custodial sentence”, said law firm K&L Gates in a briefing paper. Although the maximum sentence is life imprisonment, “sentences imposed to date have generally been lower”.

What happened

Britain’s Thames Valley Police Thursday arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles III, on suspicion of misconduct in public office tied to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The former prince was “released under investigation,” meaning he has not yet been charged nor exonerated, after almost 12 hours of questioning.

Who said what

Mountbatten-Windsor was detained early Thursday, his 66th birthday, after unmarked police cars arrived at his new home on the king’s Sandringham Estate. The Thames Valley Police is “accustomed to playing a different role for Britain’s royal family — as protectors,” said The New York Times, but confirmed earlier this month that it was investigating whether Mountbatten-Windsor improperly shared confidential government documents with Epstein while serving as a U.K. trade envoy from 2001 to 2011.

The “arrest of the senior royal, eighth in line to the throne, is unprecedented in modern times,” Reuters said. It was a “catch your breath moment” made “even more dramatic by the unprecedented statement” from Charles, “offering no hiding place or protection” for his brother, said BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan. “Let me state clearly,” the king said: “The law must take its course.”

The last senior member of Britain’s royal family to be arrested in connection with a serious crime was King Charles I, who was beheaded for treason in 1649 following his defeat in the English Civil War. Misconduct in public office, the potential charge for Mountbatten-Windsor, carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

What next?

“This is the most spectacular fall from grace for a member of the royal family in modern times,” Craig Prescott, a legal expert at the University of London, told The Associated Press. “And it may not be over yet.” Police said earlier this month they were also looking into another report from the Epstein files, that a woman was taken to an address in Windsor in 2010 “for sexual purposes.” Even if no other revelations emerge, The Wall Street Journal said, a “lengthy police investigation — and a possible criminal trial — could see the shadow of the Epstein scandal hanging over the British royal family for months to come.”

The arrest on Thursday of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, “the fool formerly known as a prince, marks the definite end of public reverence toward the British monarchy”.

“I write that as an Englishman who is rather fond of it,” said Tim Stanley in The Washington Post.

The King has said that the authorities “have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation” in their investigation into his brother, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing related to Jeffrey Epstein. But the latest twist in the sorry tale has raised questions as to whether the royals have the full and wholehearted support and cooperation of the nation.

What did the commentators say?

While the arrest has prompted a “sliver of misty-eyed, ‘good on us Brits for actually clearing out the rot’ commentary” said Harry Cole in The Sun, “that’s far eclipsed by discussions about the very future of the Crown not heard since those dark days following the death of Princess Diana”.

Indeed, “how does this work out any way other than badly for the Palace, the Royal Family, and the monarchy?” asked the BBC’s royal correspondent Jonny Dymond. Some believe the royals have done enough to distance themselves from Andrew’s actions but while he “may not have been on the Buckingham Palace balcony for a while”, any distinction between him and the royals, “is entirely lost on most people” as “the Palace, the Royal Family, the monarchy, all seem as one”.

But where there might be a distinction is between the actions of the family and the future of the monarchy, said Jonathan Dimbleby, the King’s biographer and friend. “I don’t think that it damages the monarchy,” he said of the arrest to the BBC. “I think we have to separate the notion of a family from the institution of the monarchy.”

Republicans “hope that the scandal will lead to the collapse of the crown itself”, said The Economist. Graham Smith, chief executive of the campaign group Republic, said Andrew’s arrest “threatens the whole monarchy”. It’s a sentiment that is “ambitious, even if it is a chance to erode support for the institution”, said the magazine. But Andrew does embody a “monarchy that is reduced in stature in a country that is itself getting poorer and crasser”, said Stanley in The Washington Post. The Crown is just one of a number of institutions that the country has inherited, “the purpose of which it can’t recall”.

“If we’re not careful, if their reputation sinks any lower, we might finally join the US and wipe them away in a fit of revolutionary disgust.”

What next?

While it may not result in the end of the monarchy, a “change in culture is long overdue”, said The Times in an editorial. “Under cover of royal deference and secrecy, far too little was done for far too long to rein in Mountbatten-Windsor’s behaviour.” Transparency is the only way to change public opinion and “records should now be released, and staff encouraged to speak honestly about what they saw.”

The royals “will be holding crisis talks today with a mixture of sorrow and panic”, said The Spectator’s Alexander Larman. They had hoped that, when it came to this particular scandal, “the worst was past”. But “it is now clear that far worse is almost certainly yet to come, and the question is what anyone can do about it”.

Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor are coming under renewed pressure to testify before US Congress over their links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson resigned his membership of the Labour party last night to avoid causing any “further embarrassment”. On Friday, newly released documents revealed a picture of the Labour grandee in his underwear, payments from Epstein to Mandelson, and email exchanges between the pair that appear to show Mandelson leaking confidential Downing Street documents to Epstein. The new batch of Epstein files also implicated Andrew, including a series of photos of the former prince kneeling on all fours over an unidentified woman lying on the floor.

Both men’s association with Epstein has wrecked their public reputation but, as the furore over the last few days has shown, they will find it hard to remain out of the spotlight.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer has called on Andrew to cooperate with US authorities who are investigating Epstein. It is “rare for a prime minister to intervene on matters relating to the royal family”, said The Times’ editorial board, but “such is the anger and outcry” that – in an unusually “deft reading of the public mood” – Starmer hopes to pressure Andrew “into finally doing what he should have done" a long time ago. Unless he “fully explains his past actions and what he knew about Epstein’s lifestyle”, this will remain “a running sore for the royal family”.

A lawyer representing some of Epstein’s victims told ITV News that Andrew should be extradited and forced to testify. But US investigators “face a succession of legal obstacles which make” that “unlikely”, said Cahal Milmo in The i Paper.

US investigators may not have more luck with Mandelson. Congress is “poised to issue the peer with a demand to testify in Washington”, said Connor Stringer in The Telegraph, but it “cannot compel testimony from foreigners”, so “he is under no legal obligation to respond”. Of course, “he could be subpoenaed if he sets foot on US soil” and “if he were to ignore that request, he would be liable to arrest”.

What next?

“There will be a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill who want to exert as much pressure on this as possible,” The Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale told Sky News. Some would like the US to invoke the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Britain, under which each country can request cooperation to secure testimony, via court order if necessary, from witnesses abroad. But, given the Trump administration’s proximity to the scandal, few expect this to happen.

In Andrew’s case, what might eventually force his hand is not threats of legal action but rather “internal pressure from within the royal household”, royal historian and constitutional expert Ed Owens told The i Paper. “Prime ministers do not generally speak on these sorts of things without checking with the Palace first” so “I’m wondering whether, behind the scenes, there has been a changing of the wind”.

What happened

The U.K.’s King Charles III on Thursday stripped his brother Andrew of all his remaining titles, including prince, and forced him to vacate his Royal Lodge mansion near Windsor Castle to “move to alternative private accommodation,” Buckingham Palace said. The demotion, as the king seeks to “distance the royals” from Andrew’s “links to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal,” was “one of the most dramatic moves against a member of the royal family in modern British history,” Reuters said.

Who said what

Andrew had survived “years of shameful scandals” and “decades of tawdry headlines about shady business deals, inappropriate behavior and controversial friendships,” The Associated Press said. But a “new round of public outrage” over his Epstein links — including emails showing they had kept in touch longer than admitted, and a newly published memoir in which late Epstein trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre said Andrew acted as if “having sex with me was his birthright” — proved the final straw.

The “censures” against Andrew “are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him,” Buckingham Palace said. “Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”

What next?

The former prince, now known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, was expected to move to a residence on the king’s Sandringham estate. The royal family hopes this “ripping off the bandage moment” will “finally draw a line under the endless oil slick of bad news stories about Andrew,” said BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan. But “it will take more than taking away his titles to dispel” the public anger over his perceived “unchecked privilege” and “ugly entitlement.”

It remains to be seen whether Prince Andrew will face further sanctions over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and alleged sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre. But what is clear as his accuser’s posthumous memoir hits the shelves is that Giuffre was “determined to share her story”, exposing the power and corruption that left “victims, like her, scarred after years of alleged abuse”, said The Independent.

In her 367-page book, co-authored with writer Amy Wallace, Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year aged 41, lays out her claims in “harrowing and sometimes explicit” detail. This is what we have learned.

Epstein and Maxwell’s horrific abuse

There were times Giuffre feared for her life, said London’s The Standard. During her two-year association with Epstein, she alleges he subjected her to sadomasochistic sex that caused her “so much pain that I prayed I would black out”. During this time she writes that she was passed around “scores of powerful, wealthy people” and repeatedly beaten and abused. “I believed that I might die as a sex slave,” she said.

Ghislaine Maxwell is described as a “molester with posh manners and an aristocratic pedigree” who played “den mother to Epstein’s family of dysfunctional girls”.

Giuffre also writes about her first meeting with the British socialite, who approached her while she was working as a teenager in a Mar-a-Lago spa. She describes being invited to Epstein’s house, where Maxwell allegedly instructed her to “do what I do”, before the pair sexually abused her. “The disappointment was excruciating. I blamed myself. ‘Is sex all anyone will ever want from me’,” she writes.

‘Brazen request’

Epstein and Maxwell “pleaded” with Giuffre to “have our baby”, said the New York Post. The proposal is said to have come with the promise of “round-the-clock nannies, a mansion and a $200,000 per month allowance”, but Giuffre would have to hand over all legal rights to the child.

Everything about the “brazen request felt wrong”, she writes. “There was no way I wanted to bring a child into the world for them to raise. What if the baby were female? Was the plan for Epstein and Maxwell to have me bring that little girl up until she reached puberty, then hand her over for them to abuse?”

An ‘orgy’ with Prince Andrew

Giuffre details her first meeting, aged 17, with Prince Andrew, then 41, at Maxwell’s London townhouse, said The Independent. “Just like Cinderella I was going to meet a handsome prince.”

At the house (the setting of the notorious photograph of the pair), she alleges Maxwell told her “you are to do for him what you do for Jeffrey”. They later had sex for the first time. Prince Andrew was, she said, “friendly enough, but still entitled – as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright”. Afterwards, he thanked her “in his clipped British accent”.

Around a month later, she alleges they had sex for a second time at Epstein’s home in Manhattan. The third and final time they had sex was during an “orgy” with Epstein involving “approximately eight other girls”, whom Giuffre describes as looking underage, on a private island in the Caribbean. Epstein “laughed about how they couldn’t really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with”.

Prince Andrew, who reached a financial settlement with Giuffre in 2022 with no acknowledgement of guilt, has consistently and strenuously denied any wrongdoing, and claims they “never had any sexual contact”.

Her reaction to the New York photos

Giuffre remembers seeing the photographs of Andrew with Epstein in New York’s Central Park that were “published in newspapers around the world in 2011”, said the BBC. Epstein had recently been released from prison for prostituting minors. “I was of course revolted to see two of my abusers together, out for a stroll,” she writes. “But mostly I was amazed that a member of the royal family would be stupid enough to appear in public with Epstein.”

She writes about feeling “disappointed” on learning of Epstein’s death, while he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking. “This wasn’t how justice was supposed to work out.” Later she adds that she hopes Prince Andrew will one day be “held to account”.

She has no regrets

In the final chapter of her memoir, Giuffre writes about her hopes of “preventing others suffering”, said The Independent. Dedicating the book to her “Survivor Sisters and anyone who has suffered sexual abuse”, she says the money she received in her settlement from Prince Andrew went towards setting up her foundation for preventing human trafficking.

While she doesn’t regret making her allegations public, she writes that the “constant telling and retelling has been extremely painful and exhausting. With this book, I seek to free myself from my past.”

The Duke of York has been marched down the honours hill, and persuaded to give up his royal titles after continued accusations about his association with the sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

It is a remarkable fall from grace for the late Queen’s favourite son, who was once second in line to the throne and widely feted as a Falklands War hero. Here’s how he went from popular prince to public pariah:

1999: first meets Epstein

Andrew is introduced to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell. The British socialite, daughter of press baron Robert Maxwell, was Epstein's girlfriend at the time and had met Andrew when she was at university.

The trio quickly develop a “close friendship”, according to The Independent. Andrew is said to have invited the couple to Balmoral, his mother’s Scottish residence, that same year. In June 2000, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are guests at a party hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle and, that December, Epstein joins Andrew at a shooting weekend at Sandringham, the royal family’s Norfolk estate.

2001: infamous Virginia Giuffre photo taken

According to Virginia Giuffre, then known as Virginia Roberts, this is when she first meets Andrew. In a lawsuit filed in 2019, she said that, after a sweaty night of dancing at London’s Tramp nightclub, Andrew had sex with her at Maxwell’s townhouse – where the now-infamous photo of the three of them was allegedly taken. On two other occasions – in Epstein’s New York flat and at an “orgy” on Epstein’s private Caribbean island – she is forced to have sex with Andrew, she alleged. At the time, she is 17, and a minor under US law.

2008: Epstein jailed for sex offences

Epstein is charged by Florida prosecutors with “soliciting prostitution” and “soliciting prostitution with a minor”. He pleads guilty, after making a controversial plea deal that gives him immunity from other federal sex abuse charges, and is sentenced to 18 months in prison.

2010: Epstein released

Shortly after Epstein’s release from prison, Andrew is photographed walking with him in New York’s Central Park. Andrew later claimed his sole purpose in meeting Epstein then was to end their friendship.

2015-2016: Andrew linked to Epstein in court documents

In 2015, Buckingham Palace denies “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors” on the part of the prince, after he was named in US court papers related to an Epstein legal case.

A year later, Andrew is again named as part of a defamation suit brought by Giuffre against Maxwell, with Giuffre claiming she was paid $15,000 (£11,180) to have sex with the prince. But these court documents are sealed, and not released until 2019.

2019: Epstein dies; Newsnight interview

In August, the court documents from the Giuffre v Maxwell case are unsealed on public interest grounds. The next day, Epstein is found dead in the New York jail cell where he had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He has apparently committed suicide.

In November, Andrew gives a wide-ranging interview with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis. He says he has "no recollection" of ever meeting Giuffre, and could not have sex with her in March 2001 because he was at Pizza Express with his daughter on the day in question. He also refutes Giuffre’s description of him sweating while dancing because, he said, he has been unable to sweat since serving in the Falklands War.

The interview is widely seen as disastrous. Four days later, Andrew announces that he will be stepping back from public duties,

2021-2022: Giuffre sues; royal status downgraded

In August 2021, Giuffre files a civil suit against Andrew in the US, alleging that she was forced to have sex with him in the early 2000s. Andrew’s status as a member of the royal family is downgraded in early 2022, after a US judge rules that the case can go ahead. Andrew is stripped of his military affiliations, his royal patronages and the use of his HRH title, after more than 150 veterans write to the Queen.

In February, Andrew settles the civil case brought against him by Giuffre with an out-of-court payment of £12 million but no apology and no admission of liability.

2025: Guiffre dies; Andrew gives up titles

In April, Giuffre dies by suicide, aged 41, at her farm in Western Australia. In a statement, her family say that “she lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking”.

In October, the Mail on Sunday publishes a newly unearthed email proving that Andrew continued contact with Epstein after the 2010 New York meeting at which he’d claimed to end the friendship. The mail, dated 28 February 2011, says “we are in this together”. The BBC says the allegations are “intensely damaging” for the prince.

Just days later, after a “discussion” with the King and the Prince of Wales, Andrew gives up the use of his Duke of York title, as well as all his other remaining honours, including his membership of the Order of the Garter. It’s understood that he will not attend royal family events over Christmas. For the time being, he will continue living at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.

In Giuffre’s memoir, published posthumously in late October, she claims that Andrew considered it “his birthright” to have sex with her. The release of the memoir adds to the “air of gloom at Buckingham Palace, which has tried to distance itself from Prince Andrew” and “heaps further pressure on the institution of monarchy”, said ITV News.

Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir is published today, and Buckingham Palace is braced for further allegations about Prince Andrew and his dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

Extracts from “Nobody’s Girl” by Giuffre, who claims she was coerced into sex with Andrew when she was 17, have already rocked the royal family. “I vigorously deny the accusations against me,” Andrew said on Friday. But he also announced that his Duke of York title and Order of the Garter knighthood would be “put into abeyance”, much like his HRH title was in 2019.

Only an act of Parliament can remove Andrew’s dukedom completely but, such is the heat around the scandal, there are already moves afoot in the House of Commons to try to do just that.

What did the commentators say?

There was “a sense of relief” at the Palace when Andrew agreed to stop using his titles, said Sky News’ royal correspondent Laura Bundock. But now, there is “a sense of dread over what else could emerge”. Andrew’s “disgrace and downfall” is far from over, and it could be that we are “reaching the endgame”.

The Palace has “failed to grasp the magnitude” of the scandal, Andrew Lownie, the Yorks’ biographer, told The Telegraph. They are putting “a little bit of a plaster on a huge problem”. Charles should have had Andrew’s titles removed, rather than simply ordering him not to use them, and he should have forced Andrew to cooperate with US authorities about the extent of his dealings with Epstein. “I think this is just window dressing,” Lownie said. The fact that Andrew will still “get to live as he always has done” will make people “feel he hasn’t really paid any penalty for what he’s done”.

Charles apparently believed that putting Andrew’s titles in abeyance was “sufficient”, said Caroline Davies in The Guardian. But Prince William is “prepared to take a more ruthless approach if required” when he takes the throne. He reportedly considers his uncle a “threat” and “a reputational risk to the monarchy”.

When William becomes king, Andrew’s “limited role in public life will disappear entirely – starting with the coronation”, said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. A recent “surprisingly revealing” interview with actor Eugene Levy suggested that “banishing Andrew to Siberia” would not cause William “too many sleepless nights”.

It seems that the “nuclear royal option – to strip Andrew of his princely title grows more inevitable by the day”. This “will not be an easy or fast process, and is likely to damage the very institution of the monarchy”. But “the embarrassment and headlines” may be “worth it in the longer term”.

The Palace is “walking a fine line between cutting loose a reprobate member” and infuriating Andrew to the point that he “vents criticism of the main figures in the monarchy”, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper. The “aloof tone and huffiness” of his statement on Friday signals that he still perceives his treatment as unfair, and “as the royals discovered in the Diana era” that can turn a person into “a powder keg”. The point is not whether or not Andrew “has a leg to stand on”; it’s that “he feels he does”. The more aggressively the palace seeks to exclude him, “the greater the risk of him seeking his own retribution”.

What next?

MPs have now lodged a parliamentary motion to strip Andrew of his dukedom. The government has previously said that it would be “guided” by the royal family on any decision to remove Andrew’s titles.

Whatever happens, Andrew’s “stubbornness” is “not going to change”, said McElvoy. The monarchy now has an “involuntary hermit” on its Windsor estate – still a part of the institution he was born into, however “inconvenient that may be”. How “sustainable this stand-off will prove is questionable”.

And the latest allegations are “just the tip of the iceberg”, Lownie told The Telegraph. The palace is “worried about new allegations that will emerge Stateside. They know there is more damaging stuff to come.”

Tell me about a woman “behaving poorly”, and I am likely to take her side, said Rebecca Reid in The i Paper. Sarah Ferguson is a case in point. When I was growing up in the 1990s, adults would often make snide comments about Fergie – for having her toes sucked, or fronting Weight Watchers ads. Her antics were deemed vulgar and unregal, but they endeared her to me. Now, though, Fergie turns out to have done something that cannot be laughed off as an awkward blunder.

‘Only denounced him to protect her career’

In March 2011, with pressure mounting on her and her ex-husband, the Duke of York, about their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, she gave an interview in which she said that she had made a “gigantic” mistake in accepting a £15,000 loan from the convicted child sex offender. She said that she “abhorred paedophilia”; and vowed never to have anything to do with him again. Yet last weekend, it emerged that only six weeks later, she’d sent Epstein a fawning email, in which she described him as a “supreme friend”.

The duchess told Epstein that he must feel “hellaciously let down” by her – and apologised “to you and your heart for that”. She promised that she’d not used “the P-word” [paedophile] about him, and said that she’d only denounced him to protect her career as a children’s author and philanthropist. This week, her spokesman insisted that she only wrote that email because Epstein was threatening to sue her for defamation, said Kate Mansey in The Times. “One wonders why she would have worried about such a lawsuit. But only she can answer that.”

‘She sold herself very cheap, did Fergie’

A patron of children’s charities gushing to a child sex offender? No wonder those charities were rapidly severing their links to her this week, said A.N. Wilson in the Daily Mail. Now the King, having recently readmitted Ferguson to some private events, may feel he has to banish her, to protect the royal family’s reputation, said Melanie McDonagh in The London Standard. Once again, Fergie finds herself in the gulag, brought down by her poor judgement and profligacy. After splitting up with Andrew, she lived so high on the hog, she ended up millions in debt; so in 2010, she accepted the £15,000 from the disgraced financier to stave off bankruptcy. “She sold herself very cheap, did Fergie.”

Maybe not, said royal biographer Andrew Lownie in the Daily Mail. I have heard that Epstein lent her more like £2m; she denies this, but it would explain why they stayed close. He wouldn’t have done this because he had a kind heart; he’d have expected some secret or favour or contact in return. So the question is, what did he want from her? And did she give it?

Virginia Giuffre, who accused Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein of sexually exploiting her as a teenager, has died aged 41. She died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia on Friday, her publicist confirmed.

In a statement, her family said: "Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors. Despite all the adversity she faced in her life, she shone so bright. She will be missed beyond measure."

The Epstein allegations

Giuffre became an advocate for sex trafficking survivors "after emerging as a central figure in Epstein's prolonged downfall", said The Associated Press.

She came forward publicly with her story after the initial investigation into Epstein's crimes ended in only an 18-month jail term for the late financier. He made a secret deal to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty to relatively minor state-level charges of soliciting prostitution.

In subsequent lawsuits, Giuffre said she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's Florida home, when she was approached in 2000 by Epstein's girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Giuffre said Maxwell hired her as a masseuse, "but the couple effectively made her a sexual servant" for Epstein and his associates. That included Prince Andrew, whom she says she was forced to have sex with three times while she was 17 and 18. "Ghislaine said, 'I want you to do for him what you do for Epstein'," Giuffre told NBC's Dateline in 2019.

Prince Andrew has always vehemently denied the accusations, claiming in a now infamous 2019 Newsnight interview that he had "no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever". In 2022, he settled Giuffre's lawsuit out of court, agreeing to a "substantial donation" to her charity, though admitting no liability.

Unanswered questions

Giuffre's death "will leave questions that are now likely to remain unanswered", said the BBC. Her name will "always be associated with the scandals and criminality" surrounding Epstein and his associates. As a young woman "she had the strength to stand up to a toxic mix of power, money and privilege in the circle surrounding Epstein, who sexually exploited so many girls".

"In the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight," her family said in a statement issued on Saturday. But there will now be suspicions that "the long shadow of Epstein's poisonous misuse of wealth and influence has indirectly claimed another victim".

Giuffre's passing "will weigh heavily on all involved in this most shameful of episodes", said The Telegraph, and the accusations against Prince Andrew, though "unproven", will be "linked to him for life". For Prince Andrew, Giuffre's death "draws the most tragic of lines under a period of his life he hoped would end in redemption, and now will not".

An alleged Chinese spy who reportedly sought to gain influence in the UK by becoming a close confidant of Prince Andrew was named today as Chinese businessman Yang Tengbo.

The suspected agent, previously only identified as "H6", was banned from the UK last week. Yang, also known as Chris Yang, appealed against his initial ban in March 2023, but the decision was upheld by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. In a published ruling, the judge said that the then home secretary, Suella Braverman, was "entitled to conclude that [H6] represented a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom".

This is not the first time questions have been raised about those attempting to get access to members of the royal family. An alleged Russian spy met Prince Charles and Prince William in the late 2000s after working for MI6, the Daily Mail reported earlier this year.

And before he became King, Prince Charles faced scrutiny over his access to confidential cabinet papers, information that was only revealed after a three-year battle under freedom of information legislation.

What did the commentators say?

The Duke of York has long been "dogged by questions about two overlapping problems – his judgement and his finances", said the BBC. The latest revelations are a reminder "of how the royals can be targeted by those wanting to build links either for their own personal ambition or for a strategic political agenda".

Prince Andrew is no longer a working royal and "operates outside the royal fold". A letter found in Yang's possession "suggests the risks of such a position", describing the prince as "in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything".

Indeed, the letter reveals just how blind Andrew is to his own "vulnerability" from a national security perspective, said The Guardian "The alarm bells didn't ring for him," constitutional law expert Craig Prescott told the paper. "He could ultimately have been put in a very, very compromised position had MI5 not raised the alarm, ultimately."

The revelations that the alleged Chinese spy "was able to befriend Prince Andrew and enter Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace and Windsor Castle at his invitation is scarcely believable", said The Sunday Times in an editorial.

But the affair goes beyond the Duke of York's conduct and speaks to deeper issues with a royal family whose chief members "instinctively loathe transparency" and "supine" MPs who are all too willing to overlook "dubious associations and opaque finances".

What next?

Prince Andrew's office has said he has "ceased all contact" with Yang after receiving advice from the government, and claimed the two never discussed sensitive matters.

Yang today issued a statement in which he said he has "done nothing wrong or unlawful". He added: "The widespread description of me as a 'spy' is entirely untrue."

But the allegations are likely to cause some trouble for Keir Starmer and his bid to establish closer ties with Beijing. Labour MPs are "among those urging caution about the government's warmer approach to China", said The Guardian.

Earlier this year, Netflix treated us to "Scoop", a shape-shifting dramatisation of Prince Andrew's stunning foot-in-mouth interview on BBC's "Newsnight" in 2019, in which he catastrophically failed to deflect accusations that he had sex with Virginia Giuffre at Jeffrey Epstein’s house when she was 17.

Six months on, Amazon Prime is rolling out its own take with "A Very Royal Scandal", executive produced by Emily Maitlis, the interviewer in the jaw-dropping TV special, which treated us to details of Andrew's inability to sweat and a trip to Woking's Pizza Express.

'A hall of mirrors'

Amazon's take on one of the royal family's worst moments is told through the eyes of Maitlis, played by Ruth Wilson. Michael Sheen plays Andrew as "pompous, deluded and deeply unpleasant", said Kate Mansey in The Times. He's shown "striding around" Buckingham Palace, swearing at people as freely as others say good morning.

His first scene sees him bark "'f*** off' (to a footman who dares to approach)". He calls his dogs "little buggers", the Queen's press secretary "a little shit" and his aide Amanda Thirsk, played by Joanna Scanlan, "a fatty".

In one scene, after the then Prince Charles finds out about the "Newsnight" disaster and calls his brother to remonstrate with him, Andrew shouts: "Calls me a f***ing mummy's boy! He is the f***ing mummy's boy!"

Sheen told The Hollywood Reporter's Lily Ford that "it's a hall of mirrors with Prince Andrew", that there's "a mystery at the heart" of who he is – and, "what he did or didn't do".

Before each episode, we are reminded that while this drama is based on real people and events, some scenes have been adapted or fictionalised for dramatic purposes. But, to many, this portrayal of Charles' problem sibling, will ring only too true.

A 'satiated market'

The Andrew problem continues to wreak a real-time impact on a family that has had an exceedingly difficult run of it in recent years. Andrew stepped down as a working member of the royal family after the "Newsnight" debacle. In the latest turn of events, King Charles has been applying pressure on his younger sibling to vacate his lavish 30-room Grade II listed home, Royal Lodge in Windsor's Great Park, for the more humble Frogmore Cottage, once home to Harry and Meghan before they escaped the royal circus for a sunnier life in California.

Although Charles is coughing up for the rent himself as Andrew no longer has recourse to public funds, it's "still a public sign of support for a man who was friends with a convicted paedophile and has never acknowledged his lack of judgment over that friendship", said Mansey.

For Sheen, there is a fascination in playing a man who was "so popular, thousands of women shouting and screaming" when he came back from the Falklands War with a rose in his mouth, he said in The Hollywood Reporter. "To see a man age, put on weight and start losing all that while getting further and further away from the centre of power", that "contradiction is golden for an actor".

But for Grazia's Nikki Peach, this is a "satiated market" and a story that has been told in any number of different ways already, including Channel 4's "Prince Andrew: The Musical", and a series of documentaries. While it was a "groundbreaking, compelling and critically acclaimed interview", there's something "disheartening about the fact it's still seen as fertile ground for TV and film". And as for the Prince, while he refuses to up sticks across the park, it is clear that he has suffered notably "few material consequences".

"A Very Royal Scandal" will be available for streaming on Amazon Prime from 19 September

On Christmas Day, Prince Andrew walked behind his older brother as the royals made their way to church at Sandringham, said Jenny Hjul on Reaction – signalling the "tentative rehabilitation" of the disgraced duke. Friends of the King attributed this to his "typical kindness", and a promise he'd made to his mother to look after Andrew. Alas, the gesture was "badly timed", coming only days after a court in the US had ruled that a trove of papers relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should be made public. 

The documents have contained no bombshells; but they've added new detail to existing claims (which Andrew denies) such as that the teenage girl he was alleged to have had sex with said that she had been paid $15,000 to do so. And the publicity has caused a new furore. Charles is said not to want to banish his brother, but he may have to: Epstein sleaze continues to tarnish the duke, and the Palace by association.

Andrew 'distracts attention'

Andrew's supporters claim he is being used to distract attention from other Epstein associates with more to hide, said Victoria Ward in The Daily Telegraph. And while his name does loom large he is by no means the only person named in the papers (all from a libel case brought by Andrew's accuser Virginia Giuffre against Epstein's procurer Ghislaine Maxwell), said The Times. 

Stephen Hawking comes up, in an email in which Epstein offered a reward for information to disprove claims that the physicist had taken part in an orgy on his private island. (Hawking had visited it while attending an Epstein-funded conference.) There are also references to Bill Clinton: Epstein told one of his victims that the former president (who denies any involvement in Epstein's crimes) "likes them young", and he's mentioned in connection with sex tapes that Epstein allegedly recorded. 

But most of the references to VIPs are not related to improper behaviour. The papers are mainly about Epstein.

'No stranger to blackmail'

Rich and powerful men flocked to Epstein, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times, because he promised excitement, money and – crucially – access to young girls. 

These women behaved like honey traps. When Maxwell ordered them to give "erotic massages" (code for sex) to Epstein's guests, were they being filmed? Only one of Epstein's victims is known to have mentioned sex tapes; but there were cameras in the rooms at his homes, and Epstein was "no stranger to blackmail". 

So you wonder: did he use compromising footage to get away with his abuses when he was alive? And how are the men who visited his "sex island", and made use of trafficked girls, still getting away with it now?

Prince Andrew is among the high-profile figures named in newly released US court documents detailing the extensive network of friends and business associates of disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

The now unsealed documents were part of a lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's many accusers, against Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend of Epstein's. That case was settled in 2017 before Maxwell's 2021 criminal conviction for sex trafficking and similar charges over procuring teenage girls for Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges.  

The 900 or so documents have been made public after a judge's order to reveal the true identities of almost 200 "John and Jane Does" associated with the lawsuit, with many of those named in the documents already identified by the media or as a result of Maxwell's criminal trial.

'Always going to be uncomfortable'

The release of the documents has been "inaccurately hyped" as revealing Epstein's "client list", said Morning Brew, but being named in the documents does not necessarily imply wrongdoing, as the list names victims, contacts, employees and other associates. 

Nevertheless, being named in these files from a case brought by Giuffre "was always going to be an uncomfortable moment" for Prince Andrew, said The Times. 

The Duke of York was sued by Giuffre in 2021 under New York's Child Victims Act, which allowed people who claimed to have been sexually abused as a minor to bring complaints otherwise barred by the statute of limitations. The case was settled out of court a few months later, reportedly for around £12 million. 

Among the now released files is a "lengthy deposition" from Johanna Sjoberg, a college student hired as an assistant for Epstein. Sjoberg claimed the prince groped her breast while she was with an underage Giuffre at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2001. 

In the deposition, Sjoberg described how the three of them posed for a photograph with a "Spitting Image" puppet of Andrew, which had been placed on Giuffre's lap. She described how she then "sat on Andrew's lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet's hands and put it on Virginia's breast, and so Andrew put his on mine", she said.

The accusation may no longer bring "legal liability" – the statute of limitations has now elapsed – but Andrew may be advised "to avoid visiting" the US in case further allegations are made, said the paper.  

'A royal outcast'

Buckingham Palace has previously said the allegations are "categorically untrue". But it has "declined to comment on the newly-released documents, saying it no longer speaks on behalf of the Duke of York who no longer carries out royal duties", said the BBC.

Having been stripped of his royal titles and patronages by the late Queen in 2022, Andrew has "little to lose", but the details unveiled in these unsealed documents still feel like "a fresh embarrassment", said Sky News's royal correspondent Laura Bundock. Having put in a "cheerful" appearance at Sandringham over Christmas, he may still be welcomed in royal circles privately, "but publicly he remains a royal outcast".

The appearance of the Epstein documents "is a reminder that this tawdry affair will hang over the wider Royal Family for a considerable time to come", added Alexander Larman in The Spectator. "On an existential level", it will continue to be "vastly embarrassing that a senior royal, one once believed to be the glamorous, gung-ho public face of the monarchy, has been embroiled in a scandal of this kind", he added.

King Charles, who celebrates his 75th birthday today, has not always had the easiest relationship with the British public.

In truth, few public figures "enjoy unwavering popularity for decades", said The Daily Telegraph. Even the seemingly unassailable late Queen saw her approval ratings plummet after her misjudged response to the death of Princess Diana.

Her son and heir King Charles III is "no exception to the rule that when it comes to public opinion, what goes up must come down, before it goes back up again", said the paper.

'Potential for much to go wrong'

Charles became king a little over a year ago with the "potential for much to go wrong", said The Wall Street Journal. He was following Britain's much-loved and longest-serving monarch, had a record of outspoken activism and was facing the most divided royal family in decades.

But Charles this year has been "much more about stability and reassurance than about change or reform", agreed the BBC's royal correspondent Sean Coughlan. "Any expectations of a modernising monarch have so far been put on hold."

"It's been surprising in its lack of surprises," said royal commentator Pauline Maclaran. "People have very quickly become used to him as King."

This is borne out in the polls, which show that nearly two-thirds of the British public think Charles is doing a good job. He has been aided in this by the positive perception of Queen Camilla.

"He is popular, as he has never been before," wrote Max Hastings in The Japan Times. Accession, the prize for which he waited until late in life, has "mellowed and cheered him" and "he appears willing to heed advice, good advice, as in the past he was not".

'Safety-first approach'

Critics of Charles, who had waited longer than any other heir in British history to take the throne, had predicted he might seek a "radical overhaul of the monarchy and abandon his mother's staunchly neutral and apolitical approach to the role", reported Reuters. "But, in keeping with earlier promises, he has put aside his campaigning on the environment and climate change and remained within the accepted boundaries."

Since the day of his mother's death, said Hastings, "he has toured his kingdom meeting and greeting; conducted a highly successful state visit to Germany; and appeared to cast off much of his accustomed gloom both about himself and the world in which he lives".

He may have adopted a "safety-first" approach but he has not completely given up on the passions he pursued as Prince of Wales.

Last week, King Charles rebranded his charities as the King's Trust and King's Foundation, "which will send another message of keeping working rather than slowing down or handing over the reins to the next generation", said the BBC. 

'Monarchy steady on its foundations'

"Not everything has been plain sailing," said Reuters, with the most high-profile issue remaining his own family and questions around the royal finances. 

A year into Charles's reign, these remain "shrouded in secrecy", said Hastings, and with Britain’s economy in the doldrums, "it seems extraordinary that nobody is making a fuss about the self-indulgence of the royal lifestyle, which we expected to be curtailed after Queen Elizabeth II’s death."

He has nonetheless "won praise for his deft handling of Prince Andrew's fall from grace, and sympathy for a very public falling out with his younger son, Harry", said The Telegraph.

He still faces the twin challenges of winning over younger Brits (a recent YouGov survey found just 35% of those aged 18 to 24 were in favour of keeping the monarchy) and perhaps the bigger task of maintaining support for the Commonwealth.

In this, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian, Charles suffers in comparison to his mother in that he "lacks the Queen's inevitability, that sense that he is there because he always has been", and "that aura of self-abnegation, of having surrendered himself to duty".

For many republicans, the death of the Queen and accession of King Charles was long seen as the moment when the British public would finally fall out of love with the Windsors. But "our monarchy – in this 21st century, Britain's foremost anachronism – has not for ages appeared so steady on its foundations", said Hastings. That is perhaps King Charles's greatest achievement.

Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre is set to write a memoir, a year after agreeing to a multimillion dollar settlement with the royal in her sex-abuse lawsuit against him.

Giuffre is believed to be working on a memoir detailing her abuse at the hands of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his long-time confidante and “fixer” Ghislaine Maxwell. She has reportedly signed a book deal with an unnamed publisher worth “millions”, said The Telegraph.

Prince Andrew settled a civil case with Giuffre last year, but has denied the accusations and did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement. The pair are thought to have signed a one-year agreement that means neither could publicly discuss the case – but this clause expires next month.

Sources say it is “unlikely” Giuffre will be allowed to write about her allegations against Prince Andrew or the settlement even after the gag-clause expires, according to the New York Post. Nevertheless, insiders told the paper that any book from Giuffre is likely to be an “embarrassment” for the royal family, particularly after the damaging revelations contained in Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, and because Prince Andrew is set to attend King Charles’s coronation in May.

Giuffre has already written one unpublished manuscript, entitled The Billionaire’s Playboy Club, which was first made public in a batch of court records related to her lawsuit against Maxwell, which was settled in May 2017. In the manuscript, Giuffre details life as a teenager inside Epstein’s sex ring, and describes sexual encounters she claims to have had with Epstein and his associates, including with Prince Andrew. “It wasn’t easy meeting the sexual desires of these strange men, the Prince being one of them,” she wrote.

The publishing deal comes amid reports that Prince Andrew is preparing to launch a bid to overturn the £3m settlement he reached with Giuffre, after her abuse case against Alan Dershowitz, a US lawyer, collapsed. Dropping the lawsuit last year, Guiffre said she “may have made a mistake” in identifying him as one of them men she was forced to have sex with.

The Sun on Sunday reported that the Duke is now consulting US lawyers and “hopes to force a retraction or even an apology – which may clear the way for a return to royal duties”.

The royal family have revealed their plans for Christmas Day as they prepare for their first festive season without the late Queen.

The announcement from Buckingham Palace came “just minutes” after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex unveiled a trailer for another Netflix show they have in the works, less than a week after debuting their “bombshell docuseries” Harry & Meghan, said The Mirror.

As a turbulent year for the royals draws to a close, the paper predicted that this year’s festive season will be an “emotional occasion” for the family, “who are still mourning the loss of their mother, grandmother and great-grandmother”.

Return to Sandringham

Buckingham Palace has confirmed that King Charles, Queen Consort Camilla and other senior royals will celebrate Christmas at Sandringham for the first time in three years.

The decision marks a return to royal tradition, after Queen Elizabeth spent the festive season at Windsor Castle during the pandemic.

Royal Christmases at the Norfolk estate usually include a “morning visit to St Mary Magdalene Church”, said Yahoo! News, followed by a “family lunch and a gathering round the television to watch the monarch’s televised address to Britain”.

Charles will be giving his first King’s speech, “and he's likely to pay tribute to his late mother with his words”, said The Mirror.

Prince Louis is also set for a “starring role” in the celebrations, “after stealing the show at the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee”, according to the paper’s Lucy Thornton. The four-year-old prince will reportedly join the family’s traditional Christmas Day walk to church for the first time, amid hopes that he can “give proceedings a lift” – although a “final decision” about the “important Sandringham milestone” will not be made until the big day, Thornton added.

Scaled-back plans

Experts have predicted that the royals’s “much-loved Christmas traditions” will be “scaled back” this year, said Cosmopolitan, and will centre around a “low-key Christmas lunch”.

Former BBC royal commentator Jennie Bond told OK! magazine that without “the linchpin of the Queen holding together an often fractured family, they may suddenly decide to do their own thing”.

The King’s Christmas plans “might be up in the air a bit”, she added, and “the younger royals will probably want to spend time with their own families”, so “two- or three-day celebrations” may be “a thing of the past”.

Frozen out?

According to The Sun’s royal editor Matt Wilkinson, the Sussexes are being “frozen out” of Charles’s first Christmas dinner at Sandringham as monarch. The King and Camilla have “invited large numbers of those dubbed ‘The Loyal Family’”, said Wilkinson.

The guest list is expected to include Camilla’s children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes; the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their three children; Prince Edward and his family; and princesses Beatrice and Eugenie plus their husbands and children.

But Harry and Meghan are expected to spend Christmas in California with their children Archie, three, and Lilibet, 18 months, although “it is believed they will share presents with William and Kate”, said Wilkinson.

Prince Andrew ‘masterstroke’

The King’s Christmas guest list is also expected to include Prince Andrew. His ex-wife Sarah Ferguson has reportedly been invited to join the royals for Christmas too, for the first time in 30 years.

A Sandringham source told The Mirror’s royal features writer Jennifer Newton that the former couple would be staying at Wood Farm, a five-bedroom cottage set away from the main house on the 20,000-acre estate.

Royal biographer Ingrid Seward said the decision to allow the disgraced prince and his ex to attend while keeping them “tucked out of sight” was a “masterstroke”.

Charles is “not an unkind person”, Seward told the paper. “There were many times Camilla had to hide away like a fugitive so he understands Andrew’s situation only too well.”.

But the King cannot risk his image “being tarnished by Andrew”, she added, and “he will not allow it to happen”.

A musical television special is set to cover the life of embattled royal, Prince Andrew. Starring comedian Harry Enfield, Prince Andrew: The Musical will focus “on the key events, relationships and controversies of Andrew’s life, including a re-imagining of the former-HRH’s bombshell interview with Emily Maitlis,” reported Variety. The hour-long special will air on Channel 4 in December.

Beatles tape returned to library 44 years late

A Beatles cassette that had been borrowed 44 years ago has been returned to a library in the US. The San Antonio Public Library in Texas said the tape, a recording of an interview with Beatles members John Lennon and Paul McCartney, was left anonymously in a book return drop box. “Luckily, we have been fine-free since October 2021, so even if you have an item to return that’s a year late, a decade late, and even four decades late, we will still accept it at NO charge," the library said on Facebook.

World’s oldest cat named

Guinness World Records has named a cat called Flossie, born in 1995, as the world’s oldest living moggy. Flossie is “deaf, mostly blind and often maintains a grumpy expression”, said The Times. A former stray, she has outlived two owners and is known to be at least 26 years and 330 days old. She is the same age as her new owner, Vicki Green, who lives in Orpington in southeast London.

The Queen’s beloved pet corgis were so often seen by Her Majesty’s side, whether inside the royal residences, in the gardens, or travelling with their owner by plane, train and limousine. Following the monarch’s death, concerns were raised as to who would now look after her remaining dogs.

But a spokesperson for the Royal Family has confirmed that two corgis, Muick and Sandy, will now be taken into the care of Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, at Royal Lodge in Windsor. Candy, a dachshund-corgi cross, will also move to the royal residence, The Sun reported.

A source close to the Duke of York told the BBC: “The corgis will return to live at Royal Lodge with the duke and duchess. It was the duchess who found the puppies which were gifted to Her Majesty by the Duke.”

Muick and another puppy, Fergus, were given to the monarch last spring, in the hope that they would “lift the Queen’s spirits” while Prince Philip was being cared for in hospital. She was “devastated” when Fergus died in May, at just five months old. Sandy replaced Fergus, while 13-year-old Candy is “the eldest of the Queen’s surviving dogs”, said The Sun.

Compared to the “775 rooms of Buckingham Palace or the 1,000 rooms in Windsor Castle, the three distinguished dogs will now have the run of just 30 rooms” at Royal Lodge, said Metro.

The Queen “first fell in love” with corgis in 1933, said Country Living, when the then Duke of York introduced the “horribly behaved” Dookie to the family, said the BBC. Lady Jane was adopted as a puppy in 1936, before Elizabeth was given Susan on her 18th birthday by her father.

The pair were “inseparable” and the Queen went on to look after more than 30 of Susan’s descendants, said the broadcaster. “Every puppy after Susan” served as a “reminder that life and dynasties go on”.

The Prince Andrew scandal is threatening to bring down the monarchy, unless drastic action is taken to quarantine him from the rest of the royal family.

That is the view of commentators and royal watchers from across the political spectrum after new revelations concerning his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. A newly released email – dated 28 February 2011 and containing the message “we are in this together” – appears to directly contradict claims made by the prince in his now infamous “Newsnight” interview with Emily Maitlis that he severed all ties with the disgraced financier in 2010.

The BBC said the allegations were “intensely damaging” for the Duke of York, “but perhaps still more significant are the consequences of this never-ending saga on the image of the monarchy”, said Richard Kay in the Daily Mail.

“Every good deed” carried out by the royals in recent years “risks being drowned out by the relentless wave of the Andrew scandal”. It “corrodes public support for the royals and emboldens republican voices, which gleefully seize on every indiscretion to scorn the House of Windsor’s credibility”.

Many question whether the institution is fit for the 21st century and what value it brings. Here are the arguments for and against keeping the centuries-old institution.

Pro: popular with public

The monarchy as a whole “has long enjoyed broad, albeit declining, support among Britons, even if several of its individual members have not”, said Time magazine.

Just over half (51%) of people in Britain believe that it is “very” or "quite important" for Britain to have a monarchy, according to the most recent British Social Attitudes survey, conducted by the National Centre for Social Research in 2024. This is a dramatic decline from 86% in 1983, but it’s worth noting that only 15% of those surveyed actually think the monarchy should be abolished entirely.

While there is overall positivity towards the monarchy across most age groups, “there is a sharp generational divide”, said the BBC. According to a new poll on Statista, 81% of 65-year-olds want the monarchy to continue but the younger the person polled, the more likely they are to want to replace the King with an elected head of state, a majority view among 18- to 24-year-olds.

“Modern monarchy no longer depends on divine grace, but the consent of the people,” said Robert Hazell, professor of government and the constitution at University College London, in a 2022 paper for the Institute for Government. He warned that if public support continues to decline, the government might come under pressure to reduce funding for the royals, as has happened in Spain.

Con: cost to taxpayers

The monarchy is supported financially by UK taxpayers via the Sovereign Grant, which covers central staffing costs and expenses for the monarch’s official households, maintenance of the royal palaces in England, and travel and royal engagements and visits.

Accounts for 2024/25 show that the Sovereign Grant that financial year remained at £86.3 million. Yet the “real cost” to taxpayers is nearly six times more, said anti-monarchy campaigners.

Republic, which calls for the abolition of the monarchy, claims the official figure does not account for security, and other "lost income" for taxpayers, including from property businesses controlled by the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which go directly to the King and the Prince of Wales respectively. Republic says the royals' total annual bill is in fact £510 million. "How can we talk about cutting the winter fuel allowance while wasting half a billion pounds on the royals?" Republic's chief executive, Graham Smith, told the BBC last September.

The question of whether the monarchy continues to offer value for money is one that – like positivity towards it in general – divides along generational lines. According to YouGov polling in 2024, 75% of the over-65s believe they do, but only 34% of 18 to 24-year-olds feel the same.

Pro: 'soft' power benefits UK

Like his mother before him, the King is a source of British "soft power" and diplomatic influence, holding state visits and foreign tours that bring benefits for national security, influence and trade.

A 2017 report by consultancy agency Brand Finance said that the monarchy generated an estimated £150 million worth of trade for the UK each year. And combined with contributions including surplus revenues from the Crown Estate, which go to the Treasury, and money from tourism, the total estimated gain for the UK economy was almost £1.8 billion.

"Measuring the wealth-generation of a brand is no easy task, especially when it comes to the royal family," said Sebastian Shehadi at Investment Monitor, but their influence on the UK economy "spans the likes of trade, tourism, media, real estate and heritage sites, foreign investment and much more".

Con: no place in equal society

Critics of the monarchy argue that having a system of hereditary power at the top of the country's political, military and religious institutions perpetuates class divisions and inequality.

The royal family "exist as a glaring symbol of the unearned privilege and inequality that pervades the roots of British society", said political journalist and author Eve Livingston in The Independent.

And it is not just in Britain that the monarch’s role as head of state is increasingly under scrutiny. The late Queen's reign was "bookended by periods of great uncertainty about Britain’s role on the world stage", said Foreign Policy. She "was crowned in 1953 as the sun was beginning to set on the British Empire" and her death came "as the country reexamines its place in the world". There are increasing calls for the UK to "reckon with its colonial history", while republican sentiment is gaining traction in the Caribbean.

Pro: boosts national unity

Supporters of a constitutional monarchy say it "represents a constant and lasting connection to the country's past" and they stress the importance of having a head of state who is "above party politics or factional interests", said Politics.co.uk. This neutrality means "the Crown can help secure smooth and peaceful handovers of political power and restrain abuses of authority", said The Telegraph.

The royal family's official website said that the monarch provides "a focus for national identity, unity and pride; gives a sense of stability and continuity; officially recognises success and excellence; and supports the ideal of voluntary service".

The Queen’s seven decades on the throne was "a low-key but extremely effective unifying force", said Martin Kettle in The Guardian, but it was one "her heirs cannot assume they will be able to replicate".

Con: undemocratic

Republic and other anti-monarchists argue that "hereditary public office goes against every democratic principle". The public cannot hold the royal family to account at the ballot box, so "there's nothing to stop them abusing their privilege, misusing their influence or simply wasting our money". The monarch should be replaced with an elected head of state.

In reality, the king or queen "can only ever act in the interests of the government of the day and does not represent ordinary voters", say campaigners. Therefore, "the monarchy is a broken institution" that should be scrapped in favour of an elected head of state who "could really represent our hopes and aspirations – and help us keep politicians in check".

The story of how the BBC obtained its notorious Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein is to become a film called Scoop. News of the movie is “likely to be greeted with little amusement from Andrew’s mother, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,” said Deadline, because “Buckingham Palace had hoped that, when it came to the errant royal, the less seen and heard the better”. The screenplay will be based on the book Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews by Sam McAlister, a former Newsnight producer.

Family rob restaurant after meal

A family sat down for a meal at a restaurant in North Carolina before robbing it, reported Fox News. Police said the suspects were part of a family of six who entered the Waffle House in Shelby. After a brief meal, one of the family members drew a handgun and demanded money from the restaurant employees before fleeing to a nearby fuel station. Police said the suspects, who have been arrested, also face similar outstanding charges from an incident in Minden, Louisiana a few days earlier.

US troops banned from booze

A US Army brigade in Germany has been confined to its base during evenings and temporarily banned from consuming alcohol after five troops were charged with driving scooters under the influence in Nuremberg. The soldiers were charged with being over the legal alcohol limit, according to John Tomassi, the US army spokesman in Europe. The leaders of the brigade took the disciplinary action “to make sure soldiers understand the rules of the host nation,” he told CNN.

1. The Times view on royal interventions: princely politics

The Times Editorial

on private opinions

Behind closed doors, Prince Charles is unimpressed with the government’s plans to send migrants to Rwanda, according to a source who spoke to The Times on Saturday. While there is “no doubting the passion on either side of the asylum issue” and the prince’s “trenchantly held opinions were, to be sure, vented privately rather than as part of a public address”, the “potential for word to get out is a factor that senior royals must always take into account”, said The Times. Clarence House has not denied the report. Prince Charles has given “tacit indications that as monarch he will know to avoid controversy” but neither has he “shied from it before”. Some of his causes have been humanitarian and others, “such as his lobbying for homoeopathy, have no merit”. But Prince Charles – and second in line to the throne, Prince William – “need to show care in not using their hereditary privilege as a pulpit”.

Read more

2. Millions of men support our abortion rights. We need to help them become stronger allies

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian

on pro-choice men

“As the conversation about abortion rages, it strikes me that I have never heard a man tell his abortion story publicly,” writes Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian. “But what, if you’ll forgive me for ironically borrowing a well-worn phrase, about the men? We hear a lot, too much, from men who are anti-abortion, and little from those who support it, or who have benefited from it,” she continues. “Men who are pro-choice, who have perhaps been told that abortion is a women’s issue, may feel the sensitive thing to do is to not speak at all,” Cosslett writes. “But can’t we find a way for men to talk about abortion without infringing a woman’s bodily autonomy, or speaking over her, so that they can become the ultimate allies: men who acknowledge that abortion will never relate to their bodies, but who support it because they believe it is a right.”

Read more

3. Companies are treating the non-tech savvy like second-class citizens

Jane Shilling in The Telegraph

on customer care

An increasing number of companies “actively avoid direct communication with their customers”, writes Jane Shilling in The Telegraph, and instead leave customers to navigate a range of digital options and chatbots. What is striking about these online encounters is their “utter detachment from reality”, she writes. What once would have been “a simple negotiation between a customer and a supplier” has now become “the sole responsibility of the customer”, she says. For many people, such an experience is merely frustrating and time-consuming. “But for a significant number of people, who don’t have – or want – a smartphone, who live in an area (as I do) where mobile coverage is poor, or are unable to navigate a digital world as opaque as an unknown language, the domination of the smartphone in all areas of life, from parking to accessing a bank account or a doctor’s appointment, is a means of grievous social exclusion.”

Read more

4. Boris’s rewilding obsession could backfire

Ross Clark in The Spectator

on competing policies

“Does Boris Johnson have the faintest idea what he and his government are trying to achieve anymore?” asks Ross Clark in The Spectator. The government is launching a new food strategy, in which it “demands that farmers grow more fruit and vegetables to make us less reliant on imported food”. But this “pulls in exactly the opposite direction as the one it announced just five months ago”. The new strategy contradicts Defra’s Landscape Recovery scheme, which seeks to “rewild” some 300,000 hectares of farmland. It may be that the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues have “changed their minds in reaction to the Ukraine war and the soaring price of food”, Clark contends. But if that is the case, “then they will have to withdraw” the rewilding plans. He concludes: “What the government cannot possibly do is to sustain two contradictory policies at the same time: one encouraging farmers to rewild their land and another trying to persuade farmers to turn wild land back into farmland. So, which is it to be: rewilding and green energy – or food security?”

Read more

5. Is Prince Andrew the most deluded man in Britain?

Sean O’Grady in The Independent

on an unwelcome return

“Is Prince Andrew the most deluded man in Britain? Without knowing his precise views on Brexit (and one fears the worst) which could place him in a clear, unassailable lead, he must be in contention for this unhappy title,” writes Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Having lost his public role as a result of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal only a few months ago, Prince Andrew “wants his job back”. And “part of Andrew’s road to recovery”, according to royal sources, will involve him “being sequestered in Scotland to ‘rebuild’”. “Perhaps the flunkies and the men in moustaches down at Buck House should be told that Scotland has telephones these days, not to mention paparazzi, the internet, inquisitive journalists and a sense of shame,” writes O’Grady. He’ll “have to do and say and acknowledge an awful lot more to regain public respect than living in the comfort of Balmoral (presumably) doing not much for a few months (ie situation normal),” he writes. And in just a few days, at the annual Garter ceremony, “the Duke of York will be entitled to parade in fancy dress at Windsor Castle”, says O’Grady. “Too soon, Andrew. Way too soon.”

Read more

The Archbishop of Canterbury has distanced himself from remarks in which he appeared to suggest the country should forgive Prince Andrew.

During an interview with ITV News last night, Justin Welby was asked about the Duke of York, who paid an undisclosed sum as a settlement to Virginia Giuffre, who had accused him of sexual assault, allegations that Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied.

“I think we have become a very, very unforgiving society,” said the Archbishop. “There’s a difference between consequences and forgiveness.

“Now with Prince Andrew, I think we all have to step back a bit. He’s seeking to make amends and I think that’s a very good thing.”

However, a spokesman for Welby said this morning that “the archbishop was not referring specifically to Prince Andrew when he said we must become a more forgiving society,” reported The Times.

A fresh statement from Welby said he was making a “broader point” that he hopes “we can become a more forgiving society,” but he conceded that “these are complex issues that are difficult to address in a short media interview”.

Nevertheless, Welby’s statements have re-opened the question of whether the British public can ever take Andrew, who has denied any wrongdoing, back into their hearts.

‘Most disliked’ royal

In March, Andrew came at the bottom of the Ipsos popularity rankings of the royals with just 2% choosing him as their favourite member of the Royal Family.

Then this week, as the nation prepared to celebrate 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II on the throne, new YouGov royal favourability data showed that Andrew remains the most disliked royal with a net score of -80. Just 5% of the public see him positively, while 85% view him negatively.

Andrew ‘de-royaled’

When the Queen chose Prince Andrew to accompany her down the aisle at Westminster Abbey for Prince Philip's Service of Thanksgiving in March, it provoked plenty of disapproval.

Writing for Unherd, Rector Giles Fraser said even the colourful condemnations on social media “expressed what many might nonetheless feel: that such is the nature of Andrew’s extensive failures as a human being, he should have been locked away in a royal basement, not paraded before the country”.

Jonathan Aitken, the former Conservative cabinet minister who was jailed in 1999 after being accused of perjury and perverting the course of justice, said of Andrew “my advice to him would be, do not despair” because “there are second chances” and “he needs a quiet way of finding them.”

Speaking to The Telegraph in February, he added that “Prince Andrew should prepare himself for a long wait for the national mood to soften” but “it probably will” because “the British public in its own time is more forgiving”.

However, Robert Lacey, a royal historian, told The Guardian that Andrew “has been de-royaled” and “he has now got to live a private life, and any suggestion he could return to public life is delusional.”

Seeking to make amends

The British public is likely to want evidence that Andrew is “seeking to make amends”, said Piers Morgan in The Sun. If “forgiveness is accepting that someone made a mistake, we need to know what Prince Andrew thinks his mistake was,” continued Morgan.

“All we’ve seen from Prince Andrew is ‘I’m going to clear my name,’ followed by ‘I’m writing a fat cheque to avoid going to court,’” wrote the columnist. “That's not acceptance or repentance, and Andrew – I'm sorry – I think the public might find the forgiveness part quite difficult without you keeping your half of the deal,” he added.

Writing on Twitter today, the author and activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu went further. “If Prince Andrew wants to be forgiven (for what?) he should’ve gone through a trial to prove his innocence,” she wrote.

It seems that Twitter is “absolutely fuming” as Andrew takes “his first tentative steps back into the spotlight” during the Jubilee week, reported The List. However, it is still unclear how many Jubilee events Andrew will in fact attend, noted The Independent.

Undoubtedly the most famous family in the world, the Windsors have become accustomed to having their private affairs pored over by the press and public.

Now a “bombshell” book containing “countless shocking claims about the royals” has promised to tell all about palace life, the Daily Mirror said, following the key players who have shaped the British monarchy in the last 25 years.

Written by former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil is based on hours of interviews with more than 120 royal “insiders”. Here are five of the most scandalous revelations.

The Queen worried William was a ‘brat’

As a toddler, Prince William was reportedly an ill-behaved child and was even dubbed a “holy terror” by his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, according to Brown.

The future king became a “cause of concern” to the Queen when he “showed signs of being a brat” as a toddler, Brown said. The monarch reportedly “complained to her husband that their grandson was ‘out of control’ and needed a stricter nanny.”

The Queen “was not amused that he loved to say: ‘When I am king, I am going to make a new rule that…’”.

At the age of four he allegedly had a habit of “yapping” at his nanny, Barbara Barnes, telling her: “No one tells me what to do! When I am king I will have you punished,” Brown wrote.

William and Harry had ‘Olympic rows’

The souring relationship between the two princes has been well documented in recent years following Prince Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle. But the pair resented each other before then, Brown claimed, adding that their “jokey persona” when together often “concealed resentments greater than is widely known”, according to Town & Country.

One sore spot for Prince Harry was reportedly over royal patronages, as the younger brother struggled to find his place in the family after leaving the army.

“From Harry’s point of view, William was simply ‘hogging the best briefs’, a friend of both of them told me. The younger prince seemed not to have gotten the memo that the future king would always get the juiciest patronages,” wrote Brown.

At the time, Prince Harry was reportedly a “very, very angry man” and the two brothers would have “absolutely Olympic rows” over the matter.

Queen was blindsided by Andrew’s infamous interview

In November 2019, Prince Andrew recorded what was widely dubbed a “car crash” interview with the BBC in which he addressed his long-standing friendship with the late paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

Following the widespread criticism that followed, Andrew stepped back from royal duties.

While the interview is reportedly a “source of regret” for Andrew, according to Town & Country, it seems he had the interview approved by the Queen “under false pretences”. Brown claimed that the interview was only cleared as his mother believed it was a discussion about his royal duties and his Pitch@Palace business initiative.

“Expecting just that, Her Majesty, I am told by a source close to her, watched the broadcast alone in her private sitting room at Windsor after enjoying a light dinner on a tray,” Brown said. “One only hopes she did not upend her favourite champagne nightcap.”

Philip: lowering flag at Diana’s death was a ‘humiliation’

After a public outcry following the death of Princess Diana in 1997, the Queen “capitulated at last to the crowd’s and the tabloids’ demand to lower the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace”, wrote Brown. But Prince Philip saw the move as “a great humiliation”.

The relationship between Prince Philip and Diana seemed to sour after the princess gave her own tell-all interview to Panorama in 1995. During the interview, she publicly disclosed Prince Charles’s affair with Camilla Parker Bowles.

According to royal biographer Ingrid Seward, Philip “would make himself scarce” when Diana brought Princes William and Harry to Windsor Castle, said Town & Country.

Harry and Meghan felt snubbed by Christmas broadcast

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s decision to step down as senior royals was made after their photograph was not displayed during the Queen’s Christmas broadcast, Brown said. The pair reportedly felt that that snub symbolised that they had been “kicked to the margins of the monarchy”.

“Her Majesty eloquently made the point in her speech by saying nothing,” wrote Brown. “The subtext was all in the flotilla of carefully arranged family photographs positioned on her writing desk, a grouping that, in case anyone thinks is accidental, has been artfully changed every year since the monarch’s first televised seasonal message in 1957.”

Prince Andrew has been stripped of his honorary freedom of the city of York title following a vote by local councillors.

The motion was carried “unanimously” at a full council meeting, at which councillors also called for him to relinquish his royal title in the wake of his out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, said the BBC.

The freedom of York was given to Prince Andrew in 1987 and was “essentially a wedding gift after his marriage the previous year to Sarah Ferguson”, said The Guardian.

At the time there was a “huge, joyful civic ceremony, which attracted crowds of more than 200,000 people”, the paper said, a stark contrast to its “ignominious” removal in a meeting that “barely lasted 25 minutes” some 35 years later.

Darryl Smalley, the Lib Dem executive member for culture, leisure and communities at York Council, who proposed the motion, said that the move “sends the right message that we as a city stand with victims of abuse”. He added: “The next logical step is now for Prince Andrew to relinquish his Duke of York title.”

Ahead of the planned vote, the duke was contacted by local council officers to inform him of the motion. He has so far declined to comment.

What is freedom of the city?

Freedom of the city is the highest honour a city can bestow upon a person and is often awarded “to recognise notable service by distinguished citizens, or to important and honoured visitors and royalty”, said the i news site.

It is thought to come from a medieval practice in which “citizens who had earned respect were granted freedom from serfdom”, explained the paper. Since the Local Government Act of 1972, councils have been able to award the honour of freeman or freewoman to “persons of distinction and persons who have, in the opinion of the council, rendered eminent services”.

In times gone by, anyone awarded the title of freeman was “given control of city trade, city strays and rights of pasture” as well as “given roles in running the city”, said the Daily Mail.

But in modern times, freeman is simply an honorary title, that bestows no special privileges on the holder. Occasionally, recipients are presented with a key in symbolic recognition of the honour.

Why has it been withdrawn?

The move to strip Prince Andrew of the honour comes after he reached an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre in February. This meant he would no longer face a jury trial on allegations he sexually abused Giuffre when she was a minor. The duke has always denied the claims.

The settlement is thought to “exceed £12 million” and includes a £2m contribution to Giuffre’s anti-sex-trafficking charity “thought to have been paid by the Queen”, said The Telegraph.

The removal of the honorific title follows a slew of other institutions that have sought to distance themselves from the duke in the wake of the settlement. The Queen has also stripped the duke of his military roles and royal patronages, including the use of the style “His Royal Highness”.

1. Dot Cotton: the last great working-class dame

Julie Bindel on UnHerd

on the end of an era

June Brown’s death “ends an era”, says Julie Bindel on UnHerd. Her EastEnders character, Dot Cotton ,”exemplified everything that is superb about British working-class women of a certain generation”. The “chain-smoking… long-suffering mother of Nasty Nick, wore her headscarf with pride”. Not only that, she “wore too much make-up, clutched her cardigan at her breast, and took liberties left, right and centre,” writes Bindel. For “those of us raised by such women”, she was a recognisable “real-life character”, much like “the mothers and grandmothers on the estate” where Bindel grew up. “Female viewers empathised” with Dot, but she was “no martyr”. Women of Dot’s generation and class background “had to be canny and look after themselves, because nobody else would”. Dot’s “wit, warmth and sheer chutzpah made her a working-class icon to aspire to, despite the difficulties life threw at her”. Brown’s passing “might mark the end of representation of these indefatigable grand dames of working class stock”. But these women “are the bedrock of society”.

Read more

2. Why Russian atrocities are nothing new

Peter Bergen on CNN

on familiar tactics

The pictures of atrocities in Bucha are “shocking, but are they really surprising?” asks Peter Bergen at CNN. “From Afghanistan to Chechnya to Syria”, Russia’s recent wars have been “characterised by mass casualty attacks against civilians” as well as “credible allegations of the summary executions of civilians” by Moscow’s troops. Human Rights Watch reported that more than one million Afghan citizens were killed during the nine-year war waged by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In the next decade, atrocities continued “closer to home” in Chechnya. “During their two wars in Chechnya, the Russians flattened Grozny, once a city of more than 400,000 people”, and more than 8,000 Syrian civilians were killed during the more recent civil war. “What we are seeing in Bucha now is the Russian way of war at work,” writes Bergen, “which seems designed to bludgeon civilian populations into submission”. We should “expect to see more Buchas in coming weeks”.

Read more

3. The curious case of RS Archer

Ben Sixsmith on The Critic

on digital identities

The Twitter user RS Archer is “a prolific purveyor of ‘fake news’”, writes Ben Sixsmith on The Critic. A novelist living in France, he has 90,000 followers and “is known for his politics”. But there is “no trace of ‘RS Archer’” beyond Twitter, and no “David Saunders” book series, which he claims to be the author of. His “Bondesque profile picture is from a stock photo. The identity is transparently fictional.” But Sixsmith still finds Archer’s “manufactured” character “fascinating”. His “ardently anti-Brexit and anti-Johnson” views are “Remainer wish-fulfilment. Not only do his claims say exactly what middle-class liberals wish to hear, but his whole persona is a kind of seductive fantasy”. Perhaps, says Sixsmith, “there is a bit of RS Archer in all those of us who have acquired any kind of audience on social media”. Yes, we use “real names and our real faces” but many project a “smarter, cooler, funnier and more sophisticated” version of ourselves. We shouldn’t “get hooked on improving other people’s image of ourselves rather than, well, improving ourselves”. Otherwise you might wake up one day, look in the mirror “and see a stock photo gazing back”.

Read more

4. Remembering and reliving Easter fun in Lebanon

Angela Zaher on Gal-Dem

on family memories

Easter in Lebanon “was an elaborate culinary feast replete with rituals that strengthened friendship and family bonds”, writes Angela Zaher on Gal-Dem. Whether “young or old”, everyone joined in the preparations. “I still miss the hubbub of those Easters”, with “industrial-scale batches” of semolina-based biscuits called ka’ak wa maamoul. “My mother would plan her baking day meticulously”, and this writer “may have feigned illness to stay at home” and help. Now living in London, Zaher’s “workforce” consists of herself and her two sons. Were her mother to see “how few ma’amoul we produce, I suspect she would feel sad for me and ask if I have any friends”. When she would visit Zaher and her family in London, “she would always remark on how quiet my home is”. This writer has “not been successful” in teaching her children Arabic, and the family has only been able to visit Lebanon “a couple of times in their lifetime so far”. But Zaher has “done my best to educate them about their heritage through these fun food traditions”, all the while “reliving my own childhood, remembering my parents and the happy times we shared”.

Read more

5. Prince Andrew’s trying to reinvent himself – but it’ll only work while Queen’s alive

Fleet Street Fox in The Daily Mirror

on another scandal

Future historians “will devote books, doctorates, and entire symposiums to the question of what the hell goes on in Prince Andrew’s mind”, says Fleet Street Fox in the Daily Mirror. “The Duke of York is nothing if not consistent. His only real problem is that he is consistent at making bad choices”, like deciding “not to relinquish his mother’s hand at the Westminster Abbey memorial for his father”. He instead “flaunted the Head of the Church of England in front of a bank of TV cameras”, knowing “his father’s memorial would be reduced to a news item re-upping allegations of sexual abuse”. The Royal Family now “finds itself in the unenviable situation of having paid £7.5million between them to make a scandal go away, just as the Duke of York manages to drive them smack into a new one”, in which he, his ex-wife and his children “are alleged to have been the beneficiaries of a grand swindle”. Why, the writer asks, “would a man who vowed to step away from the spotlight now be so intent on hogging it?” Andrew “seems to be intent on reinventing himself”, and “he can try it” with the Queen at his side. But he’s “underestimated” the British public’s “fury” and “the ruthlessness of the monarchy”.

Read more

The Duke of York and his ex-wife have been named in a High Court battle brought by a Turkish millionaire who claims she was scammed out of almost £40m by a fraudster.

Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson allegedly received “suspicious” payments totalling more than £1m on the orders of Selman Turk, a former Goldman Sachs banker accused of cheating Nebahat Isbilen out of her fortune.

The payments to the Royal included a £750,000 “gift” from 76-year-old Isbilen, “who was told she was paying for help with a passport so she could flee political persecution in her homeland”, reported The Telegraph.

A further payment of £350,000 linked to Turk was allegedly made to Andrew through a third party account, and £225,000 is said to have been transferred to his former wife, with whom the duke still lives.

There is “no suggestion of any wrongdoing on their part” and Andrew has repaid the £750,000, said the Daily Mail. But there was “no explanation from the prince about the mystery” surrounding the payment “or of how he became involved”, the paper reported, after a spokesperson for Andrew declined to comment.

Payment puzzle

According to The Telegraph, the first payment to the duke “came days after Mr Turk had won an award” at a Dragon’s Den-style project known as Pitch@Palace set up by Andrew.

In her witness statement, Isbilen said: “I can only wonder if there is any connection between this event and the Duke of York transfer.”

Isbilen came to live in Britain after her politician husband was jailed in 2015 following an attempted coup in Turkey. She entrusted her $87m (£66m) fortune to London-based Turkish businessman Turk, who was tasked with moving her wealth out of reach of her husband’s political enemies in Turkey, the court heard.

Isbilen claims that Turk “breached fiduciary obligations he owed to her” and “advances claims in deceit”.

Court documents show that her lawyer Jonathan Tickner wrote to Andrew in March last year, but the royal “‘declined’ to respond to questions or give any account of his relationship” with Turk, The Telegraph reported.

‘Dogged by criticism’

The High Court court battle comes just a month after Andrew settled a civil case in the US with his sexual abuse accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. The duke has denied all of Giuffre’s allegations against him.

Although Andrew has not commented publicly on the fraud case, a spokesperson for his ex-wife told The Telegraph that “the duchess was completely unaware of the allegations that have since emerged” against Turk and was “naturally concerned by what has been alleged against him”.

But despite there being no suggestion of wrongdoing by the Yorks in the latest legal scandal, they have been “dogged by criticism of their financial affairs”, the paper said. The pair have made headlines over dealings including “taking money from Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire financier and convicted paedophile, and the sale of their former marital home for an inflated fee to the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s autocratic former president”.

The duke has also been accused of having repeatedly exploited his role as Britain’s trade envoy to further his own financial interests.

And he faced a fresh wave of criticism this week, after escorting the Queen at a memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh. Some commentators slated the move, which Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror described as a “cynical, gratuitously offensive attempt by the Queen to rehabilitate” her “shamed son”.

The Queen’s decision to be escorted by Prince Andrew at a memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh has prompted comment aplenty, including speculation that this was the start of the disgraced duke’s rehabilitation into public life.

The monarch held the prince’s outstretched forearm as she entered Westminster Abbey in what The Times called a “public show of support for her son, who no longer undertakes royal duties”.

A family source told the Daily Mail that his decision to place himself “front and centre”, travelling with the Queen, had caused “consternation”. The Duke of York appeared to refuse to hand over the Queen to the Dean of Westminster. Instead, the royal “clung to his 95-year-old mother” and “continued to escort her towards her seat in full view of the guests and media”.

Andrew has been “accused of completely misreading the public mood by playing such a prominent role just weeks after agreeing a multi-million-pound settlement with his rape accuser Virginia Giuffre, whose claims he has always denied”, added the Mail.

Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror wrote that this was a “cynical, gratuitously offensive attempt by the Queen to rehabilitate” her “shamed son Andrew”.

He added that “choosing to be escorted to and from Westminster Abbey by a man who paid a reported £12m to settle a sordid sex case to avoid court was deeply distasteful”.

Sean O’Grady of The Independent said it was “another PR blunder, and a particularly ghastly one,” adding that “plainly, whoever – individually or collectively – is responsible for this arm of the monarchy isn’t doing it very well”.

Mark Borkowski, a PR and royal commentator, was also disapproving. He told The Guardian that if Andrew was testing the water to establish in what capacity he could return to public life, it would be consistent with the combination of “hubris and arrogance” and poor judgment that Andrew had demonstrated in the past, such as with his BBC Newsnight interview.

He speculated that the decision to give the prince a prominent role reflected the Queen’s loyalty, but added that “if this is her gesture, it’s a colossal mistake if they’re using a memorial service to rehabilitate this soiled royal.”

Across the Atlantic, The New York Times said Andrew’s “conspicuous” public appearance was an “unmistakable message of support” from a 95-year-old mother for her disgraced son.

“It didn’t happen by happenstance,” Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC, told the paper. “There must have been thinking behind it.” Hunt added: “Did Charles and William attempt to intervene and did they fail?”

A somewhat more supportive voice came from GB News presenter Dan Wootton. “The Queen (God bless her) does things her way. Always,” he tweeted.

“Today be in no doubt that she sent a very clear message: Prince Andrew remains my favourite son and I back him all the way.” Wootton added that this was “an utterly fascinating insight into her loyalty and faith”.

The next question is whether Andrew will now make prominent appearances at any of the events to mark the Platinum Jubilee this summer. Asked by The Telegraph about this, a royal source replied: “Doubtful but too early to say.”

Prince Andrew has avoided a potential public trial over sex abuse claims against him by agreeing a multimillion-pound settlement with his accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

But while the Duke of York continues to deny all the allegations against him, the case will now never be settled in the court of public opinion – leaving the rest of the Royal Family facing the fallout from the scandal.

Andrew’s road back to official royal status appears forever barred, and a question mark hovers over where his out-of-court settlement leaves his daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. Their royal duties had been expected to expand after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle quit the UK, but the future role to be played by the sisters in royal life is now unclear.

‘Greater roles’ post-Megxit?

When Harry and Meghan made the sensational decision to step back from royal duties two years ago, ultimately moving to California, it was widely believed that Beatrice and Eugenie would take on more prominent public roles for “the Firm”.

Over the years, the sisters have appeared at large royal events, from Westminster Abbey services to the annual Trooping of the Colour ceremony. However, they are not full-time working members of the family and have civilian jobs, a combination that Beatrice described as “hard to navigate… because there is no precedent, there is no protocol” in an interview with Vogue’s Ellie Pithers in 2018.

In the days following the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s bombshell announcement, Robert Lacey, the historical consultant for The Crown, told Mail Online that he thought Beatrice and Eugenie would “be brought forward” because it’s “what the royal family needs”.

This was something Prince Andrew pushed for from within the family, according to Hilary Rose in The Times. She wrote that the Duke of York had “hoped that Megxit” would lead to “greater roles on the royal stage for his daughters”.

However, this promotion that royal experts had anticipated and Prince Andrew had pinned his hopes on never happened. “Andrew’s years of lobbying for the ‘blood Princesses’ to have a greater role in The Firm… has finally been thwarted,” said royal correspondent Rebecca English and columnist Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail.

Following the Duke of York’s disastrous Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis in November 2019, a royal aide confirmed that Beatrice and Eugenie would continue undertaking “a small number of royal engagements each year”.

When Prince Charles inherits the throne, their number of engagements may shrink even further. The Prince of Wales is famously in favour of a streamlined future monarchy with fewer public-facing family members.

“Under his plan the number of front-rank royals, we would see at formal ceremonial occasions would be considerably reduced with Andrew’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie the most likely to be surplus to requirements,” said Richard Kay in the Daily Mail.

Patronages as a ‘dowry’

A week after the Newsnight interview, The Sunday Times reported that the Duke of York was hoping that his daughters would take over many of his royal patronages as he stepped back from public duties.

A source close to the paper said it would be a “logical next step”, with Prince Andrew “determined that his daughters should not be punished for his behaviour”.

But Sir Stephen Bubb, director of the independent and influential think-tank Charity Futures, warned the Duke of York against treating patronages as a “dowry” for Beatrice and Eugenie.

“You certainly can’t have a situation where the sins of the father are visited on the children,” he told The Sunday Times. “But the decision on patronage is a matter for the charity itself to decide what is most appropriate.”

Prince Andrew was stripped of his remaining royal patronages, along with his military titles, by the Queen in January this year after a New York judge dismissed an appeal by his lawyers to have the sexual abuse case against him dropped.

The Duke of York’s patronages “will never be returned – regardless of the outcome of any future legal proceedings”, wrote The Daily Telegraph’s associate editor Camilla Tominey when the news broke. “Instead, they will be redistributed to other members of the Royal family.”

It is not yet clear whether Beatrice and Eugenie are included in the list of royals that Prince Andrew’s 90 or so patronages, which include the Royal Free Charity, the Royal Society and the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, will be given to.

Platinum Jubilee celebrations

Royal experts have suggested that Beatrice and Eugenie will still play a role in their grandmother’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations this summer because of the “great efforts” they have made to distance themselves from the controversies surrounding their father, said the i news site.

They may end up joining the Queen and other members of the Royal Family to watch the traditional RAF flypast from the Buckingham Palace balcony on 2 June or accompany their grandmother to the Derby at Epsom two days later.

“Both have managed to achieve quite separate identities, independent from their father’s, and I don’t think the public would expect them to be punished as well,” Professor Pauline Maclaran of Royal Holloway, University of London, and co-author of Royal Fever: The British Monarchy in Consumer Culture, told the paper.

Solidarity between cousins

In a recent display of solidarity with the Royal Family, Eugenie was pictured attending the Super Bowl in Los Angeles with her cousin Prince Harry. Eugenie was “the first member of the royal family to visit [Harry] since Megxit” with the trip “raising hopes that she might help heal the rift with the wider family”, said Rose in The Times.

The fallout from Megxit relatively pales in comparison with the other scandals the Royal Family has faced just this year alone, from Prince Andrew’s multimillion-pound sexual abuse settlement to Prince Charles’s charity being investigated by police over “cash for honours”.

Given all that’s going on for the family, not to mention the Queen’s concerning Covid diagnosis, it is perhaps unsurprising that the bond between Harry and Eugenie remains strong and could be a sign that we’ll see continuing solidarity between various royal cousins throughout 2022.

The Royal Family suffered a crisis-filled week as Prince Charles’ charity came under police scrutiny while Prince Andrew was in the spotlight after reaching an out-of-court settlement with his sex abuse accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

The Duke of York agreed to pay an undisclosed sum reported to be as much as £12m to Giuffre, including a “substantial donation” to her charity for abuse victims. How Andrew will fund the payout has been the subject of intense speculation, with campaigners demanding to know whether the money will be coming from the public or private purse.

In a further embarrassment for the Royals, the Metropolitan Police announced a probe into Charles’ Prince’s Foundation. The investigation comes amid allegations that help was offered to secure honours and citizenship for a Saudi billionaire in exchange for a donation to the charity.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the pandemic, and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week:

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Joe Biden warned that Russia was poised to invade Ukraine after the besieged eastern European nation was hit by the largest cyberattack in its history.
• As Storm Eunice approached the UK, the Met Office issued rare red weather warnings for southern and eastern England, and South Wales.
• Priti Patel was reportedly planning an end to the UK’s golden visa scheme, in a bid to halt the flow of “dirty money” flooding into the UK from Russia.
• An investigation by The Times found that Covid-19 conspiracy theorists have been cashing in on YouTube advertising, earning up to £500,000 a year while spreading misinformation.
• And tennis champion Novak Djokovic suggested that he would drop out of future tournaments if Covid-19 vaccines were a mandatory requirement.

​A Labour MP has demanded “assurances” that public money will not be used to fund Prince Andrew’s out-of-court settlement with Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre.

An out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum, reportedly up to £12m, was announced by lawyers representing the Duke of York and Giuffre this week.

The deal means Prince Andrew will avoid a public trial and will not be forced into an “admission of guilt” over the allegations of sexual abuse against him, said The Guardian. Andy McDonald, Labour MP for Middlesbrough, said he would raise the issue in parliament next week when MPs return after the February recess.

Public purse

During an appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight McDonald described Prince Andrew as “a person of very high profile involved in a case where his position of authority and privilege has been allegedly abused and it is an enormous sum of money.

“We don’t know the precise figure but there is a risk that this will be at the public’s expense so we need to have that resolved,” he warned. “We need to know exactly where this money is coming from.

“I am going to take the opportunity to raise this issue in parliament because the issue isn’t going to go away until people have that information and receive assurances that public money is not going to be used to in any way contribute to the settlement.”

Andrew has always denied the allegations that he sexually abused Guiffre after she was “trafficked by his friend and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein”, said The Guardian.

But in reaching the settlement he agreed to make a “substantial donation” to Giuffre’s charity for victims of abuse, pledging to “demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein” by supporting the “fight against the evils of sex trafficking and by supporting its victims”.

The disgraced duke had faced “increasing pressure” from the Royal Family to settle and bring the case to an end after it “threatened to overshadow the Queen’s jubilee celebrations”, according to The Times. Prince Charles, his older brother, is thought to have been a particularly “prominent voice” on the matter.

One legal source told the paper that the settlement would be “worth its weight in gold” to the Queen, as embarrassing trial proceedings are likely to have gone ahead amid planned celebrations marking her 70th year on the throne.

Who’s paying?

Andrew’s finances have “long been shrouded in mystery”, royal finances expert David McClure told The Sun.

He officially receives an allowance from the Queen worth about £248,000 a year, as well as a naval pension of around £20,000 annually. But he will have “other sources” to draw on to pay the settlement, McClure said.

One of those sources is likely to be the sale of a £17m Swiss ski chalet he bought with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 2014. But “he is not yet believed to have received any money for it”, The Sun said, and is likely only to receive a “fraction” of the total sum.

He “has made a few million from that”, said McClure. “But he will have to split that with Fergie, and had a mortgage to pay on it, so he is likely to have lost money on it.”

He also “likely has money left over” from the 2007 sale of Sunninghill Park, the home he formerly shared with Ferguson, the paper said, which sold to a “Kazakh oligarch for £15m, £3m over the asking price”.

A source with knowledge of the settlement between Andrew and Giuffre told the Daily Mirror that it was only signed when Andrew was “able to provide proof” that any remaining funds from the sale of the ski chalet would be available.

The Daily Mail reported that a “bridging loan” was offered to Prince Andrew from Prince Charles and the Queen “so his US lawyers could do a quick deal” with Giuffre, but said it remained “unclear” how the duke would fund the settlement.

Much of the money is likely to come from the Queen, possibly from her Duchy of Lancaster estate or private funds from her considerable investment portfolio.

Bank of Mum & Dad

The Queen receives a taxpayer-funded sovereign grant, paid to her by the government every year, which last year totalled £51.5m.

But the grant must be spent “by the royal household in support of Her Majesty’s official duties” and so “clearly” does not include “paying out-of-court settlements”, said Craig Prescott, a lecturer in law at Bangor University, on The Conversation.

The Queen separately receives the surplus from the Duchy of Lancaster estate, which grew to a substantial £22.3m in 2020-21. But there is some argument to be had over whether funds derived from the estate should be considered “private or public” money, Prescott said.

At times acting like “a family trust” and at others like a “commercial business”, the Duchy of Lancaster estate has frequently left MPs who have tried to “scrutinise” its accounts “scratching their heads”, said Town & Country.

The Mirror said that the Queen has already given her “shamed son” £2m as a donation to Giuffre’s charity, agreeing to help him “as long as she was not connected to any personal payment to Giuffre”.

“She could not be seen to be making a payment to a victim of sexual assault, who accused her son of being an abuser,” a royal source told the paper.

“But a deal was structured in such a way to arrange a sizeable financial contribution to the settlement by way of a charitable donation instead.”

Prince Andrew has reportedly agreed to pay millions of pounds to settle the civil case brought against him in the US by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

According to The Mirror, the Duke of York has avoided a “potentially explosive civil trial” with an out-of-court deal totalling £12m, including a “substantial donation” – thought to be about £2m – to Giuffre's charity Speak Out, Act, Reclaim, which supports sex abuse survivors.

In a federal court filing in New York this week, Andrew recognised that Giuffre “suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks”. He made no apology nor admission of liability, and has repeatedly denied allegations that he sexually abused Giuffre on three occasions when she was a teenager.

Public or private purse?

Questions are now being raised about how Andrew is funding the “substantial” payout. A statement included with the letter filed this week to US judge Lewis Kaplan, who has been overseeing the civil sex claim, stated that the total settlement sum was “not being disclosed”.

But amid reports that the deal exceeds £10m, campaigners are demanding to know whether the money will be coming from the public or private purse.

The Duke of York’s finances are “famously opaque”, said the i news site. He receives a £20,000 Royal Navy pension and a £250,000 annual stipend from the Queen’s Duchy of Lancaster income, but his lifestyle has exceeded his expected income over the years.

The Times reported last year that a Conservative Party donor had cleared a £1.5m debt that Andrew owed to a private bank in Luxembourg. Leaked documents showed that in 2015, the royal was “borrowing an average of £125,000 every three months from a credit facility” offered by Banque Havilland, owned by Tory donor David Rowland, who was said to have then cleared the debt “in its entirety”.

“‘Mysterious’ and ‘murky’ are words often used to describe the Duke of York’s financial affairs,” the paper added.

In recent months, Andrew has been completing the sale of his only known asset, a seven-bedroom chalet in the Swiss village of Verbier that he bought with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 2014. The duke and duchess put the property on the market after being sued by the previous owner, Isabelle de Rouvre, “a French socialite who alleged that they owed her £6.7m from the £16.6m sale”, said The Telegraph.

Andrew is reported to have agreed a £17.5m deal with a buyer for the chalet, which costs up to £22,000 a week to rent. The proceeds were expected to be used by the royal to settle his lawsuit with de Rouve, but speculation is rife that the cash may be used to cover his Giuffre payout instead.

The Queen has already privately funded her son’s legal fight with Giuffre “to the tune of millions of pounds”, said the newspaper, which reported that the monarch will “partly” help him to pay for the out-of-court settlement.

The Queen draws more than £20m a year from the Duchy of Lancaster and is reported to have a personal net worth of about £380m.

‘Look to a private life’

Along with his finances, a question mark also remains over that role that Andrew will play in public life going forward.

The duke has already lost his royal patronages and his military and HRH titles as a result of the legal case against him. And pressure is mounting for him to step down from all public responsibilities.

“I think really he should look to a private life and enjoy essentially what is a very good privileged lifestyle,” former Royal Navy officer Chris Parry, who was Andrew's flight commander, told the BBC. “But I think he should stay out of the public eye.”

The duke is due to appear in public alongside the Queen and other members of the royal family on 29 March, at a Westminster Abbey service commemorating the Duke of Edinburgh’s death. But after that, he has no public appearances planned and is not involved in any of the celebrations marking his mother’s Platinum Jubilee.

“It has been made clear that the public have heard enough about him and enough from him. They need to hear no more,” a source close to Andrew’s team told The Telegraph.

Even though Andrew’s civil case with Giuffre is over and he has avoided the “humiliation” of being interviewed under oath, his road back to official royal status “remains barred forever”, wrote royal expert Jennie Bond in an article for The Mirror.

“The fact is that Prince Andrew will forever remain tarnished by more than a decade of speculation about his friendship with a convicted paedophile.”

1. The Prince and the survivor: our right to all the facts does not trump Virginia Giuffre’s wellbeing

Amanda Morgan and Lydia Jupp in The Sydney Morning Herald

on personal protection

The settlement between Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew “has drawn criticism from commentators and casual observers”, say Amanda Morgan and Lydia Jupp in The Sydney Morning Herald. Many “seem surprised by such a rapid turnaround in the case”. It seems the Prince was due to be deposed by Giuffre’s lawyers in the coming weeks, “so he pulled the trigger by necessity”. And though “it may have been cathartic to see Prince Andrew raked across the coals, for all the world to see, it’s easy to forget that Giuffre would have received the same treatment”. The pair say that “the survivor’s interest – her safety and wellbeing – must not be subordinate to public interest”, and “the legal system was not created to serve survivors of sexual violence”. “It requires a huge amount of courage to report a sexual assault, let alone to face the courts”, and those who do pursue justice before a jury “are subject to intense scrutiny, gaslighting and re-traumatisation” from defence laywers. None of us “should ever expect” a survivor should have to pay the price so the public has “all the facts for the sake of the truth”. Giuffre “deserves praise for speaking out”.

Read more

2. There’s no solidarity in ‘sovereign citizen’ protests – only incoherent rage

George Monbiot in The Guardian

on surges in sovereignty

When Alpha Men Assemble started paramilitary drills at the start of the year, “it looked pretty threatening”, says George Monbiot in The Guardian. “We were warned” that the group was “about to launch an insurrection against vaccines and in favour of ‘the sovereign citizen’. Since then, silence.” This was one example of “the incoherent protests now sweeping rich, English-speaking nations […] gatherings whose aims are simultaneously petty and grandiose. Their immediate objectives are small and often risible”, the underlying aims “open-ended, massive and impossible to fulfil”. The “‘sovereign citizen’ theory is a powerful current running through” protests in Ottawa, Australia, New Zealand and the US, as well as the UK’s own. “Its adherents insist they stand above the law” and “arrogate to themselves sovereign powers that not even the monarch enjoys”. What’s behind “the appeal of this movement”, asks Monbiot. Support for individual sovereignty appears to “surge in hard times”, and this writer suspects it’s “about more than money”. Capitalism promises “one day we will all be alphas – just not yet”. These movements “tend to be infested with racism and white supremacy”, and some of the Ottawa organisers “have a history of attacks on trade unions”. It seems “sovereignty and solidarity are not compatible”.

Read more

3. Joining a union is vital for workers feeling cost-of-living pinch

Angela Rayner in the Daily Mirror

on empowering employees

Britain is facing “a serious issue”, says Angela Rayner in the Daily Mirror. The deputy Labour leader says she hears “almost daily” from constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne “how seriously they are feeling the pinch” of the rising cost of living. “From care workers to young city types, from nurses to supermarket staff”, pay packets “are just not stretching far enough”. Trade unions “exist to collectively empower workers”, and the Labour Party’s links with unions are “more relevant than ever in these precarious times”, when “people need decent pay to keep afloat, flexibility to manage their family life, and the confidence to challenge inequality”. The UK has experienced a “wasted decade of low growth in our economy under the Conservatives”, but “despite the barriers” the party has “put in the way, good employers and businesses already work closely with trade unions because they care about their workers”. Labour’s New Deal for Working People promises “security at work, prosperity in decent pay, and all workers treated with respect”, starting with a trade union in “almost every workplace”.

Read more

4. Twenty years of Putin and the West still fails to understand him

Mary Dejevsky in The Independent

on miscommunications

Vladimir Putin “has been at the helm of Russia for more than 20 years” and yet “much of the Western world seems to find him as hard to read now as they did” when he became prime minister back in 1999, says Mary Dejevsky in The Independent. “Time and again the West has been surprised, wrong-footed or just generally appalled by something that Putin has supposedly said or done”, and the crisis in Ukraine “is just the latest, if perhaps the gravest, example”. Why does the West find it “so difficult to deal” with Putin?, asks Dejevsky. Over the years there has been “an almost perverse reluctance” from many in the West “to actually listen to what Putin and his officials have to say”. While “it is wise to prepare for the worst”, Putin has consistently denied an invasion into Ukraine is planned, “and not to heed or even mention these quite definite denials paints” him “as an out-and-out warmonger”. If there’s a “‘pattern of behaviour’, it is the West’s automatic resort to blaming the Kremlin for everything that happens inside and outside Russia”, she adds.

Read more

5. Price of love too high to pay in online fraud

South China Morning Post Editorial

on love scams

For some, online dating is “difficult enough” – and that’s before “having to worry about financial fraud”, says the South China Morning Post. “Fertile grounds abound for scammers” at present, and Hong Kong police have seen a rise in the amount of money being lost through such schemes during the pandemic. The figures are “probably far higher” than the reported HK$599M (£56.6m) “as victims usually experience shame and stigma, so are reluctant to inform authorities”. People dreaming “of meeting the perfect partner can easily be swayed by the online tactics of a skilful fraudster”, which include “an attractive profile” and “carefully worded messages of affection” before “requests to transfer funds” are made. It’s “too easy” to blame victims for succumbing to these scams, the newspaper continues. “Studies show vulnerability is not static and can change with personal circumstances, such as the end of a relationship, retirement or work stress”. And “it does not help that Hong Kong is gripped by a fast-spreading fifth wave” of Covid-19. “For the alert, the advice is simple: background-check a potential online suitor, take the relationship into the real world as soon as possible […] and never give cash if it has to be borrowed”.

Read more

Judith Rowbotham, a visiting research professor in socio-legal and constitutional history at the University of Plymouth, looks back at the Royal Family’s high-profile scandals.

As Queen Elizabeth II approaches her platinum jubilee, the first British monarch to do so, the royal family is also facing a difficult time. Headlines on the upcoming trial of the Duke of York are competing with plans for the jubilee.

Meanwhile, news coverage suggests that the queen and other royals, notably the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, remain popular and much loved.

The history of the British monarchy shows that ebbs and flows of popularity were not unusual, especially in the last 200 years – an era when the royal family began to be presented to the public via the mass media.

In the late 18th century, an expansion of affordable print publications created a wider audience for media stories about the royals.

The attention of these publications focused on three types of news: crime, sport and the royal family. Stories covering members of the royal family exposed them to a scale of unprecedented public scrutiny, archives show. Even before he became king, George IV’s character and extravagant habits were widely lampooned in caricatures by cartoonists such as James Gillray.

George had failed to appreciate that his habits – excessive personal expenditure, disloyalty to friends and gross self-indulgence – were disapproved of in an industrialised and increasingly urban Britain, with evangelical moral values. Times had changed, but George had not.

Fluctuations in the monarchy’s popularity, and of individual royals, are often rooted in how the monarch represents the cultural values of the majority of his or her subjects. Elizabeth II has strongly displayed this during the pandemic, notably in her decision not to demand any special privileges at Prince Philip’s funeral in compliance with the rules of her government.

William IV’s popularity

William IV appreciated why his older brother had been out of favour. His popularity increased when he opted for a low-key and low-cost coronation, spending nearly £200,000 less than George IV’s lavish celebrations. Interestingly, his wife Adelaide was the first modern consort to engage with the ordinary people through a range of philanthropic enterprises, including the Royal Naval asylum.

Widespread press coverage on Victoria’s accession confirmed her popularity. Archives show that The Globe newspaper commented: “One united wish seems to have pervaded all classes, ranks, ages, and conditions, to make the day truly one of rejoicing: throughout the length and breadth of the land this is the case, and for weeks past the provincial journals have had their columns filled with the proceedings of public meetings, and announcements of subscriptions on the part of the rich to enable their less wealthy fellow subjects to join with them in celebrating the day in a manner suitable to it.”

Despite this, Victoria’s popularity dipped in 1839, after a scandal caused by her unkind (and untrue) gossip about Lady Flora Hastings being pregnant. It turned out that Lady Flora was dying of stomach cancer.

But attitudes to Victoria shifted again with the birth of a son and heir. This is illustrated in portraits of the royal family by painters like Franz Winterhalter and is apparent through a survey of newspaper headlines, periodical articles and popular fiction. British historian John Plunkett from Exeter University described Victoria as the first media monarch as headlines established her as a national, and then imperial, embodiment of Britishness.

Even Victoria’s extravagant mourning after Prince Albert’s death in 1861 was received with popular sympathy as the mass market fiction of Rosa Nouchette Carey indicates.

Victoria’s popularity is also reflected in the consistent (unauthorised) use of her image in contemporary advertising selling an extensive range of goods from black velvet to cocoa.

High-profile scandals

The popularity of her son Edward, the Prince of Wales, dipped when his indulgent lifestyle conflicted with Victorian morality embodied by his mother. This was particularly apparent when he appeared as a witness in a high-profile divorce case and in an 1891 gambling case. Much of the media, including the Pall Mall Gazette, was critical of the heir to the throne admitting to playing baccarat, which was illegal. His conduct in the witness box at the Old Bailey was recorded as appearing shifty, evasive and dishonest, according to the Pall Mall Gazette archives.

But public opinion shifted back behind the royal family after the Prince’s eldest son died in the 1892 influenza epidemic. His other son, George, who went on to become George V, married Mary of Teck and, as Duke and Duchess of York, then became popular figures, much like the Cambridges today, after their tour of the Empire in 1901.

That 19th-century pattern has clear modern echoes in the 20th century and beyond. The abdication of undutiful Edward VIII strengthened the popularity of dutiful George VI and his queen. But the lesson provided by George IV holds. What sustains the monarchy is its ability to appear both culturally relevant and cost-effective in the eyes of the wider public.

This careful balancing act continues and is something that Elizabeth II herself has been consistently successful in achieving.

Judith Rowbotham, Visiting Research Professor in Socio-legal and Constitutional History, University of Plymouth

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A New York judge has asked law enforcement in the UK and Australia to help collect testimonies from Prince Andrew’s former aide and three other potential witnesses for the sex assault civil lawsuit brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

The Duke of York has denied all of the allegations against him, including being a co-conspirator of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But New York Judge Lewis Kaplan last month denied “in all respects” a plea by Andrew’s lawyers to dismiss the civil damages claim and ruled that the case could continue.

Newly released court documents show that Kaplan has filed letters to the UK High Court, the senior master of the Queen’s Bench Division and the Australian attorney-general “to ask for their help in gathering evidence” from a total of four witnesses by the end of April, The Times reported.

Here is the witness list so far for the civil case, which is pencilled in to take place between September and December.

Robert Olney

Ex-aide Onley is to be questioned about Andrew’s communications with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Giuffre, “along with his travel to Epstein’s homes”, according to The Times.

Former Army Air Corps officer Olney, now head of safety and business delivery at the Civil Aviation Authority, was listed in “Epstein’s infamous ‘little black book’ of contacts”, said the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay. Olney also “accompanied Andrew on several high-profile trips around the globe”.

“All the same, the request to interview him as a witness has surprised Andrew’s team,” added Kay, who noted that Olney was appointed as equerry to the royal in September 2002 – more than a year after a then teenage Giuffre was allegedly forced to have sex with Andrew.

Shukri Walker

Judge Kaplan has also requested evidence from Walker – a woman who may have seen Prince Andrew with Giuffre at a London nightclub two decades ago.

According to Giuffre’s lawyers, Walker said she saw the royal “with a young girl around the time that the plaintiff contends Prince Andrew abused her in London after visiting Tramp nightclub”.

Walker’s lawyer Lisa Bloom – who has represented women against both Bill Cosby and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly – told The Guardian last month that her client would be “willing to do the deposition Virginia Giuffre’s team is seeking”.

Giuffre’s lawyers have said that Walker’s testimony is “highly relevant” because Andrew has “denied ever meeting plaintiff or being at Tramp nightclub during the relevant time period”.

Robert Giuffre

Kaplan has written to the Australian Attorney General requesting assistance in getting testimony from Giuffre’s husband, Robert, on behalf of Andrew’s attorneys.

The couple moved to Australia after meeting 20 years ago in Thailand, where she was studying massage techniques and he was a martial arts tutor. They wed “in a Buddhist temple within ten days of meeting” and now have three children,The Telegraph reported.

According to The Independent, the judge has asked for his testimony to include how he met his wife, “his discussions with her about Andrew, her alleged childhood trauma and abuse, and her relationship with Epstein and Maxwell”. The testimony is also requested to cover “all claims Ms Giuffre has made against the duke, her alleged emotional and psychological harm and damages, her role in trafficking and recruiting young girls for Epstein, and the Giuffre household’s finances”, the newspaper said.

Judith Lightfoot

Andrew’s lawyers also asked for help in obtaining testimony from Giuffre’s psychologist, Dr Lightfoot.

Judge Kaplan has said that Lightfoot’s evidence should include “Ms Giuffre’s medical treatment, her diagnosis of Ms Giuffre, matters discussed during their sessions and claims made about Andrew”, the London Evening Standard reported.

Lightfoot will also reportedly be questioned about theories put forward by Andrew’s legal team that Giuffre “may suffer from false memories”.

Whether Dr Lightfoot “will be allowed to refuse access” to such personal information “due to patient/doctor confidentiality” remains to be seen, the paper added.

The “wrongful” conduct of Virginia Roberts Giuffre will be central to Prince Andrew’s defence against the sexual abuse lawsuit that she has brought against him, according to court papers filed yesterday by his lawyers.

In an 11-page letter to the New York Judge presiding over the case, Prince Andrew’s team cited the so-called “doctrine of unclean hands” – an “allegation that Giuffre has acted unethically related to the accusations”, said The Guardian.

Arguing that she has no right to benefit from a civil case, the lawyers wrote that “Giuffre’s alleged causes of action are barred in whole or in part by her own wrongful conduct”.

What else did the lawyers say?

The duke of York’s defence team also “reiterated their unsuccessful claim” that a 2009 settlement between Giuffre and Epstein meant that the royal was protected from legal action, said The Guardian. And they repeated their argument that Giuffre had waited too long after the alleged abuse occurred to bring a complaint, “barring her from suing”, the newspaper added.

The legal documents also laid out demands from Andrew for a “trial by jury on all causes of action asserted in the complaint”. The trial requested in the “defiant” letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan is “likely to take place in New York in September or October”, said The Independent.

Giuffre is accusing Andrew of “sexual assault and battery”. She claims that she was trafficked by late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and forced to have sex with the duke when she was 17 – allegations that Andew has repeatedly denied.

However, in the newly filed court documents, Andrew’s lawyers said that he “lacks sufficient information to admit or deny” Giuffre’s prior allegations that Epstein used his wealth and connections “to create a web of transcontinental sex trafficking that served himself, his coconspirators, and some of the most powerful people in the world”.

Royal Family’s response

With just days until the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations officially kick off, Buckingham Palace will be regarding Andrew’s legal defence with “suppressed horror”, said the BBC’s royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell.

Andrew’s lawyers “give the impression that they will go in hard, particularly over this use of doctrine of unclean hands”. Witchell told Radio 4’s Today programme. “They will attempt to assert that Virginia Giuffre’s conduct was sufficiently wrong in itself that she has forfeited the right to benefit in any way from this situation.”

How this strategy of Andrew appearing to “blame” Guiffre would “play in front of a New York jury” remained to be seen, Witchell added. But the strategy could be part of a “softening up process”, in the hope that Giuffre and her legal team would be “more inclined perhaps to consider an out-of-court settlement”.

Giuffre’s lawyers have “hit back” at the inclusion of the “doctrine of unclean hands” and the apparent blaming of her for the abuse she allegedly suffered as a teenager, said The Independent.

In a statement to the newspaper, David Boies, a member of Giuffre’s legal team, said: “Prince Andrew’s answer continues his approach of denying any knowledge or information concerning the claims against him, and purporting to blame the victim of the abuse for somehow bringing it on herself.

“We look forward to confronting Prince Andrew with his denials and attempts to blame Ms Giuffre for her own abuse at his deposition and at trial.”

1. Don’t get mad about Biden comparing George Floyd and MLK. Get mad about Biden becoming who MLK warned us about

Michael Arceneaux at The Independent

on reasons for anger

A video of Joe Biden claiming George Floyd’s death had a greater global impact than Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination “received renewed criticism amid resurfacing” in social media posts shared on MLK day this week, writes Michael Arceneaux at The Independent. The-then presidential candidate was “emphasizing the role smartphones have played in mobilizing people all over the world to participate in the movement against police brutality”, and he did not intend to “offend the late Dr King as some purport”. This online outrage “tells me people like to be mad about anything, but often not the right things”, says Arceneaux. “There is plenty of reason to be mad at Joe Biden” considering “he is failing both Dr King and George Floyd in terms of enacting legislation to help curb police brutality, voting rights, and fight poverty”. His administration “gave up on passing a police reform bill in honor of George Floyd last fall”. King’s “warning of the white moderate 60 years ago rings truer than ever in the wake of Biden’s failures to pass legislation to help the Black voters that delivered him the presidency”.

Read more

2. Covid fraudsters are being given a free pass

Alice Thomson at The Times

on costly divisions

The pandemic will soon enter the endemic phase in the UK. “The country will slowly move on” from rows over masks and rule-breaking, says Alice Thomson at The Times, to be “just as angry about who profiteered from the virus”. The newspaper’s disclosure this week that “£4.3bn of public money lost to fraud in the pandemic will never be recovered is just the tip of it”. The problem isn’t just the businesses that “took vast amounts of furlough money and then paid their chief executives huge bonuses”. There are the second home owners “who claimed compensation for mythical lost rent”, and those who “suddenly discovered they could apply, with no experience, for PPE and lateral flow contracts”. There’s no longer a sense, says Thomson “that we’re all in it together”. Instead, we enter “a new age of inequality”, where “two nations” co-exist: “the lucky few fuelling the demand for Rolls-Royces, versus everyone else being told to cuddle their pets for warmth”. The “us and them economic outcome of the pandemic” could lose the Conservatives the next election, if the “culture of the Downing Street frat house” doesn’t.

Read more

3. War is increasingly likely, with Putin amassing troops and relishing the sight of a weak President Biden

Douglas Murray at The Sun

on familiar tactics

The chances that we are about to go to war with Russia “are still slim”, says Douglas Murray at The Sun. “Nuclear-armed states do not like to go to war with each other”, something that’s been true since the Cold War. The massing of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine is a tactic Vladimir Putin has used before, says Murray. He did it in Crimea in 2014, and in 2008 “when he provoked a war with Georgia and stole” two regions. “Each time Putin took what he believed was his and the wider world did nothing. A lesson Putin noted well”. The “dictator-for-life… pretends Nato is surrounding him”, but the massing of troops this time is “of course, not about genuine fear on his part”, Murray continues. “It is part of a desire to strengthen his position domestically by once again taking what he believes is his”. The UK has sent defensive equipment to Ukraine, and while “it is in no one’s interests” for us to engage in armed conflict with Russia, “it is also in no one’s interests to allow the world’s dictators and strongmen to gobble up whatever they want”. We should, says Murray, “be proud that Britain is playing her part”.

Read more

4. It is not too late to look up

David Ho and Laurent Bopp at Al Jazeera

on serious satire

Within three weeks of its release, Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up became Netflix’s second most watched film of all time. It’s a “hilarious satire”, say geoscientists David Ho and Laurent Bopp at Al Jazeera. “But it is also a serious indictment of the failure of the Western world’s political and media classes to use their positions to try and solve global problems.” McKay has said the film is really about climate change, not an extinction-threatening asteroid hitting earth. But the film is “not a perfect analogy for the climate emergency and humanity’s response to it”, the writers here say. Its “US-centric view” doesn’t “reflect a global experience” or “make much sense when it comes to the fight against climate change”. Similarly, climate change’s effects “are not instantaneous like those of comets”, and “efforts to lessen the effects will not be felt immediately”. The moment that these writers found most powerful was at the end of the film, when Dr Randall Mindy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, says: “We really did have everything, didn’t we”. Ho and Bopp agree: “Earth does have everything needed for life. And it is our duty to continue the ongoing fight to keep it that way”.

Read more

5. A possible sex offender doesn’t look good on a commemorative tea towel

Tanya Gold at The New York Times

on business decisions

Prince Andrew is in “internal exile” in Windsor, “jobless and divorced and with a collection of carefully arranged cuddly bears”, says Tanya Gold at The New York Times. “He’s apparently fond of TV”, and this writer wonders whether The Crown would make good watching for the Duke, particularly the episode where Queen Mary reminds Elizabeth II: “The crown must win. Must always win”. Because the crown is indeed “a business” and “their business is power”. The rest, the “hats, flowers, doilies”, is mere “icing sugar”, says Gold, and it’s for that reason that the Queen’s second son “has been exiled without trial or conviction”. At least some members of the royal family understand that “their survival depends on the fumes of sentiment and nostalgia”, and “a possible sex offender doesn’t look good on a commemorative tea towel”. If Andrew were to “read the history” of his family, “he would learn that exile, imprisonment and execution are normal”.

Read more

The death of Queen Elizabeth II meant her eldest son Charles immediately became the UK’s new King, and led to other members of the Royal Family also assuming new titles.

Upon the Queen’s death, Charles, who had been the Prince of Wales, a title traditionally reserved for the heir to the throne, became King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He is also King of 14 other Commonwealth realms.

His wife, Camilla, officially became Queen Consort in accordance with the wishes of the Queen, who said during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations that it was her “sincere wish” that Camilla would use the title.

Until now, Camilla had been known as the Duchess of Cornwall, using the female equivalent of one of her husband’s titles. She was also able to use the title Princess of Wales, but was “thought to not use [it] out of respect for Charles’s ex-wife Princess Diana”, reported the Daily Mail.

Who else has a new title?

Prince William was given the title of Duke of Cambridge in 2011, when he married Kate Middleton, who became Duchess of Cambridge. Upon the Queen’s death William was given the titles previously held by his father, with the royal couple becoming the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge.

As the Daily Mail noted, there is “no automatic succession” to the Prince of Wales title, which is traditionally given to the heir apparent. But in his first address to the nation as the new King, Charles named William and Catherine the new Prince and Princess of Wales.

“With Catherine beside him, our new Prince and Princess of Wales will, I know, continue to inspire and lead our national conversations,” said the monarch.

The couple’s three children will also receive new titles, becoming known as Prince George of Wales, Princess Charlotte of Wales and Prince Louis of Wales.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are likely to retain their current titles, although a 1917 edict by King George V means their children Archie and Lilibet “are technically now a ‘prince’ and ‘princess’”, said Time. Known as the Letters Patent, the edict said that all children and grandchildren of the sovereign through a male line can hold the titles of prince and princess.

Prince Edward, the youngest of the Queen’s children and currently the Earl of Wessex, could become the Duke of Edinburgh, with his wife Sophie becoming the Duchess of Edinburgh, although no official title change has yet been made.

Can titles be removed?

The Queen stripped Prince Andrew of his honorary military titles and patronages after a US judge ruled that a civil lawsuit over sex abuse allegations against him could proceed to trial in January 2022.

Buckingham Palace announced the decision following the publication of an open letter signed by more than 150 Royal Navy, RAF and Army veterans that urged the Queen to remove her second son’s eight British military titles.

Some of these titles were inherited by Andrew from his late father, Prince Philip, including Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, described by the BBC as “one of the most senior infantry regiments in the British army”.

But Andrew “has not lost everything”, wrote Craig Prescott, a law lecturer at Bangor University, in an article on The Conversation. Along with his rank of vice admiral in the Royal Navy, Andrew retains his birth title of “prince” and “remains the Duke of York, which is a peerage”, Prescott explained. And he is also still ninth in line of succession to the throne.

How the peerage works

The peerage is a centuries-old ranking system for British nobility. Five ranks of the peerage still exist today: duke, marquess, earl, viscount and baron.

Duke is the “highest and most important rank”, explained online history magazine Historic UK. Edward III created the first duke, in 1337, when he made his eldest son the Duke of Cornwall – a title now held by Prince William. Dukes (and duchesses, the female counterpart) are addressed as “your grace”.

Andrew became Duke of York when he married Sarah Ferguson in 1986. The title is traditionally granted to the monarch’s second son and has previously been held by the Queen’s father, George VI, and her grandfather, George V.

Unlike military titles, Andrew’s peerage can only be removed by an Act of Parliament. A peerage removal “can only be done by statute, passed by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and receiving royal assent, which means the agreement of the Queen”, said the i news site.

Calls for Andrew to lose his dukedom have been growing, particularly in York, where a city council member has launched a campaign backing the move.

But there is no historical precedent for the removal of a title of peerage by the Queen: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are still the Duke and Duchess of Sussex despite quitting royal life in January 2020.

Other ranks of the peerage

A marquess, which is next in the line of nobility after a duke, is formally addressed as “lord”, and the wife of a marquess is a marchioness, addressed as “lady”. Only one woman in history has been created a marchioness in her own right: Anne Boleyn, prior to her marriage to Henry VIII.

The next rank in order of precedence is earl. The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon “eorl”, meaning military leader. After earl comes viscount, a title created in the 15th century, and then baron, a name derived from the Old German word “baro”, meaning freeman.

Titles of the peerage may be hereditary or granted for life. Historically, hereditary peers have had the right to sit in the House of Lords. However, following the House of Lords Act of 1999, most hereditary peers have now been “ejected”, with fewer than 100 remaining.

These days, new hereditary peerages are only granted by the Queen to members of the Royal Family. According to The Independent, the grandchildren of sons of the reigning monarch are automatically given the title of “prince” or “princess”, but any title beyond that – such as duke or duchess – “is granted by courtesy”.

The meaning of HRH

HRH (His or Her Royal Highness) titles have been issued to children and grandchildren of the monarch since the early 18th century, at the discretion of the monarchs of the time.

“Not everyone has accepted the offer of an HRH,” said CNN. The Queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, turned it down for her children, Peter and Zara.

“That’s in contrast to Prince Andrew, who allowed his daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, to carry it,” added the US-based news network.

Prince Andrew still retains his HRH title – described by The New York Times as “a prized symbol of his status as a senior member of the Royal Family” – but he will not be able to use it in any official capacity. This puts him on the same footing as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex following their move to California.

Andrew and the Sussexes are not the first Royals to be prevented from using the HRH titles. The Queen also stripped Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson of the title following their divorces from Charles and Andrew respectively. Diana was instead given the courtesy title of Diana, Princess of Wales.

How royal patronages work

Members of the Royal Family lend their name to a charity or organisation in a show of royal support that can provide “vital publicity” for a cause and “add status”, according to the family’s official website.

As well as losing his honorary military titles and the use of HRH, Andrew has also been stripped of his many royal patronages. In November 2019, “when the Duke of York stepped down from public duties, he held 230 patronages”, said the i news site.

Andrew’s patronages were returned to the Queen and redistributed to other members of the Royal Family.

Once seen as Britain’s “playboy prince” and a Falklands war hero, revelations over Prince Andrew’s friendship with the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has meant a spectacular fall from grace for the man often described as the Queen’s “favourite son”.

Now that a civil court case brought against him by accuser Virginia Giuffre is to go ahead, the Queen has stripped the Duke of York of his titles, including the use of HRH, and will redistribute his patronages across the Royal Family.

In a short statement released by Buckingham Palace, the Queen effectively moved him from “61 years as a public figure to a ‘private citizen’”, reported the BBC.

A close relationship

The closeness between Prince Andrew and the Queen is said to go back to his early childhood.

Elizabeth, who by the time of Andrew’s birth in 1960 had been on the throne for seven years, was able to spend much more time with her younger children, Andrew and Edward.

“When Prince Charles and Princess Anne were born, the Queen wasn’t able to spend the time with them that she would have wished to,” Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal commentator, told CNN.

By the time Andrew was born, the Queen “was able to give him more attention and Andrew was someone with whom she's had a particular affinity”, Fitzwilliams added.

According to The Telegraph, one royal insider has described Prince Andrew as “the spare she had for herself once she had produced the heir”.

While the Queen is reported to have found Prince Charles “emotionally complicated” she found Andrew to be “straightforward” and “the more glass-half-full of the pair” who could “make her laugh and raise the family’s spirits”.

Edward and Andrew were also kept much closer to home and were sent to Heatherdown Preparatory School, near Ascot, “so they could be educated nearer to Windsor Castle”.

“The Queen made time for those children,” one royal source told the newspaper. “She used to turn up at the school with one bodyguard and drive herself sometimes. She would attend sports days and various matches.”

The birth of Prince Andrew is also said to have coincided with a revitalisation of the Queen’s marriage with Prince Philip, according to HistoryExtra. The site claimed that she associated Andrew with the “re-booting of her marriage and a happy time in her life”.

Falklands war

Unlike Prince Charles, who initially read archaeology and anthropology, and later history, at Cambridge University, Andrew followed in his father’s footsteps by joining the Navy in 1979. He trained as a helicopter pilot, no doubt a point of “great pride” for both his parents, said The Telegraph.

Andrew was aboard HMS Invincible as one of the pilots of its ten Sea King helicopters when Argentina invaded the Falklands, and he saw live action during the conflict.

“Andrew’s public image at the time of the Falklands War did much to further the idea that the crown and the British people were in the fight together,” historian Ed Owens told HistoryExta.

“Having then arrived as a royal celebrity in his own right, Andrew’s image evolved, and it wasn’t long before he was presented as a ‘playboy prince’ fond of parties and female company.”

On his return from the war, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh welcomed his vessel home to Portsmouth. “He came back a hero and was very much the golden boy of the royal family,” royal expert Katie Nicholl told The Mirror.

Queen’s sadness

More than two years on from Prince Andrew’s disastrous Newsnight interview, where he failed to convincingly explain his associations with Epstein, the Queen has finally been forced to act.

The conviction of Epstein’s close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, on sex trafficking charges was said to be a “game-changer” in the Queen’s decision to strip her son of many of the trappings of royalty, according to The Sunday Times.

The feeling up until that point had been that Andrew should “be allowed the opportunity to clear his name and that to strip him of his titles during a legal case would indicate presumption of guilt”, said the paper.

“Look at the 2001 picture [of Andrew, a young Virginia Roberts and Maxwell] now,” a senior royal source told the paper. “In that Newsnight interview, it’s not just one rogue person [Epstein] he’s talking about, but also a friendship with someone who’s a convicted sex trafficker and a victim. Look at it in that light. Everyone [in the family] wants to be supportive, but he’s associated with the wrong people.”

After consultation with heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his son William, the Queen made the “final decision” to remove Andrew from public life, seemingly for ever. It was a decision said to have caused “genuine sadness” for the Queen and was hers alone to make. “Never assume she just rubber-stamps stuff,” said a courtier.

It is likely that Andrew will also be pulled from all Platinum Jubilee celebrations, due to begin in the summer.

“The plan is for him to be invisible during celebrations,” a source told The Sun newspaper.

The Mirror’s royal editor Russell Myers said there would be “nervousness” in the Palace that Andrew’s trial could overshadow the celebrations, with some key dates of the civil case set to clash with Platinum Jubilee events.

“Certainly, I don’t think Andrew will be anywhere near the public celebrations, banished from the balcony, banished from any public outing,” Myers told the Pod Save the Queen podcast.

Another tough week for Boris Johnson ended with yet more scandal amid reports that a further two lockdown parties took place at No. 10 on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral.

Downing Street apologised to the Queen after The Telegraph revealed that as she “was preparing to grieve alone” owing to Covid restrictions, No. 10 staff danced into the early hours, with one dispatched to a local supermarket with a suitcase that “was then filled with bottles of wine and brought back”.

A spokesperson for Johnson said the parties were “deeply regrettable”, but added that the prime minister did not attend either of the leaving bashes. The row has raised fresh questions about Johnson’s future, however, with his potential successors beginning to circle.

To find out how closely you’ve been paying attention to the latest developments in the pandemic, and other global events, put your knowledge to the test with our Quiz of The Week:

Need a reminder of some of the other headlines over the past seven days?

• Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday saw the PM apologise for a string of parties held at No. 10 while the country was in lockdown.
• Senior civil servant Sue Gray was tasked with leading an investigation into the Downing Street parties allegations.
• Prince Andrew was stripped of his titles and patronages after a New York judge ruled that the sexual abuse case against him brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre could go ahead.
• The European Parliament mourned the passing of President David Sassoli, who died at the age of 65 after being hospitalised last month with a “serious complication” related to his immune system.
• .A Russian-led military alliance left Kazakhstan after unrest in the former Soviet nation subsided following a week of nationwide protests.
• And the 33rd Africa Cup of Nations kicked off on Sunday 9 January, with hosts Cameroon defeating Burkina Faso 2-1 in the opening match.

The Queen has forced Prince Andrew to give up his military titles and patronages as he faces a civil trial over allegations of sexual abuse.

The Telegraph reported that the Duke of York was “summoned to Windsor Castle for a 45-minute meeting with his mother” yesterday, after a New York judge dismissed an appeal by his lawyers to have the case dropped.

“With the Queen’s approval and agreement, the Duke of York’s military affiliations and royal patronages have been returned to the Queen,” Buckingham Palace subsequently announced in a statement. “The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a private citizen.”

Although the statement was brief, the significance for Andrew and the monarchy is considerable. “In just 49 words, the Queen ended any hopes the Duke of York may have harboured of a return to royal life,” wrote The Telegraph’s associate editor Camilla Tominey.

Andrew’s titles “will never be returned – regardless of the outcome of any future legal proceedings”, she continued. “Instead, they will be redistributed to other members of the Royal Family.”

The “brutality” of the Palace statement showed the institution’s “ruthlessness”, said The Guardian, and represented a “seismic blow to Andrew’s status”.

“I don’t know what the Richter scale goes up to but this is a big earthquake,” a source told the paper, adding: “This is the most serious step they could have taken.”

Although Andrew is expected to retain his dukedom and his military rank of vice admiral, he will no longer use the title of His Royal Highness (HRH) in any official capacity.

“Losing the HRH style would be the most emotionally damaging because he was born a royal highness,” the source added.

BBC royal correspondent Sean Coughlan agreed that the move was “brutal”. The Royal Family is being “firmly distanced from the toxic fallout” of the allegations by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Andrew, for whom “the door is being closed on a return to public life”, Coughlan wrote.

Widely quoted Palace sources said the “ruthless and swift” decision to strip Andrew of titles had been “widely discussed” within the family following his failed bid to get the US case thrown out. According to the Daily Mail, princes Charles and William “demanded Andrew’s exile”.

Although Andrew is losing his royal patronages and more than a dozen ceremonial military roles, he is “unlikely” to be prevented from using the title of Duke of York, said Sky News. Royal commentator and biographer Christopher Warwick explained that while the Queen can appoint dukes, it takes an Act of Parliament to remove their titles, “which wouldn’t cover Andrew or the monarchy in glory”.

The “humiliating blow” to Andrew of losing his other titles “signals that the Queen has finally given up her patience” with her second son, said The Times’ royal correspondent Valentine Low. But Low asked: “How much does this achieve?”

The move “clearly answers some of the criticism of the Royal Family, that they were protecting Andrew at the cost of the dignity of the regiments that he represented”, but “it won’t stop the headlines”.

“The court case lumbers on,” Low added. “There is nothing that the Queen can do about that.”

Her decision to strip her embattled son of his titles means that Andrew is now a “private citizen” who will fund the legal battle to clear his name from his own pocket.

But he is “not cash rich”, said the Daily Mail, and “is certainly not rich enough to afford the £5m to £6m estimated legal bill he is likely to be left with as a result of his decision to fight this case”.

Royal insiders insisted it was “inconceivable” that the Queen would contribute to a financial settlement with Andrew’s accuser.

Some sources and pundits also suggested that the Queen might be sending a veiled message to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, amid strained relations after the couple quit their royal roles in 2020.

The Telegraph’s Tominey said that “some could view the unequivocal and somewhat uncompromising nature of the announcement as a shot across the bows as Prince Harry prepares to release his autobiography in the autumn”.

Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre have reached an out-of-court settlement in the civil sexual abuse claim filed in the US.

According to a letter submitted to the US District Court, written jointly by Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies and the Duke of York’s legal representatives, the two parties have “reached a settlement in principle”.

The out-of-court deal will mean Prince Andrew will not face a public trial over allegations that he sexually abused Giuffre when she was a teenager. The Duke of York has always strenuously denied the allegations.

Instead, he will make a “substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights”, according to the letter. The prince intends to demonstrate his regret for his association with Jeffrey Epstein by supporting the “fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims”.

What could he have faced?

The Duke of York was facing a civil trial in the US for sexual assault allegations after failing to have the lawsuit thrown out of court in mid-January.

His lawyers had called for the dismissal of the case, brought by Giuffre, citing a deal that she signed with convicted paedophile Epstein in 2009. But a New York judge rejected the motion to have the case thrown out “in all respects”.

That meant that Prince Andrew was facing “the prospect of giving evidence in a high-profile trial” that would have required him to divulge “aspects of his personal life in open court”, reported The Guardian.

In a settlement with Epstein, Giuffre was paid $500,000 (£370,000) to end her claims against the billionaire property tycoon and anyone connected to him who could be described as a “potential defendant” – including royalty.

Prince Andrew’s lawyers had tried to argue that he was a “potential defendant” under the terms of the agreement and that therefore the case brought against him by Guiffre should be dismissed. Guiffre’s lawyers argued that only the parties of the settlement agreement could benefit from it, and not a "third party”.

In his decision, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said that it was far from clear whether Prince Andrew was covered by the agreement, describing it as “ambiguous”.

As The Times explained, the deal settled a complaint which alleged that Epstein “committed violations of federal laws, including sex trafficking”. But Judge Kaplan wrote in his judgment that “it nowhere alleges that this defendant [Prince Andrew] committed any”.

Privacy protected

Judge Kaplan’s decision left Prince Andrew facing “big decisions”, said the BBC’s royal correspondent, Sean Coughlan. “Trying to block the case using the deal between the dead paedophile Epstein and Giuffre was already heavy with reputational risks.”

Any expert witnesses for the trial would have had to have been disclosed by 13 May, according to The Guardian, while rebuttal witnesses would have been disclosed a month later.

Discovery – defined as “the formal process of exchanging information between the parties about the witnesses and evidence they’ll present at trial” – would have gone on until 14 July, and a joint pre-trial proposal would have been filed by 28 July.

But Mitchell Garabedian, an experienced lawyer in sexual abuse cases, explained to The Guardian that those deadlines were only ever “a guideline”.

If the civil case against Prince Andrew had proceeded, he would have faced the prospect of being “cross-examined on camera by one of America’s most feared trial lawyers”, said The Times. Giuffre’s lawyer, Boies, led the cross-examination of Ghislaine Maxwell which resulted in perjury charges against her.

He would have been given “broad leeway to question Andrew on the allegations and on conversations he may have had with the Queen”, the paper added.

Other members of the Royal Family could also have faced questioning, including Sarah, Duchess of York, and their daughter Princess Beatrice.

The out-of-court settlement means that Prince Andrew has avoided the possibility of a “sensational” trial, The Guardian said. But a settlement could have cost “millions”. The question now, tweeted the paper’s media editor Jim Waterson, is exactly “who paid” the donation.

There had been suggestions that Giuffre would “want her day in court”, The Guardian reported. But that could have caused “monumental reputational damage” to the monarchy in the year of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

Once seen as Britain’s “playboy” prince and frequently touted as the Queen’s favourite son, Prince Andrew’s association with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has destroyed his standing in the eyes of the British public and tarnished the reputation of the Royal Family across the globe.

The playboy prince

In his youth he was considered “one of the world’s most eligible bachelors”, earning himself the tabloid nickname “Randy Andy” after being linked to a “string of beautiful women”, said the London Evening Standard. This included American actress Koo Stark, a relationship which came to an “abrupt end” in 1980 when it was revealed she had starred in a “racy” movie ten years earlier, said the Daily Mail.

But in his later years, Prince Andrew’s reputation in the British press as a Lothario royal would sour as he was linked to controversial foreign figures and criticised for his globe-trotting habits – in particular, helicopter trips to play golf – which would earn him the moniker “Air Miles Andy”, a nickname that stuck for decades.

At the time of his birth, 19 February 1960, Andrew was the “first child born to a reigning British monarch (male or female) since 1857”, according to Britannica, as heir to the throne Prince Charles was born when the Queen was still Princess Elizabeth. For the first 22 years of his life he was second in line to the throne, behind Charles, and ahead of his older sister Princess Anne, until the birth of his nephew Prince William in 1982.

The birth of subsequent generations means he is now only ninth in the order of succession, following the latest arrivals: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s children, Archie and Lilibet.

Active duty during the Falklands War

After being educated at Gordonstoun School in Scotland, as his father Prince Philip and his brother Charles had been, Andrew entered Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon, in 1979 to train as a naval officer and then underwent pilot training in fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.

At 22 he saw active service in the Royal Navy as a Sea King helicopter pilot on the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible. It was a role that “put him in the front line during the early stages of the conflict” when the Argentinian air force began a campaign targeting Royal Navy warships carrying Sear Harrier jump-jets and Sea Kings, said The Times.

“There is little doubt that his life was in constant danger throughout the ten-week campaign,” said the newspaper, with one of his regular roles to act as a decoy to draw away incoming Exocet missiles from HMS Invincible by confusing their guidance system.

On his return he was “greeted by the Queen as his ship pulled into the harbour”, said The Mirror. “He came back a hero and was very much the golden boy of the royal family,” royal expert Katie Nicholl told the newspaper.

Marriage to Sarah Ferguson

On 23 July 1986 Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson, popularly known as “Fergie”, in a grand ceremony at Westminster Abbey. They received the title of Duke and Duchess of York on the same day.

But the relationship is “believed to have begun unravelling soon after they were married”, as Prince Andrew’s naval career meant he was away for long periods, and “as a result, the couple reportedly only saw each other for around 40 days per year”, said The Independent.

The couple separated in March 1992 and divorced in May 1996. Soon after the separation Ferguson became embroiled in a scandal that would estrange her from the Royal Family for several years. Photographs of her and John Bryan, an American business manager, were published in the Daily Mirror which showed Bryan “kissing the duchess’s toes as she sunbathed topless”.

But the pair have always remained close, with friends of the one-time couple believing remarriage could “be on the cards”, said Vanity Fair. Talks of remarriage have reportedly “reignited” since the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, as this was considered impossible while the Duke was alive due to a reported “long-term rift” between him and his former daughter-in-law.

Friendship with Jeffrey Epstein

The prince’s friendships have long been a point of controversy, with his questionable associations ranging from “lunching at Buckingham Palace with a ‘notorious’ member of the former Tunisian regime, to taking a holiday with a Libyan gun smuggler”, said the BBC in 2011.

But it has been Andrew’s friendship with Epstein that has proved the most damaging to his reputation, and that of the Royal Family.

There was “huge controversy” after he was photographed meeting the disgraced financier in New York’s Central Park in December 2010, after the tycoon had served an 18-month prison sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution, said the broadcaster.

And in 2015, in US court documents, he was accused of having sex with Virginia Giuffre at three of Epstein’s properties when she was 17 years old and a minor under US law. Prince Andrew has always denied the allegations.

His associations with Epstein hit the headlines once again in 2019 when the disgraced tycoon killed himself in prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.

A Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis was intended to draw a line under Prince Andrew’s associations with Epstein and the allegations brought against him by Giuffre.

During the interview, the duke denied he slept with Giuffre, saying an encounter alleged to have taken place in 2001 could not have taken place because he was at a Pizza Express in Woking, Surrey, with his daughter Princess Beatrice.

He also said Giuffre’s claim that he was sweaty at a nightclub could not be true because an “overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands war” had left him unable to sweat.

The interview ultimately led to Prince Andrew stepping back from Royal duties and public life.

Two years on, a New York judge is deciding whether to allow Giuffre to pursue her civil case. Judge Lewis Kaplan has said he will deliver his decision “pretty soon”, leaving Andrew’s hopes of having the case thrown out of court hanging in the balance, said the i news site.

Should Kaplan dismiss the case, Andrew “will have won and will begin the long path to rebuilding his reputation”, added the website.

But if he allows the case to go forward, Andrew “could face damaging testimony”, said The New York Times, and that “would plunge the House of Windsor back into scandal at the very moment it hopes to use the Platinum Jubilee to remind Britons of the queen’s extraordinary longevity and largely blemish-free record of service”.

Prince Andrew’s legal team is calling on a US judge to throw out the sexual assault civil lawsuit against the royal following the disclosure of a settlement between his accuser and the late Jeffrey Epstein.

The legal document was released by a New York court ahead of what the BBC described as a “critical hearing” today in the case brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against the duke of York, the BBC said.

Under the terms of the 2009 deal, Guiffre was paid $500,000 (£371,000) to end her claims against billionaire paedophile Epstein and anyone connected to him who could be described as a “potential defendant”.

Why is the document important?

The 12-page document details how Giuffre agreed to “release, acquit, satisfy and forever discharge” Epstein and “any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant” from any US legal action, including damages claims dating “from the beginning of the world”.

Giuffre is now suing Prince Andrew for alleged sexual assaults that she claims took place when she was a minor under US law. She alleges that she was repeatedly forced to have sex with him when she was 17 after being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Andrew has repeatedly denied the claims.

How the settlement document is interpreted will form a “central plank” of the legal argument from the two sides in the case, said the BBC. Andrew’s lawyers have argued that although he is not mentioned by name in the agreement, he is covered by the legal document.

Giuffre alleged in her original claim against Epstein, filed in Florida in 2008, that she was “required to be sexually exploited” by his “adult male peers, including royalty”. According to Andrew’s team, “that means the duke was a potential defendant and that he was included in the 2009 agreement”, said The Times.

But Giuffre’s team have insisted that the document is “irrelevant” to her claim against the duke. “The release does not mention Prince Andrew. He did not even know about it,” said David Boies, a lawyer for Giuffre, in a statement. “The reason we sought to have the release made public was to refute the claims being made about it by Prince Andrew’s PR campaign.”

In a previous court filing, her lawyers said that the 2009 deal was “outside the four corners” of her action against Andrew because it does not specifically cover her allegations against him.

Will the case be dismissed?

Lisa Bloom, a lawyer for other alleged victims of Epstein, told the BBC that the settlement as “incomprehensibly vague” and “one of the most bizarre” she had ever seen.

“We want contracts to clearly specify who is released from a lawsuit and who is not,” said Bloom, who predicted that US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over the civil case, would not release Andrew from the lawsuit following a video teleconference with the royal’s lawyers today.

But journalist and lawyer Lucia Osborne-Crowley suggested that the “very broad” language used in the settlement could “spell success” for the prince.

“It is very possible that the settlement agreement between Virginia Roberts and Jeffrey Epstein protects Prince Andrew,” Osborne-Crowley told The Independent. Because the settlement refers to “any third party that could be considered a ‘potential defendant’ in the Epstein lawsuit”, Andew could “be ‘forever’ shielded from any and all claims” brought by Roberts, Osborne-Crowley continued.

The deal “also specifically says that all potential defendants are protected from all lawsuits regardless of whether they are brought in federal or state court”. And “American law treats settlement agreements in civil lawsuits no differently to any other private contract”.

“So if the judge rules that Prince Andrew falls into the category of a ‘potential defendant’, it’s likely that the deal will protect him,” Osborne-Crowley concluded.

The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell is casting fresh light on the crimes of late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein as victims describe her alleged role in the abuse.

The British socialite is accused of grooming teenage girls for the billionaire financier, who hanged himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial. Maxwell, who has been in a New York prison since her arrest last year, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and other charges. She faces up to 80 years behind bars if convicted.

1. The latest

The New York City jury has begun deliberations after prosecutors urged them to convict Maxwell, whom they described as a “sophisticated predator” in their closing statement.

“Ghislaine Maxwell was dangerous. She was a grown woman who preyed on vulnerable kids” and was “key to the whole operation”, assistant US attorney Alison Moe said. “It is time to hold her accountable”.

The defence accused the prosecution of “sensationalism” in its final statements to jurors.

Maxwell had “no motive” for the alleged crimes because it made no sense that “a happy, educated women in her 30s would end her career as a facilitator of sex abuse”, argued lead counsel Laura Menninger.

“Ghislaine is being tried here for being with Jeffrey Epstein,” she said. “Maybe it was the biggest mistake of her life, but it is not a crime.”

The jury “withdrew for an hour of deliberations” yesterday evening and will return today to “continue considering their verdict”, the BBC said.

Judge Alison Nathan has stated that jurors may choose to convict the former socialite if they “conclude she either ignored” or “consciously avoided” knowledge of Epstein’s underage sexual acts.

2. The allegations

Maxwell, the daughter of late media mogul Robert Maxwell, is accused of grooming teenage girls who were abused by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.

The prosecution alleges that she was integral to the abuse and sometimes participated in it. She is also accused of luring victims with cash in exchange for giving massages to Epstein that ended with sexual activity.

Ghislaine Maxwell: the allegations examined

3. Key moments

• In her opening statement, prosecutor Lara Pomerantz said Maxwell “preyed on vulnerable young girls, manipulated them and served them up to be sexually abused”. Defence lawyer Bobbi Sternheim argued that “the charges against Ghislaine Maxwell are for things that Jeffrey Epstein did, but she is not Jeffrey Epstein”.
• The trial’s first witness, Epstein’s private pilot Larry Visoski, told the court that he flew high-profile guests including Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. None are accused of criminal wrongdoing. Visoski said that Epstein “was the big number one” and that Maxwell was “number two” to his former boss.
• The first of four accusers to give evidence, known by the pseudonym Jane, broke down in tears while describing her alleged abuse. She said Maxwell was “very casual, acting like it wasn’t a big deal”. The defence told the court that Jane works as an actress. Addressing the accuser, lawyer Laura Menninger said: “You are an actor who convincingly portrays someone else for a living. You are able to cry on command.”
• Epstein’s former housekeeper Juan Alessi described Maxwell as the “lady of the house”. He also told how he was ordered not to look Epstein in the eye and was expected to be “blind, deaf and dumb”. Alessi “said staff were given a 58-page instruction manual, warning them to keep Epstein’s and Maxwell’s activities or whereabouts secret”, the BBC reported.
• A second witness named only as Kate said Maxwell befriended her when she was 17 and repeatedly pressured her into supposedly “fun, silly” jokes. These so-called stunts allegedly included Maxwell giving her a schoolgirl uniform and saying: “I thought it would be fun for you to take Jeffrey his tea in this outfit.” Kate said she wore the outfit and Epstein had sex with her.
• A third witness, named only as Carolyn, told the court that during a trip to Epstein’s Florida home in the early 2000s, when she was 14 years old, Maxwell had touched her breasts, hips and bottom.
• Carolyn also alleged Maxwell told her that she “had a great body for Epstein and his friends”. Carolyn said she went to the Palm Beach house up to three times a week until she turned 18.
• Jurors were presented with “never-before-seen digital evidence seized by the FBI during a 2019 raid on Epstein’s Manhattan home”, said the BBC.
• The stash included “photographs of two of Ms Maxwell’s accusers in various states of undress”, as well as images of Epstein and Maxwell “embracing or being intimate with each other”, the broadcaster added.
• Farmer, the fourth and final witness, took to the stand. Opting against using a pseudonym, she told the jury how she met Epstein for the first time at his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico when she was 16.
• Beginning her statement with the words “I am Annie Farmer”, she described how the late billionaire “caressed” her hand and “rubbed” her leg, adding: “I felt sick to my stomach, it wasn’t something that I was at all expecting.”
• A family spokesperson told The Telegraph that Maxwell would not take to the witness box in her defence due to “serious worries she is too fragile and will not be able to acquit herself properly”. It is understood that “her legal team and her family had debated over whether she should take the stand”, the paper added.

4. What else might we learn about Epstein?

According to The New York Times (NYT), the “Maxwell-Epstein bond is key to her trial”, amid questions about whether the pair were “partners or partners in crime”.

The late billionaire’s “shadow looms over the case even in death”, with the “first of several moments of testimony” underlining “how the trial may hinge at least in part on the precise nature of her partnership with Epstein”.

The Guardian predicted last week that the trial “might reveal previously unknown details about Epstein’s world”, including “jaw-dropping details on residences that rival royals’ estates” and “his jet-setting schedule”.

At the “very least”, the paper added, “trial proceedings might contextualise how Epstein’s display of wealth so impressed people that it intimidated them”.

Does Ghislaine Maxwell have ‘secret stash’ of Epstein sex tapes - and who could be implicated?

5. What does the trial mean for Prince Andrew?

A legal expert involved in the case told The Mail on Sunday that the Duke of York would be “dreading” the trial, as it was “inconceivable” that his name wouldn't be mentioned.

Andrew already faces a civil lawsuit brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges that she was forced to have sex with the Royal as a teenager. He has denied Guiffre's allegations.

“This will thrust Andrew back under the spotlight,” the unnamed lawyer told the newspaper. “It is inconceivable his name won't be introduced by the women who will testify against Maxwell.”

Prince Andrew: will disgraced duke ever return to public duties?

6. When will a verdict be delivered?

The trial is expected to last six weeks. Once all of the evidence has been heard, a date will be set for the verdict to be announced.

1. Attacking the woman who accuses you? It’s no sweat for Prince Andrew

Marina Hyde in The Guardian

on Andrew’s new lawyer

The fact that Prince Andrew is being represented by a lawyer who is “also defending Armie Hammer over his whole cannibal-fetish-rape situation” really is “the latest jewel in the royal family’s many, many crowns”, says The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde. Like Hammer, Prince Andrew has denied accusations of sexual assault – with the alleged victim in his case being “former Jeffrey Epstein sex slave Virginia Roberts Giuffre”. Once the Queen’s son “finally allowed lawyers to serve him the papers relating to this civil case”, a change of pace was “inevitable”, says Hyde. Now the prince is being represented by “Hollywood power attorney” Andrew Brettler and “the gloves are suddenly well and truly off”. How else, asks Hyde, can you explain “a new legal filing that teeters on the edge of victim blaming – and then plummets right into it, rolls around it, wallows deeply in it, and then finishes off by making snow angels in it?” Among other claims, the 36-page motion accuses Giuffre of “seeking ‘another payday’ at the prince’s expense” and “claim she has ‘milk[ed] the publicity’ of her association for years”. The filing reveals that “despite everything that has happened”, Hyde adds, Prince Andrew is totally blind “to the silly little tragedies of Virginia Roberts Giuffre and all the silly little girls like her”.

Read more

2. Smart motorways are a symptom of the British state’s addiction to failure

Philip Johnston in The Telegraph

on the hard shoulder

The “scariest” 20 minutes Philip Johnston has ever experienced while driving was “on the M5 travelling home from a holiday in Devon”, he writes in The Telegraph. Just as it was getting dark, he had a puncture; “a proper tyre-shredding blow-out that fortunately happened just after joining the motorway rather than at speed”. Johnston pulled onto the hard shoulder and “set about replacing the offside wheel as 40-ton lorries roared past inches away”. “I still break into a cold sweat every time I drive past the same spot”, he adds. Looking back, Johnston says he has “no idea” what he would have done without the hard shoulder. “It is difficult to understand what thought processes were involved when a few not-so-bright sparks in the Department for Transport dreamt up the idea of ‘smart’ motorways,” he continues. These come in several forms including “the all-lane running variety using the hard shoulder as a permanent additional lane”. The problem, says Johnston, “is that smart motorways are potentially dangerous for drivers forced to stop and unable to get to one of the emergency refuge areas provided every 1.2 miles”. “I would never have made it to one of those”, he says, “and a dozen or more motorists in recent years have been killed because they couldn’t either”.

Read more

3. How the Queen majestically eclipsed all those eco-posers

Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail

on a ‘no-frills’ speech

Cop26 seems to “encapsulate the insanity, vanity and general vacuousness of the modern world perfectly”, writes Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. It’s a “carousel of self-obsessed, bombastic, virtue-signalling hypocrites”, from Joe Biden “snoozing on the job” to “Nicola Sturgeon ambushing Sir David Attenborough for a selfie”. But, she continues, there has been “one exception”. “One small, white-haired, beady-eyed nonagenarian with a mind like a steel trap and a sense of decorum combined with quiet humility that, frankly, knocks all these preening popinjays into a cocked hat”. When the Queen speaks, “the world listens”, says Vine. “And not because she speaks loudly or forcefully, or because she surrounds herself with symbols of power. We listen because she is calm, wise and a little magical.” Against “the backdrop of all those motorcades and private jets and hot air-emitting climate protesters”, the simplicity of her “no-frills” speech, delivered from Windsor Castle, was as “refreshing as a bright spring morning”.

Read more

4. Little Amal is an inspiration, but not enough to transform the UK’s hostility to refugees

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on the i news site

on refugee theatre

Little Amal, the “giant puppet” who passed through Wigan on Sunday, was “whole-heartedly welcomed by many”, writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on The i news site. Created by War Horse craftsmen and made from cane and carbon fibre “to make her light enough for the many puppeteers – some of them former refugees – who move her”, Little Amal is “live theatre unlike any other – visually stunning, insistent and brazenly political”. Inevitably, says Alibhai-Brown, some folk are “revolted” by her and her “silent implorations”. In one Greek town on her journey, she was “pelted with stones”. But mostly she is “surrounded by the curious and kind – children in particular”. “Amal’s creators want to awaken our consciences and change the hateful narrative about refugees,” continues Alibhai-Brown. It’s “a valiant, but I fear, forlorn aspiration in today’s UK”.

Read more

5. Britain to Boris: Please just wear a mask around David Attenborough

Rupert Hawksley in The Independent

on a bad example

When CNN presenter Christiane Amanpour questioned Boris Johnson over his decision to not wear a mask when sitting next to “national treasure” David Attenborough, he was “clearly frustrated”, writes Rupert Hawksley in The Independent. He “hunched over, narrowed his eyes, every bit as cross as a child being asked to finish their homework” before vomiting out “a series of entirely random words in no discernible order”. “It is also genuinely quite difficult to imagine a less appropriate occasion not to wear a mask,” Hawksley continues. The PM was “sitting in a crowded room, surrounded by hundreds of people who have literally flown into Glasgow from all over the world and who will, very soon, be flying back out again all over the world”. Mask wearing is “not just about optics”, he adds. “The Covid-19 statistics do not make for happy reading.” This journey is “far from over” and part of the reason why the Covid rate is so high is “undoubtedly” because “so few of us are wearing masks”. “We look to our leaders for guidance – for leadership – and what we see is Boris Johnson not bothering, not complying, not giving a damn,” he concludes. “That’s why it matters and why you should care – even if Johnson doesn’t.”

Read more

Concerns about the Queen’s well-being have prompted proposals to expand the pool of senior Royals allowed to carry out duties on her behalf, according to insiders.

Under the 1937 Regency Act, counsellors of state are authorised to carry out most of the monarch’s official duties if she is overseas or incapacitated. By law, explained Royal.uk, these royal deputies should “include the sovereign’s spouse and the next four people in the line of succession who are over the age of 21”.

Following the death of Prince Philip earlier this year, that leaves the Prince of Wales and the dukes of Cambridge, Sussex and York currently authorised to step in to help as the Queen follows doctors’ advice to rest for at least the next two weeks following a bout of illness.

But “constitutional experts have raised concerns about Prince Harry and Prince Andrew’s ability to deputise”, The Times reported. Both have stepped back from royal duties, and Prince Andrew remains mired in scandal over his links to late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Under the current arrangement, Princess Beatrice would be next in line to become a counsellor of state. But according to The Mail on Sunday, sources say that royal aides are also drafting plans for the Duchess of Cornwall to be appointed to the “elite group”, despite not being in line to the throne.

Dr Craig Prescott, a royal expert at Bangor University, told the paper that “it would be quite easy to amend the Regency Act and allow other members of the royal family to act as counsellors of state”, which “would make the whole thing more flexible”.

Camilla would automatically “become a counsellor of state when Charles is king anyway”, Prescott added.

The next over-21 in line for the throne after Princess Beatrice is her sister Princess Eugenie, followed by Prince Edward and Princess Anne. Despite being the Queen's second-eldest child, Anne was born at a time when being female meant being leap-frogged by her brothers in the line of succession. The birth of her nieces and nephews and their children have pushed her even further down the order.

Two counsellors of state are required to act together in a “quorum” to perform crucial functions, such as providing royal assent to bills passing through Parliament and appointing High Court judges. Without such approvals, these functions of government cannot be enacted. However, counsellors cannot dissolve Parliament or appoint a prime minister.

Concerns were first raised for Her Majesty’s health on 20 October, when she cancelled a trip to Northern Ireland at short notice. Buckingham Palace said she had been told to rest by her doctors. A spokesperson admitted two days later that the Queen had gone for “preliminary tests” at the private King Edward VII Hospital in central London – her first overnight stay in hospital in eight years.

The Queen also pulled out of attending the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in person, where she had been due to host a major reception with world leaders.

The Metropolitan Police will be taking no further action against Prince Andrew following a review prompted by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the force has confirmed.

Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit in New York in August alleging that the Duke of York sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager - claims that he denies. Days later, the Met said it would review its decision not to investigate allegations connected to Epstein.

The Sunday Times reported yesterday that Scotland Yard officers recently spoke to Guiffre about the allegations, although “it remained unclear whether the Met had taken a formal statement” from her.

The Met also reviewed several documents, including one relating to the ongoing US civil lawsuit concerning Giuffre. But in a statement last night, the force said that “this review has concluded and we are taking no further action”.

A spokesperson added that the Met “continues to liaise with other law enforcement agencies who lead the investigation into matters related to Jeffrey Epstein”, who killed himself in a New York prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking minors.

The force has carried out at least two previous reviews of the case, but ruled out opening a full investigation each time, saying it was a matter for the US authorities.

In 2016, the police decided not to launch a criminal investigation on the grounds that it “would be largely focused on activities and relationships outside the UK”. Epstein’s suicide in prison prompted the second review, but the verdict was that “our position remains unchanged”.

Announcing the latest review back in August, Metropolitan Police Chief Cressida Dick said that “no one is above the law”. The review could have paved the way for the Met to open a criminal investigation of Giuffre’s claims, which Andrew has denied repeatedly.

Royal veto for the duke

Prior to yesterday’s announcement that the Met will not be taking any further action, Andrew was said to “remain convinced there is still a royal role in some shape or form, if the dust ever settles”, according to The Sunday Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah. But that was “not a view shared up the chain of command”.

Sources said that Prince William, in particular, “is no fan of Uncle Andrew” and believes his “ungracious and ungrateful” attitude towards his position poses “a risk” and “threat to the family”.

“The Royals are reading the room,” wrote Nikkhah. A YouGov poll last month of more than 3,200 people found that 69% thought it never be appropriate for Andrew to return to public life as a working member of the Royal Family.

Royal rifts and public disapproval aside, the most concerning element of the row over Giuffre’s claims is how the Met’s decision will further undermine trust in police, said Victoria Richards in The Independent. ”What hope is there for women’s confidence in the judicial process if Scotland Yard won’t look thoroughly into each and every claim?”

Public trust in the force is already “at an all-time low in the wake of Sarah Everard’s tragic death”, Richards wrote. And ruling out further investigation of the allegations against Andrew “only cements that lack of trust”, because “any claim made by any victim deserves to be taken seriously”.

A US judge has given Prince Andrew’s lawyers permission to look at a sealed agreement between his accuser Virginia Giuffre and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Giuffre claims the Queen’s son assaulted her when she was 17 years old in three locations including London and New York, an accusation he has vehemently denied.

The Duke of York’s legal team believe the contents of the 2009 settlement will nullify Giuffre’s civil sexual assault case against the royal.

The “precise wording of that deal is currently confidential – sealed by a court”, said the BBC. But the prince’s lawyers have claimed in court that Giuffre had agreed not to sue anyone else connected to Epstein when she settled damages with him 12 years ago.

The prince, who has not been charged with any crimes, must formally respond to Giuffre’s lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, by 29 October.

In a pre-trial hearing last month, Andrew’s lawyer, Andrew B Brettler, said the document “releases the duke and others from any and all potential liability”. But Giuffre’s lawyers have argued that it is “irrelevant to the case”.

Two unnamed sources close to the case told the Daily Mail last month that the agreement would not apply to the prince.

“This doesn’t apply to friends or acquaintances. If Prince Andrew is relying on this for his defence, it won’t go very far,” said one. The other said simply: “There is no Prince Andrew clause.”

The Independent explained the 2009 settlement agreement is “related to a Florida state case, which did not involve Prince Andrew”, resolving a case Giuffre had brought against Epstein, who committed suicide in a a Manhattan federal jail ten years later while awaiting a sex-trafficking trial.

It is “up for grabs whether Jeffrey Epstein – or his lawyers who crafted that 2009 settlement agreement – were attempting to build a firewall to protect those close Epstein associates in the hallowed pages of the Epstein ‘little black book’”, wrote Guy Martin in Forbes last month.

Andrew has “long been at pains to play down his decades-long association” with Epstein, said Martin. Therefore, having his lawyers claim protection from the lawsuit “by classifying the prince as an ‘associate’ or friend of Mr. Epstein’s will be a tack in the opposite direction”.

“Whether Andrew wants to hitch his wagon to that of Epstein in mounting a defence will be a question that we will be able to watch the prince’s lawyers answer.”