In the past week, many British and European journalists have noted that the Epstein Files have been treated more seriously over there than the files have been treated here in America. Keir Starmer’s government is practically hanging on by a thread because Peter Mandelsen, an ambassador appointed by Starmer, had a lengthy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his crew. The Norwegian royal house is seemingly in free fall because of the revelations about Princess Mette-Marit’s emails to Epstein. Politicians and political appointees across Europe have been thrown in the trash for their associations with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. There’s one exception to the “Brits and Europeans are taking this Epstein thing more seriously than the Americans” thing though. The Windsors seem frozen in fear, incapable of doing anything significant beyond hiding Prince Andrew in Norfolk and hoping that the whole thing will blow over. Not only that, King Charles’s advisors are still trying to convince people that Charles is worried about Andrew’s mental health and “stability.” Well, the Mail columnist A.N. Wilson has had enough. He’s calling bitches out.
It seems like a lifetime away, but it was less than three years – March 29, 2022. Prince Philip’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey. A nation had gathered to give thanks for the life of a man who had served this country for decades, both as a naval officer and as the monarch’s consort. And we all waited for the appearance of that monarch to join the huge crowd in the Abbey. The door at Poet’s Corner opened, and Queen Elizabeth entered, a frail old lady, who could not walk without some assistance. Whose arm was she holding, at this symbolic moment of her reign? Not Prince Charles or Princess Anne, her two elder children. She chose to enter the Abbey on the arm of her third child, Andrew. There was quite understandable outrage.
This was a man so bone-headed, so conceited and morally thick, as to appear on Newsnight three years before and deny that he had any recollection of meeting Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, even though we had all seen the photograph of Andrew with Giuffre at the London house of Ghislaine Maxwell (it has now been authenticated by the Epstein papers).
A man so boorish and untroubled by public sensibility that, as The Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday, he allowed Jeffrey Epstein to bring a ‘very cute’ young Romanian model to a private dinner at Buckingham Palace, along with a Russian model and two other girls.
He denies any wrongdoing, as we have become tired of hearing. But the relentless tide of squalid stories about his behaviour in royal mansions and palaces is becoming more and more degrading and shocking.
In the circumstances, the silence from senior royals is appalling. There is no excuse for it. They should apologise to the country for Andrew’s behaviour as well as to Epstein’s victims. Prince Edward’s grudging attempt to do so last week at a conference in Dubai in which he said, ‘I think it’s really important to remember the victims’, was not anything like enough.
These are perilous times for the monarchy. They may have taken away Andrew’s titles and his grand Windsor home, but more is needed to overcome the public’s revulsion.
The King’s and Prince William’s reluctance to address the issue, however, follows the pattern of the late Queen, who always let off her favourite, turning a blind eye to his excesses in the face of gruesome evidence. Queen Elizabeth II was in Balmoral when Epstein turned up with models on his arm for Andrew at Buckingham Palace. And yet courtiers would have known what was going on in her home. She could have insisted on being informed but does not seem to have been keen to find out.
She went on to help pay Andrew’s £12million settlement in the civil case Giuffre brought against him, accusing him of sexually abusing her when she was 17 (which he denies). It was effectively hush money that prevented embarrassing revelations emerging in court during Her Majesty’s Jubilee Year. The appearance in the Abbey with Andrew had been a dreadful misjudgment, but the payment to Mrs Giuffre was worse – for it appeared to involve Andrew’s family in the sleazy business of cover-up. As it happens it also had tragic consequences, with Mrs Giuffre committing suicide and her family all quarrelling over the sum. But apart from anything else, the payment made no sense – if he had not even met her, as he claimed, why would Andrew have wanted to give her such a colossal amount?
The truth is that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is his mother’s tragedy. He is her tragic flaw. As the sordid story of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor unfolds, it is impossible to ignore the part she played in his story.
I mean, Wilson isn’t wrong. It’s also somewhat convenient that as outrage builds over King Charles’s refusal to meet the moment, here’s a Mail column blaming Queen Elizabeth II for HER failures regarding Andrew. But yes, both things are true – QEII grossly mishandled the Andrew situation from start to finish, and knowing what everyone knows now, it’s bizarre to watch Charles mishandle everything in real time. My guess is that there’s a calculation being made by Charles’s advisors, which is that if they offer another apology and center the victims, the critics will have even more demands, like a real police investigation or a parliamentary inquiry.
For what it’s worth, this Wilson piece was published about 24 hours before King Charles made a new statement saying that of course the palace would cooperate with a police investigation. It’s not really “meeting the moment” as much as the statement is a half-measure designed to put this whole ordeal off for another few days.
Photos courtesy of Instar, Avalon Red.
