This afternoon’s Commons debate on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was unusual for all kinds of reasons. It was not just that the Speaker had decided that MPs could directly criticise the former Duke of York even though parliamentary convention normally prevents them from discussing the monarchy in the Chamber. It was not even that the government accepted the humble Address motion tabled by the Liberal Democrats calling for the release of the documents relating to Andrew’s appointment as trade envoy. It was also that the minister responding to the debate was able to spend most of his speech criticising someone else, rather than being on the defensive the whole time. There was, though, some confusion running through the entire debate about what precisely MPs wanted to criticise Mountbatten-Windsor for: was it his unsuitability as trade envoy because of his links to Jeffrey Epstein, or was it other aspects of his character?
Andrew would hardly be the first or last trade envoy who was rather arrogant and not very good at the business of being persuasive
Trade Minister Chris Bryant took some obvious pleasure in describing the former Prince as ‘a man on a constant self-aggrandising and self-enriching hustle, a rude, arrogant and entitled man who could not distinguish between the public interest which he said he served, and his own private interest’. He also told a story of Andrew visiting Tonypandy, saying ‘he insisted on coming by helicopter, unlike his mother, who came twice to the Rhondda and always came by car. He left early and he showed next to no interest in the young people’. He did add that it was not a crime to behave this way, ‘nor is arrogance, fortunately, I suppose’, but it was very much the tenor of the debate that anyone who had any dealings with Andrew wanted to share their stories of what a rude man he is. Lib Dem Monica Harding complained that when Mountbatten-Windsor had come to an exhibition she had staged for the British Council on Dolly the sheep, he ‘stood up in front of Japanese dignitaries and business people and said: “This is rubbish. This is Frankenstein’s sheep.”’ She suggested that this was ‘a very poor example of promoting British trade interests’. It was presumably an attempt to suggest that Andrew had been unsuitable in many ways to be a trade envoy, but it also muddied the focus on the more serious allegations. After all, he would hardly be the first or last trade envoy who was rather arrogant and not very good at the business of being persuasive.
Perhaps more important than a royal being arrogant enough to want a helicopter trip was the system that enabled the abuse perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein, and Bryant told MPs that ‘the abuse that was enabled, aided and abetted by a very extensive group of arrogant, entitled, and often very wealthy individuals in this country and elsewhere’. That enabling was something Ed Davey, whose party had tabled the motion, also wanted to underline. The Liberal Democrat leader spoke about the emails between Andrew and Epstein where the pair had discussed ‘a chance to make some money’ from the crisis in Libya. He said: ‘This shows clearly what these relationships were all about for Epstein: increasing his own wealth and power. The idea that the role of special trade envoy for our United Kingdom may have been used to help him do that – to help keep a vile paedophile sex trafficker enrich himself – is truly sickening.’ Bryant also later got on to the culture that helped Andrew, saying: ‘What this whole sorry saga shows is that deference can be a toxic presence in the body politic.’ He added that ‘when deference tips over into subservience it can be terribly dangerous, because the victims are not heard, respected or understood in the same way as those with grand titles, and that… has implications for this House.’ He was in part talking about the convention of not discussing the monarchy, arguing that it meant there was too little scrutiny.
The debate itself was about releasing the files around his appointment as trade envoy following the revelations about his extensive links with Jeffrey Epstein and his recent arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office. MPs agreed the motion without a vote, and Bryant made clear that the government supported the motion. He added that the government would not be putting ‘into the public domain anything that is required by the police for them to conduct their inquiries unless and until the police are satisfied’. He wanted to suggest that this government was doing everything possible to ensure transparency around the appointment, but the Conservatives argued that ministers were only agreeing to the publication because they were being ‘pushed every step of the way’. Perhaps, but the strange thing about this whole row is that Downing Street finds it much easier to deal with than pretty much anything else going on for the government at the moment – which is perhaps a sign more of how badly everything else is going than it is of how easy the question of the former Duke of York really is.
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