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Prince Andrew: One half of the Dysfunctional Duo

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Kate Middleton isn’t the only one to have embarrassing relatives turning up at the wedding.

On her side, there’s Uncle Gary Goldsmith, the drug-dealing millionaire whose Ibiza villa goes by the Berlusconi-esque name of Casa de Bang Bang.

On her fiancé’s side, there’s Uncle Andy Windsor — Prince Andrew, the Duke of York to the not-so-forelock-tugging plebs — now in the spotlight for his dodgy friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile, and his intemperate outbursts while allegedly representing the country on trade missions.

It was bad enough to see photos of the Duke with his arm around the bare waist of the 17-year-old masseuse at the centre of the scandal. In a further embarrassment, he admitted on the weekend he had asked Epstein to help pay the debts of his former wife, the perennially toe-curling Sarah Ferguson.

These are just the latest blots on the escutcheon since his misguided marriage fell apart. The Prince, who was once applauded for his part in the Falklands war, is seen as an aging money-obsessed buffoon, with a major sense of entitlement. Now the government is facing calls to stop using him in any official capacity.

As Owen Bowcott and Polly Curtis report in The Guardian,

“As no stranger to controversy, the Duke of York’s role as U.K. special representative for international trade and investment has already earned him bitter criticism over his supposedly close relationships with the ruling families of Tunisia, Libya and Kazakhstan.
But his friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the disgraced former newspaper owner, and the convicted American financier Jeffrey Epstein has spun off into a volatile tale of erotic massage and the procuring of underage girls into prostitution.
Epstein has been convicted of soliciting teenage girls for prostitution. Despite that, the Duke of York was photographed in New York with Epstein last December.
And it was the admission this weekend that the Prince had received a massage while staying at Epstein’s Florida mansion 10 years ago – although it did not involve sexual contact – that has apparently proved too much for the government.”

Even before evidence of the Epstein friendship surfaced, the Prince’s boorishness was amply on display, thanks to WikiLeaks. In a 2008 cable from Kyrgyzstan, the U.S. ambassador detailed his performance.

“He railed at British anti-corruption investigators, who had had the ‘idiocy’ of almost scuttling the Al-Yamama deal with Saudi Arabia … His mother’s subjects seated around the table roared their approval. He then went on to ‘these [expletive] journalists, especially from the National [sic] Guardian, who poke their noses everywhere’ and (presumably) make it harder for British businessmen to do business. The crowd practically clapped. He then capped this off with a zinger: castigating ‘our stupid British and American governments which plan at best for 10 years whereas people in this part of the world plan for centuries.’ …
[H]e reacted with almost neuralgic patriotism whenever any comparison between the United States and United Kingdom came up. For example, one British businessman noted that despite the ‘overwhelming might of the American economy compared to ours’ the amount of American and British investment in Kyrgyzstan was similar. Snapped the Duke: ‘No surprise there. The Americans don’t understand geography. Never have. In the U K., we have the best geography teachers in the world!’ ”

In an editorial, the Mail on Sunday called for the Prince to go.

“It is increasingly difficult to see how the Duke of York can continue to act as an official envoy of the British Government … Rather than tirelessly promoting British trade, he appears to be promoting the Duke of York. Would an audit of his time in the post show that he, or the country, had benefited more?
Whatever the answer, this experiment has gone far enough. The nation held Prince Andrew in some affection after his display of undoubted courage in the Falklands, and sympathized with him over the break-up of his marriage to the tempestuous Sarah Ferguson.
The idea that a prominent Royal could boost British trade was not itself a bad one. But in practice it has given rise to far too much suspicion and doubt, and now threatens to damage the Monarchy. The Duke should retire into a more private life.”

At The Daily Telegraph, Cristina Odone suggests Andrew and Fergie should remarry.

“Look at the photos, follow the stories: Andrew and Fergie enjoy a complicity that no one can destroy – or truly understand. Yes, there’s money in it. But is there also a lingering sexual attraction, that binds the portly pair? A similarly childish sense of humour? A guilty secret that joins them at the hip, even decades after they officially split up?
Whatever their secret synergy, the outrageous pair deserve each other. Until recently, it looked as if Fergie was the reckless member of this partnership; her legendary greed and lack of common sense made her look like the Lady Macbeth whose machinations risked dragging poor old Andrew into disrepute. But the Epstein affair, coming as it does on the heels of WikiLeaks which exposed Andrew’s appalling behaviour on diplomatic missions, makes him look just as foolish.
At this point, the dysfunctional duo should make their relationship official: either they start a company, or they remarry.”

compiled by Araminta Wordsworth