The Duke of York's fall from grace

0:02Hi, I'm Charlie Duffield and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up later in the show, Ultra Rock Survivor Florence and the Machine is back with her sixth studio album, Everybody Scream. It's kind of like a real reassertion of who she is. And it's really hard to argue with because the tunes are great and lyrically it's really compelling. And it's just a really exciting release. But first, Prince Andrew will be stripped of all his titles, Buckingham Palace has confirmed, and will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

0:46King Charles made the unprecedented statement last night that he will no longer be able to live on the Crown Estate and instead will move to a property on the Sandringham Estate. It follows mounting pressure over a string of scandals, the most damaging being Andrew's relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and alleged sexual abuse of Virginia Jeffrey. Last night, BBC host Fiona Bruce paused a recording of the popular political show BBC Question Time in Bradford to let audience members know that a statement had been issued by Buckingham Palace effectively ending Andrew's public life as a royal.

1:27Nearly 10 seconds of applause broke out as she explained that Andrew would no longer be known as Prince and the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy expressed her support. I'm stopping the recording because you have a breaking story which we should respond to. That's why I stopped you Matt so forgive me. So Prince Andrew. The king has initiated a process, so we're going to discuss this. Prince Andrew will no longer be Prince Andrew.

2:04He will be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He will surrender the lease to his home and he will find alternative private accommodation. Lisa, your response. Well, I mean, obviously, this is a huge development and a big step for the king to take. I have to say, just as an initial response, I really support the step that he's taken. I think.

2:38I think it sends a very powerful message to the victims of grooming and sex offences. I used to work with children who'd been abused before I came into Parliament, including many of the girls who'd been horrifically abused by grooming gangs. I read some of the testimony from some of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, not just at the time but recently with new stories that have come to light and I think you know given the new information that we have I think this is a really brave important and right step by the king and I fully support it. In a statement Miss Jeffrey's family said today an ordinary American girl from an ordinary American family brought down a British prince with her truth and extraordinary courage.

3:34The disgraced royal will now effectively have the status of a commoner. But what does this mean for his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson and his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie? Joining us now is freelance journalist Alice Cockerell. Alice, this seems like a very necessary strong move from King Charles. Would you agree? Yes, I think so. And it's kind of not really in his nature to be this ruthless. And I think probably a lot of it actually is coming from William, who is much more kind of proactive. I think Charles is thinking about his mother's wishes. The late queen certainly wouldn't have been up for this, I don't think.

4:12Not only was Andrew her favourite son, but she didn't really like untitling people, because that's the status quo. It seems kind of capricious if people can go around taking what they take to be their birthright. But I think there was an inevitability to it, really. And remind us again why this action has been taken. I think it's the dishonesty apart from everything else. I mean, if we didn't think that Emily Maitlis' interview was a catastrophe in itself, now it's just a bare-faced lie. Sarah Ferguson publicly distancing herself from him and then sending that awful, just grovelling email saying like, you know, you mean so much to my heart and all this kind of terrible stuff.

4:48So it's just completely untenable for them to have any sort of public role ever because it just sticks in your core. And I think it just is damage limitation on the part of the palace. So do you think the phrase born a princess, always a princess will ring true for Beatrice and Eugenie? I think practically speaking, they're kind of wanting to use their title will be a different thing because they're Princesses of York. And it's a pretty gruesome title to have. Lots of their kind of status, their cachet obviously comes from that. But I wouldn't be surprised if they both didn't necessarily want to use it that much and were kind of pretty much discouraged because probably not in Charles's lifetime, but I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if one day William, if they kind of put a foot wrong or something.

5:32Now this kind of precedent has been started. I think that they will be very cautious about how and when they use it. And what is life actually like for them as non-working royals? Like nice and happily married to kind of prosperous guys. So they don't get any money from the public purse, but they both have trust funds from their grandmother, the queen mother, and the great-grandmother, the queen mother and the queen. You know, they have sources of money coming in from there. And kind of public duties wise, they really don't do any public duties at all since the queen died. But they are very kind of philanthropic.

6:01They're on lots of charities, which they wouldn't be on if they weren't princesses. But they don't do anything official or take any official money apart from. Only caveat, which I'm really interested to see develop, is Eugenie, who mainly lives in Portugal. She pays a peppercorn rent at this cottage called Ivy Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace. So I'd be interested to see whether that continues. How much do you think the princesses knew about Prince Andrew's actions? I bet this story develops a bit because I would say it's kind of a horribly tricky position that they are in, being raised by these parents.

6:33You know, Fergie thought nothing of introducing them to all these kind of questionable people like P. Didion, inviting Epstein to their parties. and Epstein in a recently released email talks about when he was released from prison for his first sentence for soliciting underage girls. He said the Duchess of York was first in line to celebrate my release with her two daughters until they both put them in the path of these pretty gruesome men. I would like to think if it was my parents and they were making these catastrophically stupid decisions, you know, questionable and, you know, morally unjustifiable, you know, that I would say or do or intervene or not participate.

7:10But they were both young at the time, possibly didn't really know as much as they could have known about it. Will there be more revelations to come? Oh my God, you bet. I think there'll be huge things to come. I mean, things are going to be leaked and leaked and leaked. I think this is the tip of the iceberg. And those new stories we want to do, it will kind of hit more of a crescendo, I think, because everyone's baying for blood. I don't really understand myself, the complete hold that Epstein had over them. Because I know just Sarah Ferguson was just financial. And I think the financial kind of mismanagement and all the debts she's racked up over the years and all the questionable decisions she's made will come out of the woodwork as the Epstein files continue to be released.

7:49I think we'll get a much clearer picture of this gruesome couple and how they've behaved all these years. And how do you think Andrew will cope with all of this? I think the most interesting point that was made to me, I rung around some courtiers and one of Andrew's probably former friend. Both of them just stressed just how awful it is for Andrew because his whole, no one in the history of the world has ever loved being a prince more than Andrew. It was just his most defining thing. And people told him these funny stories, you know, if he walked into a room and people didn't stand up, he would walk out and then come back and say, should we try that again?

8:20And he was the most kind of regal person, the grandest, most regal person, because it just defined him. So the idea of him being a mister is just a catastrophic blow. Finally, is there anything else you want to add? The only other thing that was really made clear to me is the real kind of huge row that's going on, all the kind of biggest bone of contention, is what, basically the housing thing. Andrew is going to go to Sandringham, but it's all very well saying that, but it means someone has to give up their house on Sandringham Estate. I don't know if they're all completely occupied, but you know, he'll want the nicest one there, which means someone leaving.

8:54The second point of the housing dilemma is what on earth to do with Sarah? because it's ridiculous, so divorce like 30 years ago and she all seems to be buying houses and selling them, but she doesn't seem to have anywhere to go. And security is no joke, really. It's all very well saying she can't live on a crown estate and take any money, but she actually does need a level of protection, I think. Poor, long-suffering daughters, it's all very well them saying they'll put her up in their granny flat or buy her a cottage in the village or whatever, but it has to be a bigger operation than that. Let's go to a break.

9:26Coming up in part two, Florence and the Machine wants to make you scream this Halloween. We'll see you back here in just a moment. Welcome back. After years away from the music scene, Florence and the Machine is back with her sixth record, Everybody Scream, fittingly released today on Halloween. The album comes just one week after Lily Allen's much-talked-about West End Girl, which has been lauded as a masterpiece of confessional pop. But on Florence's record, the focus is not so much on tantalising gossip column details, but songs crafted with breathtakingly ambitious musical scope. I spoke to The Standard's head of culture, Martin Robinson.

10:11Martin, first of all, what themes or topics does this record tackle? Yes, the album is called Everybody's Scream, and it's essentially looking at some of the problems that she's sort of encountered over the last three years. She hasn't released an album in that time. And she did an interview a couple of months ago where she was talking about what she's been through. She's sort of included a miscarriage and she has sort of life-threatening surgery. It's all this quite heavy stuff. So the album sort of gets into all that and sort of tackles, not in particular sort of specifics often, but just as sort of alludes to these difficulties and touches upon these real places, but then kind of manages to create this amazingly epic sort of fearsome album on top of it so it's a real like sign of sort of strength and a renewed artist I think so it's a really it's a really interesting record.

11:01You've written that it shows a musician regaining her confidence and attitude. Given that Florence has been away from the music scene for a while do you think there are lessons to be learned there about the necessity of taking time out? Yeah I think the benefit is it really shows how powerful music can be in those kind of circumstances and also sort of creativity of how that can help people find a way out of these things there's quite a lot of ideas around collectivity and women and fans community everybody's scream the title track is really pointed towards our audience and he's i'm going to make you scream i'm going to make you shout i'm going to make you dance it's got all these kind of like exhortations to get up and do something so there's elements of helping yourself that's in there but it's a real sort of like big expansive record as well it's not like self-help it's much more ambitious than that so do we learn more about how she feels about fame one of the big themes in it is the male rock kind of canon and how she's found that difficult to penetrate or at least finds it kind of ludicrous so she keeps on making sort of little mentions of there being 10 women in the top 100 albums of all time and she gives little cutting asides to the 1975 and an ex-boyfriend who wore all these band t-shirts and there's always these kind of like ideas that she's never really got the respect she's deserved in terms of that big sort of like patriarchal idea of music which is one populated by like all these big male acts and male critics and male record companies and so she's really sort of like hammers through that all but not in a kind of like resentful way it's more like she just casts it all aside it's quite a glorious approach that she's got just kind of laughing at it i mean it's pretty pretty strong in that sense but she's one of the most successful british alt-rock artists of her era would you agree she's definitely one of the standout talents of the last 20-25 years as the albums have gone on she probably didn't have the kindest of critical responses sometimes and even with the first album which is now regarded as a classic i remember when that first came out it was getting a lot of sneery sort judgments over her presentation as much as the music in fact more than more than music so she's definitely had a much harder time than say someone like Nick Cave or someone like that who's like a similar kind of artist I think she's certainly got a point.

13:27And which songs stood out to you do you have any favourites? Yeah I really like title track Everybody Screams it's just sort of like a big sort of statement of intent there's also one called Music by Men again as I've said this is a bit of a of sort of the male rock scene but it's a particularly good one she talks about her i think it's an ex-relationship she's been out with i mean people can look this up but she's been out with various musicians through the years but she sings about how on the way to couples therapy you put your headphones in so you didn't have to talk to me listening to your own demos on the ride home which is quite a nice little takedown she manages to kind of have these little sort of confessional moments which obviously in the taylor swift world is very popular but then she does all these like massive tunes as well.

14:10There's one called Sympathy Magic and one called Kraken, which are just the real wall of sound, orchestras, guitars. It's really got a lot of weight to it. And finally, Martin, you've said this could be the album of the year. I always say that with whatever I fancy at the time, but I think it's going to be right up there. Anything that feels really, really magnetic and of the moment, you're looking for that excitement around these record releases and what it does and the impact it has. And I think this one will have A really big response and just feels like very alive and excited. It's not like Lily Allen's album was out last week.

14:46It's a bit of a sort of like down a record. There's a quick confessional thing that she put together, but it's not very exhilarating. And that, after all, is the most powerful thing. One of the great things that music can do is to give you that exhilaration.

15:07And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to get in touch, please do drop us a line at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here on Monday at 5pm. We'll see you then.