Prince
Andrew's private office to be moved out of Buckingham Palace
Duke
intends to keep working on mentoring scheme despite saying he would step back
from public life
Simon
Murphy , Jim Waterson and Kevin Rawlinson
Fri 22 Nov
2019 18.34 GMTFirst published on Fri 22 Nov 2019 17.22 GMT
Prince
Andrew and Amanda Thirsk
The Duke of York with Amanda Thirsk. Reports
suggest Thirsk will take up a role as the chief executive of Pitch@Palace,
where she has already served as a director since 2014. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Prince
Andrew is preparing to leave his private office in Buckingham Palace as he
seeks a way to maintain control of an entrepreneurial scheme he set up, despite
having agreed to step back from public life.
The palace
confirmed on Friday that the Duke of York intended to continue working on the
Pitch@Palace scheme, even as Barclays became the latest among a growing number
of organisations to sever ties with him over his links to the convicted child
sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
“The Duke
will continue to work on Pitch and will look at how he takes this forward
outside of his public duties, and outside of Buckingham Palace,” a spokesman
said on Friday. “We recognise there will be a period of time while this
transition takes place.”
The news
came shortly after it emerged that the aide who orchestrated the duke’s
disastrous interview about his Epstein links is no longer his private
secretary.
Amanda
Thirsk, who was said to have played a key role in persuading him to agree to
the BBC interview, will reportedly run Pitch@Palace.
On Friday,
Buckingham Palace refused to confirm the details surrounding Thirsk’s departure
from her long-standing role. A spokesman said: “We would not comment on the
impact on any individual member of his team.”
It follows
Barclays’ announcement late on Friday that it was pulling its support as a
major sponsor from the prince’s mentoring scheme. In a statement, it said: “In
light of the current situation, we have informed Pitch@Palace that going
forward we will, regretfully, no longer be participating in the programme.
Pitch@Palace has been historically highly successful in supporting
entrepreneurs and job creation and we hope a way forward can be found that
means they can continue this important work.”
Earlier,
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) said it had dropped Andrew as its
patron, with the prince also stepping down from the same role at London
Metropolitan University.
The BBC
confirmed it would air a damaging Panorama interview on 2 December with
Virginia Giuffre, the woman who claimed she was made to have sex with Prince
Andrew on three occasions including when she was 17.
Giuffre,
formerly called Roberts, spoke to Panorama three weeks ago for an investigation
the programme has been working on for months scrutinising the prince’s
connections with Epstein, who killed himself in August as he awaited trial on
new sex trafficking charges.
But before
the episode was ready to air, the prince agreed to do a sit-down interview with
rival BBC programme Newsnight.
The
interview with Emily Maitlis, during which the royal denied claims he slept
with Giuffre and failed to express sympathy to Epstein’s victims, prompted an
outpouring of criticism. He told the Newsnight presenter he only went to stay
with Epstein in New York in 2010, after Epstein had served jail time for child
sex offences, to inform the financier that he could no longer associate with
him.
Who were
the main players behind the Prince Andrew interview?
A round-up
of the personalities behind the eye-opening royal interview, from the Duke’s
aides to the journalist who secured the scoop
Guardian
staff
Sun 17 Nov
2019 19.35 GMTLast modified on Mon 18 Nov 2019 10.21 GMT
Samantha
McAlister, Emily Maitlis, Jason Stein and Amanda Thirsk
Left to right: Samantha McAlister, Emily
Maitlis, Jason Stein and Amanda Thirsk Composite: Getty/Alpha/Rex
Jason Stein
The former
special adviser to Amber Rudd and spokesman for Liz Truss was hired by Prince
Andrew in September to mastermind his PR fightback – but left by mutual consent
two weeks ago after his advice to reject the Newsnight interview request was
ignored. It was reportedly suggested that Andrew should instead focus on
charitable work and then agree to two newspaper interviews next year. His Twitter
profile says he is now a director at Finsbury Global, a strategic
communications firm that specialises in “creating, sustaining, protecting and
rebuilding reputation capital”.
Amanda
Thirsk
Private
secretary to Prince Andrew and director of his Pitch@Palace Global operation.
It is understood that Thirsk clashed with Stein and pushed hard for Andrew to
do the interview in the face of his initial scepticism, persuading him that it
was the best way to draw a line under the rumours about the nature of his
relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A former
banker, she joined Andrew’s office in 2012. Described by one colleague as a
“force of nature” who thinks “the Duke has done nothing wrong … All he did was
go and see his friend.”
Emily
Maitlis
The lead
presenter of Newsnight who was widely praised for her forensic interview
technique and had practised with editor Esme Wren standing in for Andrew in
rehearsals. Speaking before the interview on Friday’s Newsnight, she told
fellow presenter Kirsty Wark the interview was “very uncomfortable”. “It’s hard
to describe what it feels like to be sitting in Buckingham Palace, opposite the
Queen’s son, Prince Andrew, and quizzing him about his sexual history,” she
said. “After Epstein’s death, the talks intensified – we had to make it clear
it would be no holds barred.”
Samantha
McAlister
A BBC
journalist since 2003, she joined Newsnight in 2011, where she is prized for
her ability to secure hard-to-get interviews. Her LinkedIn profile says she is
“used to persuading reluctant individuals to participate in a globally renowned
news programme”. The former barrister and European debating champion has
previously booked interviews with former FBI director James Comey and former US
president Bill Clinton, and was described on Saturday by Newsnight editor Esme
Wren as “indefatigable”.
• This
article was amended on 18 November 2019 to correct descriptions of Epstein’s
offending.
 |
Amanda Thirsk
Private secretary to Prince Andrew and director of his Pitch@Palace Global operation. It is understood that Thirsk clashed with Stein and pushed hard for Andrew to do the interview in the face of his initial scepticism, persuading him that it was the best way to draw a line under the rumours about the nature of his relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A former banker, she joined Andrew’s office in 2012. Described by one colleague as a “force of nature” who thinks “the Duke has done nothing wrong … All he did was go and see his friend.”
|
Prince
Andrew, Jeffrey Epstein and Newsnight: anatomy of a PR disaster
The Duke of
York’s plan to block speculation over his ties to a convicted child sex
offender quickly came undone
Kevin
Rawlinson
Wed 20 Nov
2019 21.32 GMTLast modified on Thu 21 Nov 2019 07.45 GMT
The plan,
it appeared, was fairly straightforward: get Prince Andrew in front of a camera
and put a stop to speculation about the nature of his connections to the
convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
So, how did
it go from that to the Queen feeling she had no choice but to take the barely
conceivable step of allowing one of her sons to step back from public duties
altogether – in less than five days?
The Duke of
York’s strategy had taken a hit even before he had sat down opposite the BBC
Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis. Andrew had already lost the services of
Jason Stein, the spin doctor hired in September to restore his reputation.
Stein had reportedly advised Andrew against the whole thing, preferring a
longer-term strategy that included a great deal of charity work and interviews
with print outlets to mark his birthday.
The
unravelling of the strategy began almost immediately after the interview ended.
Andrew appeared pleased with his performance, even giving the Newsnight team a
tour of the palace afterwards. But when lines from the interview began reaching
journalists’ inboxes early on Friday evening, they were astonished by what they
read. By Saturday morning, the story was dominating the news agenda. The
headlines were devastating for Andrew. And the interview had not yet even been
aired.
The early
press reports focused on his claim that his decision to maintain close
relations with Epstein despite the financier’s conviction for sexual offences
was motivated primarily by the prince’s “tendency to be too honourable”.
Kept back
by the BBC was the prince’s claim that he could not have had sex with Virginia
Giuffre, which she says she was coerced into doing while a teenager, because he
was at home after a visit to Pizza Express in Woking. Nor was his contention
that her description of his dancing with her beforehand could not be true
because he was unable to sweat at the time.
Those
revelations, when they came out, were met with incredulity and were shared
widely online, adding fresh impetus to the story.
By Sunday
evening, Andrew was facing calls to speak to the FBI from lawyers representing
10 of the Epstein’s victims. While some of the attention was focused on
Andrew’s extraordinary defence, there was strong criticism of his attitude
towards the victims and the fact that he had not expressed sympathy for them in
the interview.
The Liberal
Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, said she could not understand “how somebody could
be talking about their relationship with [Epstein] without recognising, or
understanding, or discussing, how he felt about those victims. And I felt they
should have been much more at the centre of that discussion.”
The
backlash continued into this week as numerous organisations began to cut ties
with the prince. On Monday, it emerged that the accountancy giant KPMG would
not be renewing its sponsorship of Andrew’s entrepreneurial scheme,
Pitch@Palace.
That night
a fresh Epstein accuser gave a press conference in Los Angeles where she
detailed allegations that the financier assaulted her when she was 15 and urged
Andrew to come forward to the authorities with whatever information he had
about his former friend.
On Tuesday,
Standard Chartered also pulled out of Pitch@Palace as questions about Andrew’s
continued involvement in the scheme he founded in 2014 continued to circulate.
They prompted a whole host of other firms to review their involvement or cut
ties altogether.
Wednesday
morning brought no respite, as it emerged that three Australian universities
had severed their links with the business-mentoring charity’s Australian
branch. On top of that, the telecoms firm BT said it would not work with
Andrew’s digital training scheme while he was a patron.
Later that
same day a letter emerged casting serious doubt on Andrew’s claim in the BBC
interview to have first met Epstein in 1999. The letter – written to the Times
in 2011 to counter reports that the prince had been a friend of Saif Gaddafi,
son of the former Libyan dictator – had come from his own former chief of
staff, who said that the prince had met Epstein in “the early 1990s”.
At first,
Buckingham Palace sought to defend Andrew over the apparent discrepancy. “The
duke’s words in the interview speak for themselves,” said a spokesperson.
By
Wednesday afternoon, the palace sought to bring the issue to a close with
Andrew’s announcement that he would be stepping back from public duties and was
“willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency” with their Epstein
investigations if required.
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