For 11 seconds on Wednesday, Queen Camilla was the most uncomfortable person in Britain. Arriving at a London primary school to do her job of smiling at children and wearing brooches, Her Majesty stepped out of her chauffeured Audi and was forced to come face-to-face with homunculus Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s disgrace. Making her way inside, the waiting press didn’t just dutifully snap away but a reporter, highly unusually, yelled out a question about Jeffrey Epstein.
Camilla responded by looking straight ahead while silently praying a sinkhole might spontaneously appear under the press pen.
The situation escalated on Thursday at the perfectly named Dedham in Sussex when King Charles and his lady were heckled by members of the public and the press about Epstein while doing a walkabout in the on-brand drizzle. First, another reporter shouted a question at them before a couple of the great unwashed also yelled out to ask them about his brother’s former BFF Epstein.
Ahead of the Dedham visit, dozens of copies of the creepy photo of Andrew on all fours over a prone woman, and with “The royal family should not be above the law” printed on the back, were scattered around the area.
And Buckingham Palace? They should be ashamed of themselves. Good, very long and hard looks in mirrors are needed this weekend.
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For seven days now, the Palace has maintained a position of stony, Medusan muteness since the full, horrible extent of Andrew’s closeness to Jeffrey Epstein was dragged out into the open thanks to the US Department of Justice’s (DoJ) release of more than three million documents.
To detail every repellent morsel we have learnt about the former Duke of York is not advisable after eating so just a couple of choice morsels that really gives you the measure of the man.
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On Christmas Eve 2010 Andrew spread joy and goodwill to all men by sending Epstein a confidential brief about business opportunities in war-torn Afghanistan. That year alone, 103 British service people were killed there but our Andrew was seeing flashing dollar signs and snouting around the reconstruction money trough. Oink oink.
Another: A year after Epstein had become a child sex offender Andrew invited him, and three women who Epstein had with him, to dinner at Buckingham Palace.
Then came a separate development: A second Epstein victim came forward to allege that she was trafficked to the UK to sleep with Andrew. (He has yet to respond to this.)
The same day that Camilla was practising her selective deafness, the Thames Valley Police said it was “aware of reports” of a woman said to have been “taken to an address in Windsor in 2010 for sexual purposes”. Which is to say, watch this space.
So obviously the Palace, neck deep in the most serious crisis since Edward VIII musingly noodled ‘abdication’ in his journal in 1936, did the right thing and responded with superior moral backbone and a focus on the victims.
Hah. Got you. Nah. The closest Charles has come to acting is him reportedly getting shirty over Andrew exercising his Windsor Castle stable privileges and being photographed trotting around like he doesn’t have a care in the world and so bundled him off to live in a different free house in Norfolk ahead of schedule. That’ll teach him!
All this week His Majesty has played a game of pretend, keeping on buggering on (and Churchill wept …) as if the monarchy is not on fire and not once finding it in his busy schedule of hosting a (this is true) Palace reception for local council workers. Obviously it’s more important to thank the regional waste managers than to find a moment to put out a statement or meaningfully express sympathy for the victims.
The whole thing is the fourth estate equivalent of the Fabian Strategy and the King should be ashamed.
The Crown is meant to stand for something – duty, honour, dignity – and this week we have not seen a shred of any of that. Just brooches and smiling at small children and Charles turning up at a fun run after an aide explained to him what a) ‘fun’ and b) a ‘run’ are.
After Diana, Princess of Wales died, one headline screamed at the late Queen, “Show us you care”. The same is just as applicable now.
The Palace’s failure this week to directly address the suffering of the hundreds, if not more, of girls and women abused by Epstein – a man who holidayed at Queen Elizabeth’s private homes Sandringham and Balmoral, was invited for dinner to Buckingham Palace and partied at Windsor Castle – is to their eternal discredit. For at least a decade, Epstein gallivanted around the world with one of their frontline members, allegedly gave millions of dollars to a woman with a royal title, and a trafficking victim was allegedly brought to Buckingham Palace by Andrew for tea and a tour and they seem think it’s acceptable to play deaf and dumb.
They have also failed to make clear that no one is above the law and should anyone with a badge, in either the US or the UK, want a nice little chat with Andrew then he must do so.
Law in the UK is made in the King’s name but he is doing an excellent job of making it look like he is letting one of his family members dodge and weave telling authorities everything he knows. (Last year the US Congress summoned Andrew to testify, a request he has totally ignored.)
All we have seen this week is a hanky-twisting sovereign who wants us all to join him in playing pretend that his brother’s sins have nothing to do with the royal family and not splattered the House of Windsor with enough raw sewerage they will need a power hose to get off.
The closest anyone came was when Prince Edward, an HRH so forgettable he has to wear a name tag to Christmas, was asked by the host at an education conference how the royal family was “coping”. He limply offered up, “I think it’s all really important always to remember the victims. And who are the victims in all this? A lot of victims in all this.”
If this was the best they could do then Republic UK should start popping the Tesco bubbles.
The silence the Palace is maintaining is not dignified or stoic or can be written off as just those repressed Brits just doing some on-brand repressing. It is a total and utter failure of moral leadership and duty.
What Charles should have done is issued a statement like the one they did last October which said that “their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”
They should have made very, very clear that Crown Inc’s position is that should any authorities on either side of the Atlantic want to have a not-so-quiet word with Andrew then he should speak to them.
Oh, Charles and reportedly Prince William had tried to get ahead of this last year by the titular shearing and de-princing Andrew, meaning he is technically no longer ‘royal’ in the most literal sense. It was meant to be the reputational equivalent of lopping off of the gangrenous York limb. Look here, we’ve finally found a big stick and gotten all tough. Ooh errr.
But the real world does not function on the same level of heraldic symbolism and does not give two damns about which letters go before which names and who gets to have an Order of the Garter heraldic banner.
Andrew is still the King’s brother, who has moved into another home owned by the King and will reportedly have household staff provided by the King and security paid for by the King and, some say, an allowance shelled out by the King.
Andrew’s big punishment by his family is being sent to live in a house that won’t ever get a starring place in the National Trust register and to have to play golf not at his preferred club.
Oh, the humanity!
That the royal family seems to be operating under the assumption that taking away his titles is a sufficiently terrible punishment and shows them acting decisively and firmly and only reflects how detached they are from public feeling.
We are about this close to someone building a pyre and trying to find a stake outside Wood Farm, where Andrew is currently holed up, and Charles seems to be operating as if it’s in any way acceptable to not take a firm line and to ignore the people’s growing rage. What smoke? I can’t smell anything.
What’s the point of a King who is currently displaying all the stiff spine and leadership of a calamari?
(And all this despite the fact that one of Camilla’s core areas of work has been domestic and sexual violence including becoming the patron of Nigeria’s first sexual assault referral centre.)
This week’s heckling and yelling of Charles and Camilla will only continue and none of them are immune. Last month while in Scotland, a man shouted at Prince William and Kate, The Prince and Princess of Wales, “How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein? Have you been covering up for Andrew?”
Unless the Palace actually locates their moral true north and uses their biggest, most serious words and makes their position clear then they should expect more yelling, more hollered questions, and more people wondering what the point of the monarchy is. (And Republic might want to get in a few more cases.)
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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