Latest / Mark and Pete / Andrew Mountbatten Windsor: a national embarrassment?
Transcript
- 0:08Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, a national embarrassment.
- 0:12Welcome to Mark and Pete, and tonight we consider what happens
- 0:17when a royal scandal refuses to fade quietly into the tapestry.
- 0:22Yes, this is Mark and Pete's two blokes with half an opinion.
- 0:26Now here's our first thought. Above all else, beneath our
- 0:31dignity we do abhor. If standards fall, we should
- 0:35deplore. And side by side we must ensure
- 0:39that nobody is above the law. Well, when it comes to royalty
- 0:45we often look with great regard. But then we come on to recent
- 0:50events. Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has
- 0:53been arrested and indeed then investigated and released on
- 0:57suspicion of misconduct in in a public office.
- 1:01Now, Mr. Pete, this is a royal saga that's been running for
- 1:05some time. We'll dig deep into the detail.
- 1:08But I ask you, first of all, what do you think of this
- 1:11particular affair? More importantly, where does it
- 1:14leave King Charles and the royal family?
- 1:18Well, the full family hold a very special place in Britain,
- 1:23though. Yes, it's a constitutional
- 1:24monarchy, but culturally they're almost like an exemplar family.
- 1:28They're meant to be a good family.
- 1:30That's how they fit in. They don't have much actual
- 1:33power, but they have influence which some of which is vested in
- 1:37the fact that they're good, a good Christian family.
- 1:40And the king or queen is head of the Church of England.
- 1:45And if we're going to look at this from a Christian point of
- 1:48view, let's take a verse from the Psalms.
- 1:51Psalm 101 says I will behave wisely in a perfect way, a walk
- 1:56within my house with a perfect heart.
- 1:58This is the point I will set nothing wicked before my eyes.
- 2:02And I think what's happened here is Andrew has, perhaps because
- 2:08of some core problem with sexual perversion within him, but
- 2:12things have been set before his eyes.
- 2:14People have been set before his eyes.
- 2:16He's been tempted. That's his issue.
- 2:19And King Charles, well, things were set before his eyes and he
- 2:24ignored them. And I think that's the issue.
- 2:26He's put the whole of the monarchy in some sort of
- 2:28jeopardy by his lack of. Well, what's interesting is that
- 2:33the police actually arrested Andrew because originally that
- 2:38some of the scandals that we've seen in the media and recent
- 2:40times relate to Andrew's relationship with Jeffrey
- 2:43Epstein and the allegations have been quite evident both in terms
- 2:49of photographic evidence, emails, etcetera.
- 2:52What's interesting is that the saga continues where basically
- 2:57as the trade envoy for Britain and Andrew really has also been
- 3:02accused of perhaps some wrongdoing in that fashion.
- 3:06Now, one could actually definitely focus on the first
- 3:09issue, which is around his relationships.
- 3:11Um, allegedly with people who are of an underage, but when it
- 3:16comes to the other side of it and giving away trade secrets or
- 3:21even national secrets, that takes it to another level.
- 3:24So one of the things, things, Mr. Pete, is should Andrew now
- 3:29be looked at in a different light and possibly even charge
- 3:32for treason? Well, now that Andrew isn't part
- 3:37of the royal family, although as you may come onto, he is still
- 3:41technically in line for the throne, but he's no longer holds
- 3:44the title of Prince, he's can be treated as a commoner.
- 3:49That's my understanding of the law, that now he can be treated
- 3:53as a commoner. Certainly him being arrested
- 3:55seems to indicate that, and that would mean that he can be, he
- 4:02can be looked into, investigated in a way.
- 4:04Now, of course, kings and Queens are not exempt from being
- 4:07charged with murder and that sort of thing, but normally some
- 4:11sort of scandalous activity would have been brushed aside,
- 4:16ignored, well, at least treated privately.
- 4:19And I guess that's why the king thought he could look the other
- 4:22way. He didn't know the extent of
- 4:23what had gone on. I guess I don't know.
- 4:26But he did have a warning, so he should have looked into it.
- 4:29But he he probably thought, well, these things are just
- 4:33brushed under the carpet. But now having been stripped of
- 4:35his title as he was, as the king was sort of forced into doing
- 4:39really by public pressure. Yeah, I think Andrew can be
- 4:44charged and he will be investigating more thoroughly.
- 4:49And I think it's it's sunk home with him.
- 4:53There's an interesting image of him in in the car on the way
- 4:58back from having been taken down to the police station where he
- 5:02looks like he's like, it looks like death cooled down as they
- 5:06say he looks. Like he's.
- 5:08Stared into the abyss, and the abyss stared back at him,
- 5:12calling him home. He looks.
- 5:13It looks like every worst nightmare has just happened to
- 5:17him. And yeah, I think he's wrong
- 5:19there. I think he's going to get worse.
- 5:20So yeah, I think, I mean, he could end up in prison.
- 5:23Well, what's interesting, in the infamous interview that he did
- 5:27with the BBC, if he. Yeah, where he claimed that he
- 5:30did not sweat. Now, if you looked at some of
- 5:32the media, it says in the titles he's sweating.
- 5:35Now to your point in terms of what might be coming, but I ask,
- 5:41I do ask the other thing, which is you mentioned about King
- 5:43Charles the Third. Now what's interesting is if
- 5:46Andrew were to be put into a court of law ineffectively, he
- 5:50would be up against his brother because essentially all courts,
- 5:54certainly at that level are under the royal remit.
- 5:57And of course that that in itself plays some strange
- 6:01dynamics. We've never seen anything like
- 6:04this before. If you think of scandals that
- 6:06have happened in royalty before, you know, when we think of
- 6:09Edward the 8th's abdicating and we think of many other scandals
- 6:12that have happened, some of them have been trivial and others
- 6:15have been a little bit more serious.
- 6:16But of all the ones that we've got, this touches upon not just
- 6:20the acts of individuals, but even the Constitution, because
- 6:25this is where it gets a little bit tricky.
- 6:27So from from the point of view of how we move this forward, I
- 6:33think it has it has wider national implications rather
- 6:36than just implications on one man.
- 6:41Yeah, I think this is what just just to take this, this scandal,
- 6:48this situation as a whole, this focusing on Andrew is an
- 6:52interest, interesting decision by what the mainstream media is
- 6:57that all the talk is currently about Andrew.
- 7:00It's not just him. He's an easy, an easy target for
- 7:06saturation of the media because he's an ex Prince and everyone's
- 7:08very interested in it. But it's salacious material.
- 7:11Now I'm not saying people shouldn't be interested because
- 7:15of course it's because of the implications to do with the
- 7:20monarchy that we've just been discussing.
- 7:22But there were certain well known people, politicians,
- 7:27certain billionaires who have been implicated as well, so
- 7:31Andrew is a very useful scapegoat for them.
- 7:36Now that's an interesting angle, isn't it?
- 7:37Because when we look at Andrew, we're sort of thinking about his
- 7:40role as the trade end boy. We're thinking about the
- 7:42scandals that maybe his visits to Vietnam, Singapore, China, as
- 7:47well as his visits to Epstein, Yes.
- 7:50Does this actually sort of really cover up paper over the
- 7:54cracks elsewhere? I I suppose that you have to
- 7:58say, and this is really, really important.
- 8:01Ironically, Andrew has not been charged with anything.
- 8:05Now, I'm not saying he's not guilty of something.
- 8:07I'm sure over the course of events unfold, it's possible
- 8:11that there will be evidence and there may be evidence that
- 8:13hasn't come to light. But I'm just going to throw this
- 8:16into the mix, which I think is really important.
- 8:19What if he's innocent?