Latest / The Fourcast / Andrew arrested: what’s next for the Crown?

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Andrew arrested: what’s next for the Crown? · The Fourcast

0:00
The royal family has always misbehaved, but they've done so
0:03
behind layers of privacy that has now been obliterated, does
0:06
not exist in the difference has gone.
0:08
The religious idea of Romani is they're facing a terminal
0:11
crisis. The crisis, if you like, is way
0:14
out of their control. I think we'll look back at
0:16
today, the day that Angie was arrested, as a, as a real
0:21
turning point. I mean, it is a member of the
0:23
royal family as we sit here is in a cell.
0:27
The same police force that has arrested him is looking into
0:30
much more serious allegations, arguably about the trafficking
0:34
of women. Are we approaching a point where
0:36
this is not recoverable? Hello and welcome to the
0:42
forecast. Andrew Manbatton Windsor has
0:44
been arrested and his brother, the King, says the police have
0:46
his full and wholehearted support and that the law must
0:49
take its course. So what happens next for Andrew
0:52
and the Crown? Is this the biggest crisis the
0:55
royal family has faced in modern history?
0:57
The King says it would not be right to comment further on the
0:59
matter. But how long will he be able to
1:01
hold that line? Joining me today, the historian
1:04
Dan Snow and David Yellen, the former editor of The Sun, is
1:08
joining us on Zoom. David, let's begin with you
1:11
because you work in in public relations as well.
1:15
I mean, is, is this the biggest crisis the monarchy has ever
1:19
faced in modern times? And can they survive it?
1:22
I think this is a very bad day in a series of very bad days.
1:26
I think they're going to be a lot more bad days if this goes
1:28
to court. And I don't think people have
1:31
really got their heads around that yet.
1:33
And yes, Krishna, I think this is the worst crisis since the
1:36
abdication. Yeah.
1:37
Dan when was the last time a Prince was arrested?
1:40
Oh, I'm glad you've asked me that.
1:41
I, I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to crunch it.
1:43
I, I think it was probably the Duke of Monmouth who was the son
1:47
of the acknowledged, albeit legitimate son of Charles the
1:50
Second, fought an upright, launched an uprising against his
1:53
uncle James 2nd, and was arrested and tried and executed
1:56
in 1685. And despite the best efforts of
1:59
many, many Georgian Princess and you know, some of Queen
2:02
Victoria's two kids, they have managed to, they've managed to
2:04
keep out of keep out of the prison cell.
2:07
So I think it's, I mean, it really is.
2:08
It's got usually when you people say things are unprecedented,
2:11
they're usually quite precedented.
2:13
But this one is this is really extraordinary, really
2:16
extraordinary. I mean, David, when you say this
2:18
is going to get worse, you have to think about where where an
2:23
arrest leads, if it goes to a criminal case and who the other
2:28
witnesses might be, who else might be questioned.
2:31
We're talking about people in government, people in the
2:36
palace, possibly Sarah Ferguson, you know, goodness knows who
2:41
else, Possibly the king. You know, journalists like
2:43
ourselves have been around a few years.
2:45
We're used to this. But I don't think the public is
2:48
yet. And I think what we're going to
2:50
see, what's going to happen is it will go quiet for a bit
2:53
because that's what happens. Should there be charges, for
2:56
example? This is now an active case.
2:59
So it might dip, but then it will come back and it will come
3:02
back in the most forensic and reputationally damaging way that
3:05
you can possibly have, which is if it happens, a Criminal Court
3:10
case, as you say, Krishna. With, with, with people that
3:13
normally don't talk, that have spent their entire lives not
3:17
talking publicly when they except when they want to be like
3:20
Sarah Ferguson and members of the royal family and people in
3:23
and around. And much more importantly, it's
3:24
in my mind, the staff, the people at the palace, what did
3:29
they know, you know, and when did they know it?
3:32
And they will be asked that. And I think this is, I mean, we
3:36
don't know how bad this is because we don't know what's
3:39
actually going to come out. It's the real truth.
3:41
But you know what? Neither does the palace.
3:43
Right. But I mean, do you think their
3:45
public line can hold, but that's it.
3:47
They've said they support the investigation.
3:49
No, and that's it. I did this podcast on the BBC
3:52
call when it hits the fan and I've been saying for weeks there
3:55
that actually that what you might call the tactical PR of
3:58
the palace has gotten very good in recent in recent weeks.
4:02
They react in real time to the news.
4:04
So today we've seen two statements, seen a statement
4:07
from Buckingham Palace, a statement from Kensington
4:09
Palace. And they haven't just said we
4:12
can't comment because this is an ongoing case.
4:13
They have, they have, you know, said that they, I haven't got
4:17
the exact words in front of me, but basically they are concerned
4:21
about the allegations and they will continue to cooperate and
4:23
so on. That's OK.
4:27
But really the, the, the, the crisis, if you like, is way out
4:32
of their control now because they don't know what's going to
4:36
happen. They don't know, they don't know
4:37
how bad this is. And, and, you know, we are
4:41
possibly going to see, you know, the, the king because obviously
4:47
every prosecution in the UK is in the King's name, the king
4:51
having to, to prosecute his own brother.
4:54
I mean, that would be a truly extraordinary thing.
4:58
And I think also we have to think about, you know, these
5:02
statements work. I think they work for for people
5:06
like us people, you know, we've been around a bit.
5:09
We know that really the powers can't say much more and they're
5:13
trying their best. But for younger generations and
5:17
for the rest of the world, they just see Epstein and Andrew and
5:23
Virginia Jeffrey arrest court case, you know, locked up at the
5:28
moment. And it can't get worse, isn't
5:32
it? I mean, that is just
5:33
reputationally devastating. And that's what the world sees.
5:38
And I think I, I really think there's a risk question that we
5:40
within the media, we sort of, we don't see the, what we don't see
5:44
actually how the rest of the world and people under the age
5:47
of say 40 are, are seeing this and what they think about this.
5:52
Dan, how how do you think this translates to the public also
5:55
bearing in mind that in America they don't have any of the
5:58
deference to the royal family We do.
6:00
And you've got politicians out there demanding everybody gives
6:03
evidence. Yeah, well, I I was tried what
6:05
David said in a in a series of bad days.
6:07
This is the worst day. The the problem is the, the, the
6:10
royal family have been on, they've been taking hits since
6:13
the invention of, of the sort of the modern news media, let alone
6:17
the Internet, the annihilation of distance, the intimacy, the
6:20
destruction of privacy. It was all they they've just
6:22
been below. You know, I grew up with toe
6:24
sucking and I grew up with tape record, phone recordings.
6:27
I mean, this is as Dave, this has been a this has just been a
6:30
attritional First World War like trench warfare.
6:33
This family has been involved in and I think if you, if you
6:36
really scale it right back, you know, what is the point?
6:38
The monarchy, well, 1000 years ago, the point, the monarchy is
6:40
they're going to protect you from the guy coming over the
6:42
beach. They're going to protect your
6:43
farm from being burning your kids from being enslaved, right.
6:45
So that's, that's gone. That's we don't have that
6:47
anymore. So then the monarchy invented
6:48
this new idea, which is the idea of this sort of soft power, a
6:51
family that can exist above the fray, above the petty squabbles,
6:55
above the little things that you and I do every day trying to
6:58
earn a buck, trying to get ahead.
6:59
They don't need all that they got the jewelry in the medals
7:01
the past. So instead they're going to
7:03
they're going to shape best behaviour and and manners.
7:06
They're going to do good works and bring attention things.
7:08
But that that doesn't work if if you know that members of the
7:12
family are flogging state secrets to to to foreign agents,
7:17
It doesn't work if they're behaving atrocity in their
7:19
personal life. And so it's the combination of
7:20
those two things. The fault the royal family has
7:22
always misbehaved, but they've done so behind layers of privacy
7:27
that has now been obliterate does not exist in what we the
7:29
difference has gone. The religious idea of Romanica
7:31
is gone. So, so we are happy to report
7:33
and share those things which, which would have sunk Edward the
7:36
7th when he was a young man, It would have sunk the George the
7:39
4th when he was a young man. William the 4th was getting in
7:41
brawls the whole time when he was young, that stuff that
7:43
happened behind closed doors. So, so that's gone and, and, and
7:47
now they're even undermining this sort of idea of what this
7:49
from if it, if they're just like the rest of us, just trying to
7:52
make a buck, trying to buy a ski chalet by flogging stuff they
7:55
comes across, they're distant. What is the point?
7:57
I mean, what we, what we don't know, we don't know is I just
8:01
want to say the allegation is that emails were being passed
8:07
about forthcoming trips in his role as a trade envoy and then
8:13
reports of what had happened on those trips.
8:17
And, and, and I suppose so we've got to be careful about words
8:20
like flogging because we don't know whether there was anything.
8:23
Commercially sent in. Return.
8:26
But I mean, you know, that is just where this begins, so.
8:29
So this is a lot worse than sex scandals of the past or divorces
8:34
because this is criminality potentially.
8:37
And also the same police force that has arrested him is looking
8:41
into much more serious allegations, arguably about the
8:44
trafficking of women into this country for for Andrew to have
8:51
sex with is doesn't that, you know, are we approaching a point
8:58
where this is not recoverable? And and that it goes far deeper
9:02
than Andrew? Because the questions will pile
9:05
up now about what the king ever knew the king.
9:10
The king can't be can't give evidence in a court case for the
9:13
reasons David has said. Because the king brings the
9:16
prosecution. It also makes us think about the
9:19
role of the Queen. Yeah, well.
9:21
The late Queen, Yeah. I'm all, all of everything's
9:25
recoverable. I mean, the British royal family
9:27
have come back from the most astonishing problems before.
9:31
But the by but by the same token, it's also everything is I
9:34
think more volatile. We, we know from our political
9:36
partisanship, we are a lot less. We are happier to change
9:39
positions when it comes to vote, you know, voting.
9:42
We were seeing this on, on either flank of the political
9:45
party situation at the moment. So we we are less though I think
9:48
there's less ballast. I think there's less, oh, well,
9:51
we've had this system for 300 years, let's not get it.
9:54
And there's a sense like with Scottish independence, you just
9:56
need to get 50% + 1 on one day. And I think that's a real danger
10:00
for the royal family that this, this is, it doesn't need to be a
10:03
kind of world historic, seismic, slow process.
10:05
It can just get really bad, but for a short enough period where
10:10
something, you know, it, all it takes is a Jeremy Corbyn to get
10:12
into office or something like that, and then they've got then
10:14
it, then it's then they're facing a terminal crisis.
10:17
David, what do you make of how we're going to look at Queen
10:20
Elizabeth through this now as well?
10:23
I mean, throughout all the scandals and all the, you know,
10:27
the, the, the horrible years, she was the one who was, who was
10:30
unimpeachable. There may have been missteps,
10:34
but by and large she was respected and loved.
10:39
Is aren't people going to reassess that now and say, what
10:43
did she know? Was she involved in the payment
10:47
to Virginia Giuffre and why? We, we know that it's been
10:52
widely reported that Andrew, Prince Andrew that was paid up
10:56
to £12 million to Virginia and Giuffre.
11:00
And we know that a large chunk of that money came from the
11:03
Queen. And it is true that people in
11:05
the palace are extremely concerned that this could affect
11:08
her reputation. And I noticed that Tim
11:10
Montgomery on, on their on X this morning posted, you know,
11:15
thank God the Queen's gone because this would this, you
11:18
know, this would have been very difficult for her.
11:20
And I, I, it's interesting if you look at that, the response
11:23
to that post from particularly younger people was what about
11:28
Virginia, Jeffrey? And this is what I mean about, I
11:32
think younger people, particularly women, but not just
11:35
not just women see this as a cover up of, of abuse.
11:44
And you can never recover from that.
11:46
I'm quite right too. And in institutions it's it's,
11:49
it's it's look at what's happened to the BBC post Jimmy
11:52
Savile and so on, not making comparisons between Jimmy Savile
11:54
and Prince Andrew. What I'm saying is that that
11:57
type of crisis is of a whole different nature to a normal
12:01
reputational crisis. If it turns out and if this goes
12:05
to court and if it emerges, and I suspect it will, that there
12:10
are many people including the police protection people that
12:13
new things go back to the Emily make this interview in Newsnight
12:17
2019 clear that many of the things said in that interview
12:20
were untrue. I mean, it's undisputed now how
12:23
many people in the palace knew, how many people sat at home and
12:27
watched that interview and knew that wasn't true and didn't do
12:30
anything about it and how senior were they and did that include
12:35
members of the royal family? At the moment we don't know the
12:38
answers, but if a court case gives us those answers, then I
12:41
think the institution could really be damaged, I mean really
12:44
be damaged. I agree with Dan that everything
12:46
is recoverable. But I detect, you know, with the
12:50
Prince of Princess of Wales, you know, it's almost as if then
12:54
some of the things they say. And do you, you wonder whether
12:56
they that, whether they've lost the fight actually, whether they
13:00
actually want the royal family as it exists now to continue.
13:04
I'm not sure that they want the royal family to continue.
13:06
But I think in a much more in a slimmed down version, I think, I
13:09
think The upshot from all this may well be a very severely
13:13
damaged institution, sadly, with a lot of illness at the moment
13:17
as well, which is another factor.
13:20
And in the future, as these these things roll out, we have
13:23
a, a smaller royal family that's entirely different in nature to
13:27
the one that we see now. I think, I think we'll look back
13:30
at today, the day that Andrew was arrested as a, as a real
13:35
turning point. I mean, he is a member of the
13:37
royal family as we sit here is in a cell.
13:41
Or, or a police station at least.
13:43
Yes, I mean and, and again, I think for both fairness and and
13:48
legal necessity, I need to say that Andrew has not been found
13:52
guilty of anything and denies all the allegations against him.
13:57
But something has clearly changed dam which which is that
14:00
throughout all the these years of allegations, the police
14:05
didn't move and the police didn't mount an investigation.
14:09
And and us and other news organisations were going to them
14:12
and saying, well, what about the flights and what about these
14:14
allegations? Why aren't you investigating?
14:17
And you know, the word just came back.
14:18
There is no investigation. You know, the King spoke some
14:24
days ago or issued a statement saying that they were prepared
14:27
to, they stood ready to assist the, you know, the Thames Valley
14:31
Police. And then the Prime Minister a
14:33
few days later said nobody is above the law.
14:36
I mean, these are signals. Presumably, I wonder.
14:40
It's fascinating, isn't it? I mean, I think that.
14:42
I mean, but I also think that when, you know, when you publish
14:45
your inbox, you it's pretty tough to get away from, you
14:48
know, when it's in black and white and it's not rumour, it's
14:51
not unsubstantiated. I mean, this is now.
14:53
It's now there for people to read and it just gets it just
14:57
gets harder to to ignore and sideline.
15:00
But I think you're right. Something's changed not in the
15:01
last few days and I'd love to know more about that.
15:04
What has also changed, and this is reasons to be hopeful, if you
15:08
like, which is that it shows that our democracy has changed
15:11
our our concept of ourselves. A nation has changed which is,
15:14
you know, this, this just, you know, the Queen's uncle was
15:16
reasonable, allegedly reasonably badly behaved.
15:19
Certainly as I said with the 7th paved dreadfully and and was all
15:22
and was enmeshed in the justice system to a certain extent and
15:28
had to be removed from that. So in the 19th century.
15:30
But this is just this is an example of albeit delayed, but
15:34
this is an example of a of a citizen of this country being
15:37
taken into custody like anybody else, being treated the same as
15:40
anyone else. So sometimes when bad things
15:43
look like they're happening in Democrat, bad things never look
15:46
like happening in totalitarian states until the whole thing
15:48
collapses. When bad things happen into Oxy,
15:50
it's because we are not shy of them, we're not afraid of them.
15:52
And I think it does say something about Britain arguably
15:55
moving towards a different, different place, different
15:57
relationship with the Royals certainly, but different idea of
15:59
ourselves. So do we know whether in in
16:01
history, I mean, I'm talking about the last couple 100 years,
16:04
I suppose, whether the the Royals were in fact protected?
16:07
Yeah, by by authority. Absolutely.
16:09
William the 4th was in a brawl, got let out as soon as they
16:12
found out who he was. They they perhaps there's just
16:16
simply no. Yes, they were protected.
16:19
Yes. Yes, they they.
16:21
Still are, to the degree. I mean, obviously, you know, I
16:24
don't put it at the top of my CV anymore, but I was editor of The
16:26
Sun for five years and there were, there were a number of
16:29
times went during my editing years when we didn't run stories
16:33
about senior members of the royal family.
16:35
And that still happens now. And they're not going to say
16:37
what they are obviously, but they're the royal family are
16:40
still protected by the British press.
16:42
There is still a relation, not all the time, but there are
16:45
rules, unwritten rules. I completely agree with what
16:49
you've just said about Dan, about the UK.
16:52
It contrasts so much with the US.
16:55
The moment, you know, we, we've Peter Manlson has been
16:57
investigated. You know, Andrew has been
16:59
investigated. There are consequences in this
17:02
country to doing things alleged, to doing things that are, that
17:07
are, that are wrong. I know these are alleged crimes
17:10
and we don't know yet. But there are no matter who you
17:12
are, the police come knocking. That does not happen in the US
17:16
at the moment. And even if it does, you know,
17:19
the president will just wipe the slate clean later.
17:23
And I, I think the contrast between what's happening in
17:26
America and Britain, it makes me feel quite proud to be British.
17:29
And I'm not, I'm not something that rolls myself a flag
17:32
regularly, but I am quite, you know, there are.
17:35
I completely agree. There are some positives here
17:38
too. Just, I mean, people will be
17:40
intrigued by the idea that stories weren't run.
17:43
Can you just without saying what they were, why weren't they run?
17:47
You know who who who would decide to bury them and why.
17:50
Well, when I was editing The Sun, The Sun was selling 3.8
17:56
million copies. It was much, much bigger than
17:58
than than it is now. And you would have to take her
18:02
as an editor, you would have to, in conjunction with your
18:06
proprietary and so on, work out whether running certain news
18:09
stories would sell more copies or lose you copies.
18:13
And I, I don't want to go into mistakes I made, but I didn't
18:15
make. I did make mistakes and I
18:18
apologise for them at the time and lost a lot of sales
18:21
sometimes and those were relatively small beer.
18:25
So it was it was about the readers not liking this stuff
18:28
rather than a sort of an establishment cover up.
18:31
Yeah. The question is, I mean, this is
18:32
very, this is really before social media.
18:35
The question was, will do the readers want to to read this?
18:40
Do they want to read this or would they rather not read this?
18:44
And that still happens now, bizarrely.
18:46
So there are many, there are many rumours and things about
18:49
members of the royal family you can see on social media or in
18:51
the US. And I'm in the USA lot and I can
18:54
I read things there. I don't really, I don't read in
18:56
the UK and most people in this country may, May.
19:00
I'm not saying these rumours are true, I'm just saying the idea
19:05
that the British press just print anything about the royal
19:07
family is not true, wasn't true then and it's not true now.
19:11
But then let's go to William and Kate because because their
19:13
statements have been much lower level than the kings.
19:18
You know, their their statements so far have been about their
19:21
concern for women and girls and, and they haven't really engaged
19:27
beyond that. You know, are they are they
19:31
slipping behind? Do they need to engage with
19:34
what's going on, or are they right to keep a distance?
19:36
I mean, I, I think they probably want to keep a distance, don't
19:38
they? I mean, they must be just
19:39
desperate. I mean, you do, you spend your
19:41
life trying to do good works and shape good behaviours and all
19:47
those things and then you are dragged things totally outside
19:51
your control, sort of drag you back into these discussions like
19:53
the one we're having now. We're not talking about the, the
19:57
amazing things that they have done, no doubt in their, in
19:58
their own, you know, their own philanthropic and charitable
20:00
lives recently. So it must be it it, Yeah, it
20:04
must. It's a brutal, it's a brutal
20:06
tightrope they're walking. David, what do you make of the
20:09
way they are handling it, given William could be king pretty
20:14
soon? We haven't mentioned Prince
20:15
Harry, and I think that's a factor that that that we should
20:19
just throw into the mix here. He is of course, in in court
20:23
this week against the owners of the Daily Mail and has chosen to
20:27
relieve the royal family and live in the US as we know.
20:31
That affects, I think a lot of the way that they communicate.
20:34
But I think on this issue, it is more a case of them wanting to
20:41
align with Buckingham Palace, aligned with the king, but play
20:45
second fiddle and they are, you know, second fiddle.
20:47
I mean, that's the way the family work.
20:49
So I don't think there's anything surprising actually in
20:51
a way that they in the way that they that they have
20:55
communicated. I think, I think it's been, I
20:57
think it's been fine. And I think it's I think it's
21:00
fine today. But I do think, as I said
21:02
earlier, that you can see if you read between the lines where
21:05
we're going with this, which is, which is just trying.
21:09
I think they want to try and be a relatively ordinary family,
21:12
which is is of course a very, very difficult task to pull off
21:16
because they're not. But but doesn't it also sort of
21:20
accelerate what William has been talking about, which is he wants
21:23
change, You know, I mean, we we have very little sense of what
21:27
change he actually means. But in his last interview about
21:30
how he wants to change the monarchy, which was on Apple TV
21:33
with a Hollywood star, Eugene, you know, he, he sort of hinted
21:38
that he wanted, he wanted a modernised and changed royal
21:41
family. He isn't he going to have to
21:44
accelerate that pretty quickly if his uncle is facing criminal
21:49
charges. It's really interesting because
21:51
even that interview, there was a degree of deference there.
21:54
And as Dan was a alluding to or talking saying earlier, if
21:59
difference disappears entirely, what is the left?
22:02
And that is the real problem, the real problem for them.
22:05
And I think that, you know, it's very difficult to maintain
22:08
difference if you go for a smaller scale Dutch ordinary
22:12
sort of European style and monarchy.
22:16
And I think, and I also think, and I'm thinking back to what I
22:18
was saying earlier, I think the, the link with Epstein and these
22:22
allegations about, about abuse, abuse of young women and, and,
22:28
and, and worse are really damaging.
22:34
I, I think are damaging for all generations, but I think for the
22:37
younger generations, they're, if you look at the numbers, the,
22:40
the royal family's approval ratings amongst younger people
22:45
have never been worse. And I think this is one of the
22:47
reasons why. I, I love the this idea of this
22:49
trip down. Like it's always very fun
22:50
because it's, they talk about change.
22:52
No one seems to talk about change in their kind of
22:53
constitutional legal position, perhaps financial position.
22:56
It always seems to be about bulleting uncles.
22:58
I mean, it's like, yeah, slim down.
23:00
That's what we need. Slim down.
23:01
I mean, we're not in, we're not in Mughal India.
23:03
You can't just all the Ottoman, you know, Ottoman Empire, you
23:05
can't strangle the extraneous members of the family.
23:07
You know, I don't. So I I've never seen a case that
23:10
that's that somehow this changed monarchy.
23:13
I don't know what it looks like as an institution other than
23:16
please, please can we ignore royal cousins and uncles?
23:19
And I feel sorry for Prince Louis because he's looks like
23:22
he's on the ski jump. But it's this, it's this is it
23:25
just that it is it I no one other than the king, queen and
23:29
the heir should sort of have any attention.
23:31
I mean, what what is what is this new plan?
23:33
I don't know what it looks like. Yeah, I mean, and it's worth
23:35
point reminding people that Andrew is still eighth in line
23:38
to the throne, which is, which is just bizarre and
23:41
extraordinary. I mean, doesn't it look as
23:43
though the king in his statements, though, is basically
23:46
saying, OK, you can have him, you know, totally.
23:49
He he's the sacrificial lamb to save the monarchy.
23:52
Yes, after a very bad start, though, I mean, they, they,
23:56
they, you know, they've only caught up recently.
23:58
Their, their, their, their communications and what they're
24:01
saying now are, are, are good. And as I've said earlier and
24:06
said on, you know, when he hits the fan, they are reacting in
24:09
real time now, which is why we've seen two statements today.
24:12
And the idea that you they put out two statements in 24 hours,
24:15
just hours after the the police turned up 8:00 this morning in a
24:19
previous life would have in a previous era would never have
24:23
happened. You know, if the, if the queen
24:24
was still, if the queen was still the queen, we wouldn't
24:27
have seen any of this. So, but the problem is if you
24:31
are now treating your communications like a, like a
24:34
government, like, like a government department or a
24:36
company, you've got to keep it up.
24:38
You cannot say no comment. You've got to react.
24:41
And therefore, whatever happens, they have to react.
24:44
So, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the royal family is in
24:49
modern times survive because this sort of thin veneer, this
24:52
sort of gossamer veneer that we can see who they are and we can
24:57
see all their faults, but we don't really want to look
25:00
through the gossamer. We just want to, you know, we,
25:02
we will, we will salute and we'll carry on.
25:04
And I'm not sure that exists anymore.
25:07
And as soon as that goes from a veneer or whatever you want to
25:09
call it, the, the shield between us and them.
25:12
Once that's lifted, what's left? I mean, isn't the other aspects
25:17
of this, which I think particularly the young people on
25:19
social media, you know, are appalled by, is that the way
25:24
these stories play out, whether it's Andrew or Mandelson or, or,
25:27
or any of the other things they, they, they turn in, in the media
25:32
into sort of institutional stories, scandal stories.
25:36
And the, the biggest scandal of the last 100 years is this
25:41
extraordinary network of exploitation of women and, and
25:45
children that was going on by the rich and powerful and
25:49
sometimes famous. And that keeps getting buried by
25:54
the latest elements of scandal. And, and, and that if this
25:58
spreads beyond misconduct in public office to, to the
26:03
question, you know, and the allegations that Thames Valley
26:06
Police are also investigating about trafficking, you know, we
26:12
keep saying it's as bad as it gets.
26:13
That's as bad as it gets because that is the worst scandal in in
26:17
our modern history, right? You know, forget the politics.
26:20
It is. And I don't think we are
26:23
anywhere near the end of this. In fact, I think we're in, you
26:26
know, we're, we're halfway through a volume of, you know,
26:28
it's a 3 volume novel and we're halfway through the 1st volume.
26:31
Because this is about the powerless and the powerful.
26:37
And it is the people that have forgotten are the people like
26:40
Virginia Jeffrey who took her own life.
26:43
And there are many others like that.
26:46
And the public can see that. And it's really interesting what
26:50
you just said, Krishna, because I think the media of which we're
26:52
all apart, really the way the media handles these is that we,
26:56
we convert them into institutional stories.
26:59
We look at it from the perspective of government,
27:03
Downing St. the White House, the palace, whereas the public look
27:07
at it from the point of view of the of the victims and quite
27:12
right too. And therefore the powerful
27:14
people around the world. I mean, what's happened here,
27:16
what the New York Times has been brilliant.
27:19
There's many comments the New York Times, I forget his name,
27:21
who says that the Epstein emails are really important because
27:24
they show us how the Uber Uber powerful talk to each other when
27:28
when they don't think we're looking.
27:30
And he they're absolutely right. The arrogance, the entitlement
27:36
and there's going to be big consequences for this massive
27:38
consequences. And we're only, we're only at
27:40
the beginnings of it. But it's interesting, David
27:42
listening to you because this is a crisis, but the reason it's
27:44
delayed, the reason no one didn't think is because it
27:47
because the social I social ideas, our culture is changing
27:51
very fast, right? So, so now the 30-40 a hundred
27:54
years ago, the idea that Prince Andrew would be brought down by
27:57
having sex with a 17 year old for allegedly.
27:59
And but that that fact, just people laughing that what would
28:03
have brought the monarchy down is getting divorced, having sex
28:07
with someone in a same sex relationship.
28:09
End of right now. I, I run is that's why the kind
28:12
of that's why this this institution is just reeling
28:15
because because society and we see it in our own families.
28:18
We see it talking to our grandparents about race, about
28:21
climate, about about gender relation, all that kind of
28:24
stuff. These things are now, as you
28:26
say, that would be the worst crisis in history of our family.
28:29
But 40 years ago, that wasn't a crisis.
28:31
What dare I say was the norm? It was assumed that rich,
28:34
powerful men were going to seek out young women to have sex
28:38
with. It also makes you wonder whether
28:40
if, if this is the beginning of some kind of downfall of the
28:43
elite, whether whether we are also at the beginning of quite a
28:47
big social shift. Yeah, we're wondering where this
28:49
where this huge, these huge shifts, where do they, where do
28:52
they end? And at the end of the day, you
28:54
find yourself, you can find yourself on the wrong side of
28:56
history. You know, only ten, 20-30 years
28:58
passes and you go from being good lad to being a criminal.
29:02
David Yellen, Dan Snow, thank you both very much indeed.
29:05
Thank you. That's it for this edition of
29:06
the FORECAST. We'll be back very soon.
29:08
Bye bye.