If you can’t see the problem with Andrew, ma’am,
perhaps it’s time to hang up the crown
Catherine
Bennett
Giving the prince centre stage at Philip’s memorial
service was a foolish misstep
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Sat 2 Apr
2022 19.00 BST
It’s six
weeks since Prince Andrew settled out of court with his accuser, Virginia
Giuffre, for a sum estimated at £12m. Cheap at the price, it was suggested, if
the money (source unexplained) prevented sexual assault charges and a public
trial ruining his mother’s platinum jubilee. Whatever’s left to be ruined, that
is, after mixed results from the Cambridges’ vintage-inspired Caribbean visit
in which only Kate’s elaborate wardrobe signalled that anything had changed
since 1953.
Since
Andrew testified in the settlement to a hitherto unsuspected concern for
victims of sex trafficking, along with a newfound regret for knowing Jeffrey
Epstein, the deal was also welcomed as a victory for Giuffre’s fellow
survivors. A lawyer for Sarah Ransome, one of those abused by Epstein, called
the settlement a “banner day”; survivors had “been heard and were no longer
silenced”.
These
women, probably unfamiliar with correct form concerning the titled associates
of known sex offenders, could not have anticipated that Andrew’s discomfiture
would be strictly temporary. A prince who is no longer HRH owing to some
serious sexual allegations should still, as newly demonstrated by the UK’s
foremost role models, be seen at formal events and addressed ducally as “your
Grace”. Should one bow? A nod is usually acceptable where a prince has been
unable to account, as with Andrew, for a photograph of him pawing a teenage
girl, with Ghislaine Maxwell in the background. Following a period of
reflection – a month is ample – current protocol requires a monarch’s son
previously accused of sexual assault to take precedence in royal ceremonial
over siblings who have never associated with a known sex offender (Charles’s
favourites, Jimmy Savile and Laurens van der Post, were only posthumously
unmasked).
As the
Queen’s escort at Prince Philip’s memorial service, Andrew duly enjoyed a
central role: received by reverential clerics and a trumpet fanfare, then
serenaded to a front seat by less valued siblings and relations. If only a
prior engagement in New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center had not obliged
Ghislaine to send regrets it could have been just like old times.
As a
massive public affront to Giuffre and the other women raped by Epstein, the
event could hardly have been surpassed
As a
massive public affront to Giuffre and the other women raped by Andrew’s friend
Epstein, the event could hardly, however, have been surpassed. After being
silenced for years by their abusers’ allies, the women last week saw the
memorial to Prince Philip double, as dictated by Andrew’s leading role, as a
further denial of their existence. Juliette Bryant, a survivor of Epstein’s
abuse, said: “It’s not just an insult to the victims – it’s a complete insult
towards humanity.”
The deep
public respect and affection for the Queen, with an added tenderness that comes
of seeing her look, often, tired, small and alone, meant that this perverse
choreography was received, where she was concerned, less with disapproval than
with incredulity. How could this dutiful woman, one of the UK’s dwindling
emblems of national probity, have allowed her greedy, notoriously brutish son
to reinvent her husband’s memorial service as a rehabilitation opportunity? She
should have been one of the country’s last protections against epidemic Matt
Hancock Syndrome: the pathological inability to feel shame.
It’s
possible that the Queen never saw the seedy photo, is the one person who still
believes Andrew’s Newsnight codswallop: that he can’t sweat, always wears ties,
stayed at Epstein’s to “show leadership”. Maybe he was addressing Mummy all
along? “My judgment was probably coloured by my tendency to be too honourable,
but that’s just the way it is.”
As much as
her admirers would welcome any relief from the cognitive dissonance, this
explanation, since it requires a credulity alarming in a head of state,
obviously requires the Queen to step down. If she believes Andrew, what would
she not believe from Boris Johnson?
More likely
though, given her involvement in Andrew’s earlier demotion, the Queen was
acquainted with the accusations and with Andrew’s reasons for not repeating in
a courtroom his Newsnight line: “I have no recollection of ever meeting this
lady.” His accelerated redemption came after she witnessed, like everyone else,
Andrew dodging court papers, Andrew’s lawyers’, after they’d failed on
technicalities, resorting to insinuations about his accuser’s greed, morals,
false memory. Giuffre was even accused of being the harmful one, for somehow
diverting attention from “those who have actually perpetrated sexual offences
against minors”.
Only on
reaching a settlement did Andrew say she’d “suffered as an established victim
of abuse” and regret, as he’d previously refused to do, his association with
Epstein.
The Queen
presumably knew all this and, with a wide choice of children and grandchildren
for memorial plus-ones, picked the son who once facilitated a loan for his
ex-wife from a sex offender. The son who once sold a house for £3m above the
asking price. Days after the memorial, the names of Andrew and his ex-wife
would again come up, in a bewildering fraud case involving a £750,000 “wedding
gift” and a Turkish woman’s passport.
To judge by
last week, the family might have saved the £12m it spent rescuing the jubilee
from Andrew. If he could be irreplaceable at Philip’s memorial, despite advice,
then every jubilee event must still be at risk. Actually, if he’d defended
himself in court then returned to non-royal obscurity it might have done less
damage than his Westminster Abbey performance, acting as if open invitations to
the massage-addicted Epstein households were the kind of things that could
happen to any pious Anglican.
Whether the
Queen is too blinded by her affections to recognise the impact of Andrew’s
unbanishing or she knows and doesn’t care, they’re both reasons to retire
before he causes her further trouble. It might seem a poor reward for the years
of service, even a cruel and unusual punishment, but she has certainly earned
the right, at 95, to spend more time with her favourite son, enjoying the
conversation that made him such a treasured guest in any home owned by Jeffrey
Epstein.
Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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