The royal family has always misbehaved, but they've done so
behind layers of privacy that has now been obliterated, does
not exist in the difference has gone.
The religious idea of Romani is they're facing a terminal
crisis. The crisis, if you like, is way
out of their control. I think we'll look back at
today, the day that Angie was arrested, as a, as a real
turning point. I mean, it is a member of the
royal family as we sit here is in a cell.
The same police force that has arrested him is looking into
much more serious allegations, arguably about the trafficking
of women. Are we approaching a point where
this is not recoverable? Hello and welcome to the
forecast. Andrew Manbatton Windsor has
been arrested and his brother, the King, says the police have
his full and wholehearted support and that the law must
take its course. So what happens next for Andrew
and the Crown? Is this the biggest crisis the
royal family has faced in modern history?
The King says it would not be right to comment further on the
matter. But how long will he be able to
hold that line? Joining me today, the historian
Dan Snow and David Yellen, the former editor of The Sun, is
joining us on Zoom. David, let's begin with you
because you work in in public relations as well.
I mean, is, is this the biggest crisis the monarchy has ever
faced in modern times? And can they survive it?
I think this is a very bad day in a series of very bad days.
I think they're going to be a lot more bad days if this goes
to court. And I don't think people have
really got their heads around that yet.
And yes, Krishna, I think this is the worst crisis since the
abdication. Yeah.
Dan when was the last time a Prince was arrested?
Oh, I'm glad you've asked me that.
I, I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to crunch it.
I, I think it was probably the Duke of Monmouth who was the son
of the acknowledged, albeit legitimate son of Charles the
Second, fought an upright, launched an uprising against his
uncle James 2nd, and was arrested and tried and executed
in 1685. And despite the best efforts of
many, many Georgian Princess and you know, some of Queen
Victoria's two kids, they have managed to, they've managed to
keep out of keep out of the prison cell.
So I think it's, I mean, it really is.
It's got usually when you people say things are unprecedented,
they're usually quite precedented.
But this one is this is really extraordinary, really
extraordinary. I mean, David, when you say this
is going to get worse, you have to think about where where an
arrest leads, if it goes to a criminal case and who the other
witnesses might be, who else might be questioned.
We're talking about people in government, people in the
palace, possibly Sarah Ferguson, you know, goodness knows who
else, Possibly the king. You know, journalists like
ourselves have been around a few years.
We're used to this. But I don't think the public is
yet. And I think what we're going to
see, what's going to happen is it will go quiet for a bit
because that's what happens. Should there be charges, for
example? This is now an active case.
So it might dip, but then it will come back and it will come
back in the most forensic and reputationally damaging way that
you can possibly have, which is if it happens, a Criminal Court
case, as you say, Krishna. With, with, with people that
normally don't talk, that have spent their entire lives not
talking publicly when they except when they want to be like
Sarah Ferguson and members of the royal family and people in
and around. And much more importantly, it's
in my mind, the staff, the people at the palace, what did
they know, you know, and when did they know it?
And they will be asked that. And I think this is, I mean, we
don't know how bad this is because we don't know what's
actually going to come out. It's the real truth.
But you know what? Neither does the palace.
Right. But I mean, do you think their
public line can hold, but that's it.
They've said they support the investigation.
No, and that's it. I did this podcast on the BBC
call when it hits the fan and I've been saying for weeks there
that actually that what you might call the tactical PR of
the palace has gotten very good in recent in recent weeks.
They react in real time to the news.
So today we've seen two statements, seen a statement
from Buckingham Palace, a statement from Kensington
Palace. And they haven't just said we
can't comment because this is an ongoing case.
They have, they have, you know, said that they, I haven't got
the exact words in front of me, but basically they are concerned
about the allegations and they will continue to cooperate and
so on. That's OK.
But really the, the, the, the crisis, if you like, is way out
of their control now because they don't know what's going to
happen. They don't know, they don't know
how bad this is. And, and, you know, we are
possibly going to see, you know, the, the king because obviously
every prosecution in the UK is in the King's name, the king
having to, to prosecute his own brother.
I mean, that would be a truly extraordinary thing.
And I think also we have to think about, you know, these
statements work. I think they work for for people
like us people, you know, we've been around a bit.
We know that really the powers can't say much more and they're
trying their best. But for younger generations and
for the rest of the world, they just see Epstein and Andrew and
Virginia Jeffrey arrest court case, you know, locked up at the
moment. And it can't get worse, isn't
it? I mean, that is just
reputationally devastating. And that's what the world sees.
And I think I, I really think there's a risk question that we
within the media, we sort of, we don't see the, what we don't see
actually how the rest of the world and people under the age
of say 40 are, are seeing this and what they think about this.
Dan, how how do you think this translates to the public also
bearing in mind that in America they don't have any of the
deference to the royal family We do.
And you've got politicians out there demanding everybody gives
evidence. Yeah, well, I I was tried what
David said in a in a series of bad days.
This is the worst day. The the problem is the, the, the
royal family have been on, they've been taking hits since
the invention of, of the sort of the modern news media, let alone
the Internet, the annihilation of distance, the intimacy, the
destruction of privacy. It was all they they've just
been below. You know, I grew up with toe
sucking and I grew up with tape record, phone recordings.
I mean, this is as Dave, this has been a this has just been a
attritional First World War like trench warfare.
This family has been involved in and I think if you, if you
really scale it right back, you know, what is the point?
The monarchy, well, 1000 years ago, the point, the monarchy is
they're going to protect you from the guy coming over the
beach. They're going to protect your
farm from being burning your kids from being enslaved, right.
So that's, that's gone. That's we don't have that
anymore. So then the monarchy invented
this new idea, which is the idea of this sort of soft power, a
family that can exist above the fray, above the petty squabbles,
above the little things that you and I do every day trying to
earn a buck, trying to get ahead.
They don't need all that they got the jewelry in the medals
the past. So instead they're going to
they're going to shape best behaviour and and manners.
They're going to do good works and bring attention things.
But that that doesn't work if if you know that members of the
family are flogging state secrets to to to foreign agents,
It doesn't work if they're behaving atrocity in their
personal life. And so it's the combination of
those two things. The fault the royal family has
always misbehaved, but they've done so behind layers of privacy
that has now been obliterate does not exist in what we the
difference has gone. The religious idea of Romanica
is gone. So, so we are happy to report
and share those things which, which would have sunk Edward the
7th when he was a young man, It would have sunk the George the
4th when he was a young man. William the 4th was getting in
brawls the whole time when he was young, that stuff that
happened behind closed doors. So, so that's gone and, and, and
now they're even undermining this sort of idea of what this
from if it, if they're just like the rest of us, just trying to
make a buck, trying to buy a ski chalet by flogging stuff they
comes across, they're distant. What is the point?
I mean, what we, what we don't know, we don't know is I just
want to say the allegation is that emails were being passed
about forthcoming trips in his role as a trade envoy and then
reports of what had happened on those trips.
And, and, and I suppose so we've got to be careful about words
like flogging because we don't know whether there was anything.
Commercially sent in. Return.
But I mean, you know, that is just where this begins, so.
So this is a lot worse than sex scandals of the past or divorces
because this is criminality potentially.
And also the same police force that has arrested him is looking
into much more serious allegations, arguably about the
trafficking of women into this country for for Andrew to have
sex with is doesn't that, you know, are we approaching a point
where this is not recoverable? And and that it goes far deeper
than Andrew? Because the questions will pile
up now about what the king ever knew the king.
The king can't be can't give evidence in a court case for the
reasons David has said. Because the king brings the
prosecution. It also makes us think about the
role of the Queen. Yeah, well.
The late Queen, Yeah. I'm all, all of everything's
recoverable. I mean, the British royal family
have come back from the most astonishing problems before.
But the by but by the same token, it's also everything is I
think more volatile. We, we know from our political
partisanship, we are a lot less. We are happier to change
positions when it comes to vote, you know, voting.
We were seeing this on, on either flank of the political
party situation at the moment. So we we are less though I think
there's less ballast. I think there's less, oh, well,
we've had this system for 300 years, let's not get it.
And there's a sense like with Scottish independence, you just
need to get 50% + 1 on one day. And I think that's a real danger
for the royal family that this, this is, it doesn't need to be a
kind of world historic, seismic, slow process.
It can just get really bad, but for a short enough period where
something, you know, it, all it takes is a Jeremy Corbyn to get
into office or something like that, and then they've got then
it, then it's then they're facing a terminal crisis.
David, what do you make of how we're going to look at Queen
Elizabeth through this now as well?
I mean, throughout all the scandals and all the, you know,
the, the, the horrible years, she was the one who was, who was
unimpeachable. There may have been missteps,
but by and large she was respected and loved.
Is aren't people going to reassess that now and say, what
did she know? Was she involved in the payment
to Virginia Giuffre and why? We, we know that it's been
widely reported that Andrew, Prince Andrew that was paid up
to £12 million to Virginia and Giuffre.
And we know that a large chunk of that money came from the
Queen. And it is true that people in
the palace are extremely concerned that this could affect
her reputation. And I noticed that Tim
Montgomery on, on their on X this morning posted, you know,
thank God the Queen's gone because this would this, you
know, this would have been very difficult for her.
And I, I, it's interesting if you look at that, the response
to that post from particularly younger people was what about
Virginia, Jeffrey? And this is what I mean about, I
think younger people, particularly women, but not just
not just women see this as a cover up of, of abuse.
And you can never recover from that.
I'm quite right too. And in institutions it's it's,
it's it's look at what's happened to the BBC post Jimmy
Savile and so on, not making comparisons between Jimmy Savile
and Prince Andrew. What I'm saying is that that
type of crisis is of a whole different nature to a normal
reputational crisis. If it turns out and if this goes
to court and if it emerges, and I suspect it will, that there
are many people including the police protection people that
new things go back to the Emily make this interview in Newsnight
2019 clear that many of the things said in that interview
were untrue. I mean, it's undisputed now how
many people in the palace knew, how many people sat at home and
watched that interview and knew that wasn't true and didn't do
anything about it and how senior were they and did that include
members of the royal family? At the moment we don't know the
answers, but if a court case gives us those answers, then I
think the institution could really be damaged, I mean really
be damaged. I agree with Dan that everything
is recoverable. But I detect, you know, with the
Prince of Princess of Wales, you know, it's almost as if then
some of the things they say. And do you, you wonder whether
they that, whether they've lost the fight actually, whether they
actually want the royal family as it exists now to continue.
I'm not sure that they want the royal family to continue.
But I think in a much more in a slimmed down version, I think, I
think The upshot from all this may well be a very severely
damaged institution, sadly, with a lot of illness at the moment
as well, which is another factor.
And in the future, as these these things roll out, we have
a, a smaller royal family that's entirely different in nature to
the one that we see now. I think, I think we'll look back
at today, the day that Andrew was arrested as a, as a real
turning point. I mean, he is a member of the
royal family as we sit here is in a cell.
Or, or a police station at least.
Yes, I mean and, and again, I think for both fairness and and
legal necessity, I need to say that Andrew has not been found
guilty of anything and denies all the allegations against him.
But something has clearly changed dam which which is that
throughout all the these years of allegations, the police
didn't move and the police didn't mount an investigation.
And and us and other news organisations were going to them
and saying, well, what about the flights and what about these
allegations? Why aren't you investigating?
And you know, the word just came back.
There is no investigation. You know, the King spoke some
days ago or issued a statement saying that they were prepared
to, they stood ready to assist the, you know, the Thames Valley
Police. And then the Prime Minister a
few days later said nobody is above the law.
I mean, these are signals. Presumably, I wonder.
It's fascinating, isn't it? I mean, I think that.
I mean, but I also think that when, you know, when you publish
your inbox, you it's pretty tough to get away from, you
know, when it's in black and white and it's not rumour, it's
not unsubstantiated. I mean, this is now.
It's now there for people to read and it just gets it just
gets harder to to ignore and sideline.
But I think you're right. Something's changed not in the
last few days and I'd love to know more about that.
What has also changed, and this is reasons to be hopeful, if you
like, which is that it shows that our democracy has changed
our our concept of ourselves. A nation has changed which is,
you know, this, this just, you know, the Queen's uncle was
reasonable, allegedly reasonably badly behaved.
Certainly as I said with the 7th paved dreadfully and and was all
and was enmeshed in the justice system to a certain extent and
had to be removed from that. So in the 19th century.
But this is just this is an example of albeit delayed, but
this is an example of a of a citizen of this country being
taken into custody like anybody else, being treated the same as
anyone else. So sometimes when bad things
look like they're happening in Democrat, bad things never look
like happening in totalitarian states until the whole thing
collapses. When bad things happen into Oxy,
it's because we are not shy of them, we're not afraid of them.
And I think it does say something about Britain arguably
moving towards a different, different place, different
relationship with the Royals certainly, but different idea of
ourselves. So do we know whether in in
history, I mean, I'm talking about the last couple 100 years,
I suppose, whether the the Royals were in fact protected?
Yeah, by by authority. Absolutely.
William the 4th was in a brawl, got let out as soon as they
found out who he was. They they perhaps there's just
simply no. Yes, they were protected.
Yes. Yes, they they.
Still are, to the degree. I mean, obviously, you know, I
don't put it at the top of my CV anymore, but I was editor of The
Sun for five years and there were, there were a number of
times went during my editing years when we didn't run stories
about senior members of the royal family.
And that still happens now. And they're not going to say
what they are obviously, but they're the royal family are
still protected by the British press.
There is still a relation, not all the time, but there are
rules, unwritten rules. I completely agree with what
you've just said about Dan, about the UK.
It contrasts so much with the US.
The moment, you know, we, we've Peter Manlson has been
investigated. You know, Andrew has been
investigated. There are consequences in this
country to doing things alleged, to doing things that are, that
are, that are wrong. I know these are alleged crimes
and we don't know yet. But there are no matter who you
are, the police come knocking. That does not happen in the US
at the moment. And even if it does, you know,
the president will just wipe the slate clean later.
And I, I think the contrast between what's happening in
America and Britain, it makes me feel quite proud to be British.
And I'm not, I'm not something that rolls myself a flag
regularly, but I am quite, you know, there are.
I completely agree. There are some positives here
too. Just, I mean, people will be
intrigued by the idea that stories weren't run.
Can you just without saying what they were, why weren't they run?
You know who who who would decide to bury them and why.
Well, when I was editing The Sun, The Sun was selling 3.8
million copies. It was much, much bigger than
than than it is now. And you would have to take her
as an editor, you would have to, in conjunction with your
proprietary and so on, work out whether running certain news
stories would sell more copies or lose you copies.
And I, I don't want to go into mistakes I made, but I didn't
make. I did make mistakes and I
apologise for them at the time and lost a lot of sales
sometimes and those were relatively small beer.
So it was it was about the readers not liking this stuff
rather than a sort of an establishment cover up.
Yeah. The question is, I mean, this is
very, this is really before social media.
The question was, will do the readers want to to read this?
Do they want to read this or would they rather not read this?
And that still happens now, bizarrely.
So there are many, there are many rumours and things about
members of the royal family you can see on social media or in
the US. And I'm in the USA lot and I can
I read things there. I don't really, I don't read in
the UK and most people in this country may, May.
I'm not saying these rumours are true, I'm just saying the idea
that the British press just print anything about the royal
family is not true, wasn't true then and it's not true now.
But then let's go to William and Kate because because their
statements have been much lower level than the kings.
You know, their their statements so far have been about their
concern for women and girls and, and they haven't really engaged
beyond that. You know, are they are they
slipping behind? Do they need to engage with
what's going on, or are they right to keep a distance?
I mean, I, I think they probably want to keep a distance, don't
they? I mean, they must be just
desperate. I mean, you do, you spend your
life trying to do good works and shape good behaviours and all
those things and then you are dragged things totally outside
your control, sort of drag you back into these discussions like
the one we're having now. We're not talking about the, the
amazing things that they have done, no doubt in their, in
their own, you know, their own philanthropic and charitable
lives recently. So it must be it it, Yeah, it
must. It's a brutal, it's a brutal
tightrope they're walking. David, what do you make of the
way they are handling it, given William could be king pretty
soon? We haven't mentioned Prince
Harry, and I think that's a factor that that that we should
just throw into the mix here. He is of course, in in court
this week against the owners of the Daily Mail and has chosen to
relieve the royal family and live in the US as we know.
That affects, I think a lot of the way that they communicate.
But I think on this issue, it is more a case of them wanting to
align with Buckingham Palace, aligned with the king, but play
second fiddle and they are, you know, second fiddle.
I mean, that's the way the family work.
So I don't think there's anything surprising actually in
a way that they in the way that they that they have
communicated. I think, I think it's been, I
think it's been fine. And I think it's I think it's
fine today. But I do think, as I said
earlier, that you can see if you read between the lines where
we're going with this, which is, which is just trying.
I think they want to try and be a relatively ordinary family,
which is is of course a very, very difficult task to pull off
because they're not. But but doesn't it also sort of
accelerate what William has been talking about, which is he wants
change, You know, I mean, we we have very little sense of what
change he actually means. But in his last interview about
how he wants to change the monarchy, which was on Apple TV
with a Hollywood star, Eugene, you know, he, he sort of hinted
that he wanted, he wanted a modernised and changed royal
family. He isn't he going to have to
accelerate that pretty quickly if his uncle is facing criminal
charges. It's really interesting because
even that interview, there was a degree of deference there.
And as Dan was a alluding to or talking saying earlier, if
difference disappears entirely, what is the left?
And that is the real problem, the real problem for them.
And I think that, you know, it's very difficult to maintain
difference if you go for a smaller scale Dutch ordinary
sort of European style and monarchy.
And I think, and I also think, and I'm thinking back to what I
was saying earlier, I think the, the link with Epstein and these
allegations about, about abuse, abuse of young women and, and,
and, and worse are really damaging.
I, I think are damaging for all generations, but I think for the
younger generations, they're, if you look at the numbers, the,
the royal family's approval ratings amongst younger people
have never been worse. And I think this is one of the
reasons why. I, I love the this idea of this
trip down. Like it's always very fun
because it's, they talk about change.
No one seems to talk about change in their kind of
constitutional legal position, perhaps financial position.
It always seems to be about bulleting uncles.
I mean, it's like, yeah, slim down.
That's what we need. Slim down.
I mean, we're not in, we're not in Mughal India.
You can't just all the Ottoman, you know, Ottoman Empire, you
can't strangle the extraneous members of the family.
You know, I don't. So I I've never seen a case that
that's that somehow this changed monarchy.
I don't know what it looks like as an institution other than
please, please can we ignore royal cousins and uncles?
And I feel sorry for Prince Louis because he's looks like
he's on the ski jump. But it's this, it's this is it
just that it is it I no one other than the king, queen and
the heir should sort of have any attention.
I mean, what what is what is this new plan?
I don't know what it looks like. Yeah, I mean, and it's worth
point reminding people that Andrew is still eighth in line
to the throne, which is, which is just bizarre and
extraordinary. I mean, doesn't it look as
though the king in his statements, though, is basically
saying, OK, you can have him, you know, totally.
He he's the sacrificial lamb to save the monarchy.
Yes, after a very bad start, though, I mean, they, they,
they, you know, they've only caught up recently.
Their, their, their, their communications and what they're
saying now are, are, are good. And as I've said earlier and
said on, you know, when he hits the fan, they are reacting in
real time now, which is why we've seen two statements today.
And the idea that you they put out two statements in 24 hours,
just hours after the the police turned up 8:00 this morning in a
previous life would have in a previous era would never have
happened. You know, if the, if the queen
was still, if the queen was still the queen, we wouldn't
have seen any of this. So, but the problem is if you
are now treating your communications like a, like a
government, like, like a government department or a
company, you've got to keep it up.
You cannot say no comment. You've got to react.
And therefore, whatever happens, they have to react.
So, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the royal family is in
modern times survive because this sort of thin veneer, this
sort of gossamer veneer that we can see who they are and we can
see all their faults, but we don't really want to look
through the gossamer. We just want to, you know, we,
we will, we will salute and we'll carry on.
And I'm not sure that exists anymore.
And as soon as that goes from a veneer or whatever you want to
call it, the, the shield between us and them.
Once that's lifted, what's left? I mean, isn't the other aspects
of this, which I think particularly the young people on
social media, you know, are appalled by, is that the way
these stories play out, whether it's Andrew or Mandelson or, or,
or any of the other things they, they, they turn in, in the media
into sort of institutional stories, scandal stories.
And the, the biggest scandal of the last 100 years is this
extraordinary network of exploitation of women and, and
children that was going on by the rich and powerful and
sometimes famous. And that keeps getting buried by
the latest elements of scandal. And, and, and that if this
spreads beyond misconduct in public office to, to the
question, you know, and the allegations that Thames Valley
Police are also investigating about trafficking, you know, we
keep saying it's as bad as it gets.
That's as bad as it gets because that is the worst scandal in in
our modern history, right? You know, forget the politics.
It is. And I don't think we are
anywhere near the end of this. In fact, I think we're in, you
know, we're, we're halfway through a volume of, you know,
it's a 3 volume novel and we're halfway through the 1st volume.
Because this is about the powerless and the powerful.
And it is the people that have forgotten are the people like
Virginia Jeffrey who took her own life.
And there are many others like that.
And the public can see that. And it's really interesting what
you just said, Krishna, because I think the media of which we're
all apart, really the way the media handles these is that we,
we convert them into institutional stories.
We look at it from the perspective of government,
Downing St. the White House, the palace, whereas the public look
at it from the point of view of the of the victims and quite
right too. And therefore the powerful
people around the world. I mean, what's happened here,
what the New York Times has been brilliant.
There's many comments the New York Times, I forget his name,
who says that the Epstein emails are really important because
they show us how the Uber Uber powerful talk to each other when
when they don't think we're looking.
And he they're absolutely right. The arrogance, the entitlement
and there's going to be big consequences for this massive
consequences. And we're only, we're only at
the beginnings of it. But it's interesting, David
listening to you because this is a crisis, but the reason it's
delayed, the reason no one didn't think is because it
because the social I social ideas, our culture is changing
very fast, right? So, so now the 30-40 a hundred
years ago, the idea that Prince Andrew would be brought down by
having sex with a 17 year old for allegedly.
And but that that fact, just people laughing that what would
have brought the monarchy down is getting divorced, having sex
with someone in a same sex relationship.
End of right now. I, I run is that's why the kind
of that's why this this institution is just reeling
because because society and we see it in our own families.
We see it talking to our grandparents about race, about
climate, about about gender relation, all that kind of
stuff. These things are now, as you
say, that would be the worst crisis in history of our family.
But 40 years ago, that wasn't a crisis.
What dare I say was the norm? It was assumed that rich,
powerful men were going to seek out young women to have sex
with. It also makes you wonder whether
if, if this is the beginning of some kind of downfall of the
elite, whether whether we are also at the beginning of quite a
big social shift. Yeah, we're wondering where this
where this huge, these huge shifts, where do they, where do
they end? And at the end of the day, you
find yourself, you can find yourself on the wrong side of
history. You know, only ten, 20-30 years
passes and you go from being good lad to being a criminal.
David Yellen, Dan Snow, thank you both very much indeed.
Thank you. That's it for this edition of
the FORECAST. We'll be back very soon.
Bye bye.