The Man Formerly Known as Prince Andrew

0:01Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is a prince no more, Prince William is in Brazil for the Earthshot Prize and Prince Harry Learns to Speak Like an American. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners and welcome to the show. It was a hugely dramatic day. On Thursday, King Charles III finally took a really strong, clear stance on his brother, Prince Andrew, although Prince Andrew no more. He was stripped of not only his prince title, but the king also strips Andrew of his Duke of York title. He's been kicked out of all kinds of other things, like the Order of the Garter, but he is going still to lose his Vice Admiral rank with the Royal Navy, which was an honorary rank.

0:49While he did serve in the forces, Andrew never rose to the rank of Vice Admiral. He got it to mark, I think it was his 55th birthday. So that's going to, obviously, all of this relates to Prince Andrew's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the allegations against him. So Virginia Jeffrey said that in 2001, she was trafficked to London, New York and the US Virgin Islands and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. She presented as evidence to back up her accounts, a photo of Andrew with his arm around her waist taken by Epstein, she says, at Ghislaine Maxwell's London townhouse.

1:29Now, Virginia sued Andrew in court in New York. He had an opportunity to potentially try to clear his name. He turned it down, instead settling out of court, while not admitting liability, but for a large, a very large sum of money that has never been actually officially disclosed. Now, Andrew has always denied the allegations against him and continues to do so. But this scandal was building and building and building because a whole load of new material was being released into the public domain, including emails between Andrew and Epstein that had undermined Andrew's account of, in particular, a visit to New York where he stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's house.

2:13He stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's mansion in New York where some of the abuse took place. And he said he did that in December 2010 in order to cut off his friendship with Epstein in person, because that was the honourable thing to do. And he was too honourable. And then it emerged that in February 2011, he sent Epstein an email immediately after Virginia Jeffery's first newspaper interview was published, saying, you know, I'm more worried about how this is affecting you. We'll just have to rise above it and we'll play again soon. So amidst all of this kind of rising, mounting pressure, not just on Andrew, but on the monarchy to actually take a strong stance, the king has obviously made this decision that past efforts to tackle the Andrew crisis had not been enough.

3:00So I'm going to read what the actual Buckingham Palace statement said in just a second. But first of all, I actually want to start with the statement that came from Virginia's family. So Virginia's brother, Sky Roberts, told the BBC, this normal girl from a normal family has taken down a prince. We are so proud of her. And Virginia's sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, said, it is truly a moment for her and all survivors. Everything she fought for was not in vain. And actually, Sky Roberts' interview with the BBC was very moving. He said all of this through tears, basically. He was clearly, visibly very moved.

3:40by the kind of victory. I mean, they really are celebrating this as a victory for Virginia. And Virginia obviously passed away in April in 2025 from what her family have described as a suicide and what her publisher describes as a suicide. And obviously, not only did this decision come off the back of various emails that Andrew sent coming to light, but it also came off the back of Virginia's posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, being published months after her death. So it's a huge victory for Virginia. And if she was alive to see it, I think she would have been hugely encouraged and she would have felt optimistic on the back of this win.

4:20Now, she had other problems in her life going on and other family issues, and those wouldn't have gone away just because this had happened. But I think she would have had a huge boost from this win. But let's also talk about the actual Palace statement. So it was released on October the 30th, about 7 o 'clock, 7 p.m. UK time. It was one of those situations where, you know, we were told to expect a statement coming. So we knew in advance and we knew, obviously, it was going to be Andrew related. We didn't know exactly what it was going to say. I expected it to be about Royal Lodge, Andrew's 30 room mansion in Windsor, which he has been forced to leave.

4:59So Royal Lodge was in there. I did not, honestly, I did not in a million years expect them to take away his prince title and return him to being a kind of a common, a commoner, so to speak, to use the not particularly sensitive language of kind of aristocratic Britain. But that is that is the word for it. But here's what the statement says. His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the style, titles and honours of Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. his lease on Royal Lodge has to date provided him with legal protection to continue in residence.

5:34A formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation. These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him. Their Majesty, and this is actually, this is a crucial bit, which has been missing from all of Andrew's past statements. The Buckingham Palace statement ends with their majesties note the plural 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 and i say note the plural in that because obviously queen camilla works to support rape charities um and so i'm sure she will have found this whole process extremely difficult watching and you know bear in mind it must have been what two weeks ago maybe three that andrew was allowed to release his own statement in his own words in which he said he was he was giving up the use of his title so he kept the titles initially um but he was giving up the use of the titles to avoid being a distraction to the good work of the monarchy um and he you know he didn't say anything about sympathy for the victims he said he was doing his duty as he has always done so this statement has got it much better but it is also actually the first time it's the first time that the monarchy has actually issued its own statement on Prince Andrew.

6:57Before, he's always been left to speak for himself. You know, no matter how bad the crisis was, they always just basically did the equivalent, the PR equivalent of kind of handing the microphone to Andrew. And, you know, I think the feeling was inside the palace that they were making him take responsibility by speaking for himself. But obviously that always enabled him to kind of duck and dodge and swerve and try to just kind of, you know, not be held to account. essentially. So what this has done for the very, very first time, and bear in mind, this scandal first emerged kind of December 2010 into February 2011.

7:33And in all that time, close to 15 years, this is the first time that a monarch has gone on the record via a Buckingham Palace statement to express the monarchy's perspective on Andrew, right? It should not in a million years have taken them 15 years to do it. But it is a good thing that it's now happened and I think I'll talk about polling a little bit more later on but I think there are signs that British public opinion supports Charles' decision but does think that it came too slowly essentially is the top line but what else can we read into this statement? The reference to survivors and victims is so so so important because obviously when Andrew gave his car crash interview to Emily Maitlis that was one of the big take-homes from it is that he didn't express any sympathy for Epstein's victims And even if he wants to maintain his own innocence and say that the allegations against him are false, there is absolutely no reason at all not to express sympathy for Epstein's victims.

8:33And it was this really kind of bizarre thing to not do that. Like any, you know, a day one press officer would tell you express sympathies for the victims of sex trafficking and child abuse. Like it's crazy not to. So they made sure to get that in there. and then of course the big question is what happens next now does the scandal go away you know should it go away is the other question and in terms of news organisations writing about Andrew in relation to Epstein no I don't think this is going to go away anytime soon they will continue to write about it and you know my understanding is there are investigative journalists who have been working on this for months, dating back to before this new round of reporting, who I'm sure will still continue working on it.

9:24And there are signs of some of the fruits of some of their labour starting to appear in dribs and drabs in the British media. So I'm sure that will continue. And there are whole sections of this to be unpacked. So some of these emails that have been coming out about Andrew, and actually there's a new one, let me say, before I go deep into that, there's already been, since this statement on Thursday, There's already been a new email to emerge, which was one that Andrew sent to Jeffrey Epstein in the kind of run up just before he went. He traveled to New York to supposedly break off the friendship for being too honorable in December 2010.

10:01So in in April 2010, so about what would that be? Eight months out from going to the state of Epstein in New York. Andrew emailed Epstein at a point he said to Emily Maitlis. Let's recap the timeline. In 2019, in his BBC Newsnight interview, he said 2006 was when he cut off ties with Jeffrey Epstein. And then 2010 was the last time he saw him flying out to New York to stay with him in order to formally, officially end the friendship. Because that was the honourable thing to do. But contact stopped in 2006. So we now have April 2010, Andrew emails Epstein. and it basically along the lines they're trying to come up with a date to maybe see each other and Andrew's saying that it would be good to catch up in person now obviously if he's going to stay with Epstein in New York some some communication must have happened in order to organize that so the basic surface level of the email doesn't necessarily contradict Andrew's account because obviously you wouldn't necessarily if we assume that Andrew was telling the truth And there are innumerable reasons not to assume that.

11:09But if we assume for argument's sake that he was, you wouldn't necessarily say in your initial email, oh, well, I'm coming to break off the friendship in person because that would break off the friendship. You know, no one's going to take that visit. So on a surface level, it doesn't accept that they're not just talking about this New York visit. So Andrew is also talking, you know, Epstein's clearly trying to broker a meeting of some kind between Andrew and a guy called Jess Staley, a big shop banker. And so that's the element that contradicts what Andrew said to Emily Maitlis, which is that this is not simply contact in service of producing that meeting in New York.

11:51It's also in service of some other thing that's clearly going on behind the scenes involving Jess Staley. and that is another whole area of this that hasn't been properly unpacked yet like what was going on there why did Epstein want to introduce Andrew to Jess Staley what did you know what was the relationship between Staley and Epstein obviously Staley might well say it was completely you know he had absolutely no I'm sure he would probably say Epstein he had absolutely no idea about Epstein's crimes and it was all completely benign. But there is a huge potential for there to be more stories unpacking what was really going on there.

12:31It's another reason to think that we haven't heard the end of this, that there will be more stories to emerge because this is a whole aspect of it that we know very little about in reality. But what we do know is that Sarah Ferguson at this time had massive, massive debts. So that's a whole area of this that we haven't unpacked yet that we know really very little about. You know, why was Andrew, what was it that Andrew was hoping to get from meeting Jess Daly? Was it anything to do with Sarah Ferguson's gargantuan debts that she was trying to resolve at this time? And that Epstein, we know Epstein helped Sarah Ferguson resolve those debts, but right now all we know is that Epstein lent her about 15 grand.

13:11So if it turns out that actually he brokered some much bigger deal, then obviously that would be a massive story. So, yeah, I don't in short think that this is going away. The reporting of this is not going to stop and nor actually should it stop. It's not the right thing for reporting to stop just because it has the potential to cause reputational damage for the monarchy. The pernicious, horrific, traumatic impact of sex trafficking and sexual abuse is too important to try to say that we all have to stop talking about it now because it might be bad for the monarchy you know you cannot put institutional reputations above the the public interest in exposing and you know trying to stop future examples of sex trafficking and child abuse because that's really what it's about if we take a strong stance on these issues our hope is that it will encourage people to stop this stuff from happening again in the future it's a never again issue.

14:12So, you know, I honestly, I'm not particularly hoping even that the stories will stop coming out. But the question is, has the monarchy taken a strong enough stance on this issue now that people can view the institution of the palace to be on the right side of this question, not the wrong side? Because the perception up until now among huge swathes of the British public has been that the palace were actively shielding Andrew, that they were protecting him and I still get people coming on to me even now, even in the last few days, I've had people saying, you know, when will the palace hand over Andrew to the police, which, you know, they're not actually stopping, actively stopping the police in that way from getting to Andrew.

14:53The police have reviewed this issue a whole load of times. And unfortunately I've always taken the view that they weren't going to prosecute Virginia's allegations. And so in that sense, you know, the palace, there's no question the palace handing Andrew over because that's not how it works. The police would have to issue a summons to try and bring Andrew in for an interview under Courtland would be the process. But there is the possibility that that could still happen. It's not going to happen, I don't think, in relation to Virginia's allegations because she would be needed as a witness in court.

15:29It would so much would hinge on her reliability as a witness that I just cannot see her core allegations being tried without her presence in court to be tested as a witness. And now that she's passed away, that's not going to be possible. But this issue of Andrew, February 2011, we've had an email leak now in which he sent an email to a deputy press secretary to the Queen saying that he had asked a police protection officer to basically effectively dig up dirt on Virginia. and he said, I've handed over her social security number and date of birth. I've heard she's had a criminal record and asked the on-duty PPO to look into it.

16:08And that is potentially an offence of misconduct in a public office. So we'll have to see, you know, the police have said they're actively looking into that. And so we'll have to see whether they take that or not, whether they launch a full-scale investigation, whether they bring Andrew in, whether he's interviewed or not, what he says when he is, whether the palace give over, hand over Andrew's emails to the police. And that is another big question here. You know, if it gets to the point that the palace needing to do more, I mean, the other way that a major corporation might deal with this is if you look at the way that the Murdoch press, that Rupert Murdoch's media empire responded to phone hacking allegations back in 2009, 2010, 2011.

16:50They brought in outside legal counsel, an outside law firm, to review millions of emails and to determine which ones needed to be handed over to the police as part of a Metropolitan Police investigation into phone hacking and other allegations. So that's another thing they could do, is they could actually launch a review of Andrew's emails through his official Palace email address, and the other emails sent between press officers and find out what those emails say. and they could get them reviewed by an outside law firm that has no particular obligation to anybody and for that law firm to then determine whether any need to be handed over to the police and to make that happen if deemed necessary.

17:35So that is another option they could go down. Another aspect of this is, like I said, Andrew's been told to leave Royal Lodge. So the question is, where's he going next? Well, the answer we already have, which is that he's going to move to a home in Sanjungham State. So not necessarily the kind of what's known as the big house, the main house in Sandringham, but, you know, it will be one of the other houses there. So that is really interesting. So getting Andrew out of Royal Lodge was really important. A huge amount of pressure was building around it, not least of all because Andrew hasn't really properly paid rent in years at Royal Lodge.

18:11He kind of paid forwards. He paid a million pounds up front. He funded seven and a half million pounds of renovations at Royal Lodge. And then this was all way back in the 2000s. And since then, he's paid what's known as a peppercorn rent, which is basically no rent. It means you just have to pay a little something, i.e. a peppercorn is the example. So he's effectively paid no rent in decades. And with every year that passes and he stays there, the value for money that he gets out of that deal only gets better and better and better with time. And it was a 75-year lease. So getting him out of Royal Lodge was really important.

18:46But taking him in at Sandringham, and we also understand the king's kind of helping him out a bit financially, does mean that there isn't total separation. And, you know, it risks the continued perception that actually the king is shielding Andrew. Actually, when Virginia was trying to file her civil lawsuit against Andrew, her lawyers needed to serve Andrew papers. And they had to do this in person. And so one thing, one problem they had is they literally couldn't physically get to him. They couldn't get anywhere near him because he was staying in these royal residences, including he went to stay up at Balmoral with the Queen.

19:24And so that created a real, like, perfect symbolism for the kind of monarchy's reputational crisis, which is that they appeared to be literally shielding Andrew from the process of being served papers by a woman who wanted to accuse him of rape in that case. Obviously, like I said, he denies it. But Charles, again, you know, the San Gingham Estate is private property. You can't just walk onto it and go for a stroll around the ground. So Andrew being in a house on the San Gingham Estate means he's not on royal, as in monarchy terrain, because San Gingham is privately owned. It's not, you know, the estate at Windsor, Windsor Castle, is owned by us, by the British public.

20:08And also so is Royal Lodge. Royal Lodge is owned by a property portfolio called the Crown Estate. whoever is the reigning monarch of the day, their name is on the paperwork. But if they don't own it individually as a person, Charles as a person does not own the crown estate. And in fact, various systems have been put in place to make it independent of the monarchy. So actually all the profits from the crown estate go to the treasury, they go to Downing Street, they go to the government, and then a percentage of those profits is given back to the monarchy as it's public funding. so Crown Estate owned Royal Lodge Andrew leased it from them but he was on public you know like a publicly owned asset that was his house so Sandringham is not publicly owned it's not part of Crown Estate Charles owns it individually as a private person but because he's living effectively in Charles' house you know whichever property they choose Charles hasn't completely distanced himself from Andrew and we understand that he's going to be giving Andrew a little bit of money so you know it's a really difficult one that because if Charles didn't give Andrew any money and did just kick him out onto the street it's equally possible that he could wind up in the hands of a kind of foreign intelligence asset you know he could wind up being an asset for an intelligence agency overseas you know he had this friendship and one of his other scandals was a friendship with a man called Yang Tang Bo who's British intelligence considered to be a Chinese spy.

21:43They kicked him out of Britain. Now, Yang Tangbo denies that and appealed and lost his appeal. But he had a friendship with Andrew that really did smack of that kind of spy relationship where he was kind of getting Andrew to kind of do small break of the rule kind of situations, smuggling him into Royal Lodge without his name being recorded in the official guest list or whatever and going behind the backs of ex-private secretaries. So he was doing that classic thing that spies do where they introduce small rule breaking into the relationship. So, you know, we don't want that situation. We don't want Andrew saying, oh, well, forget you, forget Britain.

22:21I'll go and I'll just sell myself to a foreign intelligence agency and I'll give them all the royal family secrets, which they can then use to try to exert influence. and I'll help make introductions to other people in aristocratic British society. And we don't want him working for another government. So it is a really tricky one. And having him a bit in-house does make some sense, but it does create this residual reputational risk for the monarchy and for Charles that people still think Charles is protecting him and shielding him from allegations. Because like I said, there is still this perception that he needs to be handed over to the police.

23:00when in reality, as of now, the police have not actually asked for that to happen. So, look, Charles, clearly it's so much better than where the monarchy was before. And, you know, we are told by Palace insiders, we in the media have been told, myself included, that, you know, Charles has done this because he does think that there were significant kind of errors of judgment or judgment failings by Andrew, notwithstanding the fact that Andrew denies the central allegations against him. And that is so much better than what the messaging has been up until this point, you know, with Andrew saying, like, he always did his duty and he just wanted to stop being a distraction.

23:45That was ridiculous. So it's a much stronger stance and it makes so much sense to do that because really, you know, the question underneath it all is how should, The monarchy is supposed to show leadership and Charles is supposed to show leadership. So the underlying question was always, how should we as a society respond to allegations of child abuse, of rape, of sex trafficking? How should we as a society, if you were to pick people off the street, I don't think anyone would say, oh, well, probably you should just kind of deny it all, hope it goes away, sweep it under the carpet a little bit.

24:23from 2011 when some of this stuff first started coming out through a whole load of civil lawsuits in America in kind of 2016 in which the allegations against Andrew came out in the British press. It was then 2019 before Andrew tried to clear his name on television. That went obviously terribly. He was told to step back from public duties but then didn't cooperate with the FBI for a period of time while they were trying to get his witness testimony. so you know there have been so many moments in this whole process where Andrew was not behaving in a way that we expect from public figures and it's taken way way way too long but they did get there in the end so I talked earlier about the polling the polling says 80 % of people think that Charles made the right decision so I think it was actually 79 so obviously you know overwhelmingly people think it was the right thing to strip Andrew of his titles but around about just a little shy of 60%, I think about 58 % said Charles was too slow.

25:24No, I think 3 % thought he did it too quickly. I don't know what's going on with those 3%, but they have their opinions. About 20 % felt it was the right time, but not too slow. But those numbers are stark and they do show the king, they will reassure the king that what he's done is the right thing, that what he's done was necessary and it had to happen. but they do make it very clear that people think this was a long time coming which of course it was and the other key difference here is the powers need to continue moving away from this framing and perception that what this is about is preventing reputation or damage to the monarchy it cannot be about that because putting the reputation of an institution first is what has led to a whole load of these kind of scandals and crises never being dealt with from Harvey Weinstein to the BBC because there was a massive scandal around a guy called Jimmy Savile who was probably Britain's most notorious paedophile and sexual abuser.

26:28And again, the BBC's reputation was put before stopping him from being a predator. So you absolutely cannot have framing where an institution's reputation is being put first. but we'll see how things progress I think the big test is going to be does Andrew ever get seen in public with the royals ever again and they should be aiming for basically no like maybe at a funeral but even then it's very difficult it's really really difficult to tell someone they can't go to a funeral especially a funeral for their own father which I'm not saying it's coming anytime soon but it's going to come at some point.

27:14And so, you know, would Andrew be invited to Charles' funeral whenever it may be, hopefully many years away? You probably would have to invite him. But then, you know, Andrew needs to get it into his head so that he can't be going up to other members of the royal family and chatting to them and laughing with them and, you know, looking friendly and pally with them. He needs to understand his own radioactivity. But in the much more immediate term, you know, we're not expecting him at Christmas this year. Will he be at Easter? You know, will he, will he turn up in a church in Windsor at Easter? And where is the ban on Christmas going to be permanent?

27:51Because it's kind of vague. The noise is coming out. Palace sources at the moment are kind of vague along lines. Well, you know, he's been, he understands that he can't come to Christmases, but you know, what, what really like, is he going to stick to that? Does that mean he will never be seen in public with the Royals again? Like that is the key thing. because if he finds any little loophole or workaround or moment when he can thrust himself back into the limelight and Charles is photographed or filmed laughing with him and chatting with him, then you're virtually back to square one. So, you know, huge progress on this, and I hope that this marks the start of a new era for the monarchy because the other legacy issue, I mean, there are two issues going forward for this.

28:36One, this is huge for the royals because it potentially sets a precedent. You know, this is the first time since the abdication crisis in 1936 when Edward VIII gave up the throne in order to marry the American divorcee Wallace Simpson. And he was basically forced to give up the throne by the British government. It's the first time since then that a royal family member has had to step down because they did something that was deemed to be morally wrong. Or has been kicked out, rather, given the heave-ho. He obviously stepped down voluntarily initially, and now he's being actively told in no uncertain terms that he's not wanted anymore.

29:14So that is one thing. This creates a potential precedent. What happens if there's another royal family member in the future? Will people start demanding Harry and Meghan be stripped of their titles? I think probably Harry and Meghan will be all right unless they start to really upset people again and kind of declare war on the monarchy again. If they do, then absolutely, yes, people will start demanding that. if they play a clean game, so to speak, then I think they'll probably be all right. But then the other issue is, has the monarchy actually turned a corner in terms of knowing how to deal with situations where our royal family members' actions have become, you know, either beyond the pay or need to be changed or reined in in some way?

29:56Like if this happens again in another circumstance, that no doubt will be different in some ways. Will the palace know what to do? will they handle it better? So I go back to the allegations of bullying against Meghan, which, you know, maybe you believe them, maybe you don't, maybe you love Meghan, maybe you hate her, but whatever you think about it, you know, the Kensington Palace Press Secretary, Jason Knuff, went on record to accuse Meghan of bullying staff out of the private office because he wanted to draw attention to this fact, to this problem, that there isn't a system within the monarchy for how you rein in a royal family member who you consider to be misbehaving.