Gordon Brown is a man who gets into the detail.
In office, and since then, he has applied his forensic mind to the matters that concern him. Lately, he has been focused on the Epstein files.
What he discovered shocked him. There was the immediate anger about the “extent of betrayal” by his former business secretary, Peter Mandelson, during the global financial crisis.
But it was the “the abuse of women by male predators and their enablers – and Britain’s as yet unacknowledged role” that has left the deepest mark.
He looked at flight records, examined the evidence and came to a conclusion: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should face police questioning over Jeffrey Epstein.
He’s not on his own in that conviction.
This week, voices around Westminster and beyond have insisted the role of UK institutions in this most horrifying of scandals must be now examined. And that includes the monarchy.
On Thursday, cabinet secretary Chris Ward was cornered about the former prince by Sarah Owen, chair of the Commons women and equalities committee.
Mountbatten-Windsor was trade envoy to critical countries, including China and Hong Kong, between 2001 and 2011.
Wasn’t it time for him “to answer both to the police and parliament”, she asked.
MPs can no longer afford to be deferential when it comes to the royals, Owen told the Guardian.
“We have to do this to put faith back into systems where people have lost it,” she said. “If we don’t it weakens people’s belief in democracy, their trust in politics as a force for good. That risks us going down to a really dark path.”
Writing in the New Statesman, Brown referenced a BBC investigation which found many of Epstein’s private planes had travelled through Stansted and other UK airports, where women “were transferred from one Epstein plane to another”.
But Brown had been “told privately” that previous Metropolitan police inquiries “related to the former Prince Andrew did not properly check vital evidence of flights”.
“The Stansted revelations alone require them to interview Andrew,” he argued.
Former Victim’s Commissioner Vera Baird told the Guardian that she had spoken to the police about Mountbatten-Windsor before the Covid pandemic struck, but was assured the issue was being investigated thoroughly in the US.
“Clearly, [Mountbatten-Windsor] is not going to do anything himself. Clearly, there’s a limit to what the royal family can do,” she said. “So the police need to investigate.”
Even from his bolthole in Sandringham, Norfolk, to where he is exiled by his brother, King Charles, can Mountbatten-Windsor, despite his vociferous denials of any wrongdoing, still ignore the deafening roars for him to cooperate with any police investigations, and to testify to the US Congress on what he himself knew about Epstein?
Thames Valley police is assessing whether to investigate the apparent sharing of some documents by Mountbatten-Windsor to Epstein during his time as trade envoy, and is engaged in discussions with specialist crown prosecutors from the CPS. The same force is assessing claims a woman was sent to the UK by Epstein for a sexual encounter with the then prince, which allegedly occurred at his former Royal Lodge residence in 2010. The woman, who is not British, was in her 20s at the time. The allegation is separate to the one made by Virginia Giuffre.
As Mountbatten-Windsor’s past answers over his relationship with Epstein are apparently blown apart, there has been no response from him.
When, with titles still intact, the then Prince Andrew told interviewer Emily Maitlis and 1.7 million BBC Newsnight viewers in 2019 of his Pizza Express in Woking alibi, and revealed a temporary medical inability to sweat, he would have expected to be believed, especially as the queen’s son.
Not any more.
There was also the matter of that March 2001 photograph, with Mountbatten-Windsor’s hand seemingly around the bare waist of a 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who would later claim she was forced to have sex with the royal, a claim he has always denied, and said to have been taken in Ghislaine Maxwell’s London Belgravia mews home.
Asked about it, he had stared at Maitlis, earnestly. It was difficult, he insisted, to “prove” it was “faked”, because it was a photograph of a photograph.
“Whether that’s my hand, or whether that’s the position …” he went on, before concluding: “I’m afraid to say that I don’t believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested.”
Was it taken by Epstein? The then prince said that he had never seen Epstein “with a camera in my life”.
Yet Epstein appears to have kept many photographs of people, presumably to utilise for some purpose at a future date.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s explanation of that photograph is now robustly questioned by a July 2011 email from Epstein to his publicist, which states: “yes she was on my plane and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew”, in an apparent reference to Giuffre.
Maxwell further strengthens the argument for its authenticity in an email to Epstein in 2015, headed “draft statement”. She appears to write: “In 2001 I was in London when [redacted] met a number of friends of mine including Prince Andrew. A photograph was taken as I imagine she wanted to show it to friends and family.”
Another reason to doubt the photo, Mountbatten-Windsor insisted to Maitlis, was he was “not one to, as it were, hug and public displays of affection”. Yet, a photograph recently disclosed of him crouching on all fours, barefoot and smiling, over an unidentified woman lying on the floor, also casts doubt on this claim.
What of another photograph, pivotal to his downfall, and taken in early December 2010, five months after the financier’s release from prison for soliciting sex with a minor, showing the two men strolling in New York’s Central Park?
Wielded as proof of his ongoing relationship with Epstein that conviction, Mountbatten-Windsor would brush it aside as the final moment of their friendship.
He had to show “leadership”, he told Maitlis, and tell Epstein: “That’s it.” It was the “honourable and right thing to do” face-to-face. Crucially, he insisted, “from that day forth, I was never in contact with him”.
But a thank-you email he appears to have written to Epstein on 22 December 2010 reads: “It was great to spend time with my US family. Looking forward to joining you all again soon.”
Then with imminent publication by the Mail on Sunday of an article about Andrew, Epstein and Maxwell, “The Duke” writes to Epstein in February 2011: “It would seem we are in this together and we will have to rise above it.” Another, in March 2011 reads: “Please make sure that every statement or legal letter states clearly that I am NOT involved and that I knew and know NOTHING about any of these allegations. I can’t take any more of this my end.”
These emails may raise serious questions about the personal integrity of a public figure, but what of professional integrity.
Emails between Andrew and Epstein show the former prince sharing information about potential investments for his friend – all while he was on the government payroll as UK trade envoy.
When the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic this week reported Mountbatten-Windsor to Thames Valley police, its CEO Graham Smith said: “I cannot see any significant difference between these allegations and those against Peter Mandelson.”
Christmas Eve 2010, after he has insisted he had no contact, the former duke appears to forward to Epstein a document including information on investment opportunities in gold and uranium in Afghanistan.
The document, specifically prepared by government officials for him, according to the BBC, references “significant high value mineral deposits” and the “potential for low cost extraction”, including valuable natural resources such as marble, gold, iridium, uranium, thorium and possible deposits of oil and gas. All sent, apparently to Epstein.
Another email indicates that on 7 October 2010, he sent Epstein details of his official upcoming trips as trade envoy to Singapore, Vietnam, Shenzhen in China and Hong Kong, where he was accompanied by business associates of the child sex offender. After the trip, on 30 November, he appears to have forwarded official reports of those visits sent by his then special assistant, Amit Patel, to Epstein, five minutes after receiving them.
Buckingham Palace may have said in October, when Charles stripped his brother of all vestiges of royalty, and booted him and his ex-wife out of his 30-room Windsor residence, Royal Lodge, that such “censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him”.
As the drip-drip of disclosures continues, Buckingham Palace has stressed this week that Charles has “profound concern” at the allegations and is ready to support any police investigation. Though “specific claims in question are for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to address”, it said, “if we are approached by Thames Valley police we stand ready to support them as you would expect”. The Prince and Princess of Wales, were also said by their spokesperson to be “deeply concerned” by the continuing revelations.
Will that palace support translate into access to any royal email addresses Mountbatten-Windsor used? One Epstein survivor has called on Buckingham Palace to proactively search files and emails relating to the then Prince Andrew. Juliette Bryant, who told the BBC at her Cape Town home she had never met Andrew and has made no allegations against him, said of the Palace: “It’s great that they’ve made a statement, finally. But the thing is, are they going to actually act on it?” Referring to the palace, as well as the police and other authorities, she added: “They need to go through all Prince Andrew’s files and emails.”
It’s difficult for the family whose dysfunction has been brutally exposed in the public domain, for politicians who like to praise the royal family and for a public with a profound respect for this most revered of public institutions, says Bolsolver MP Natalie Fleet, a survivor of teenage grooming.
Fleet said: “I definitely have [the royal family] on a pedestal, and I want to keep them there, they are such an important part of our country and I think most people feel like that.”
“But that is why there’s even more need for them to be seen to be doing the right thing at times like this. Women are sick of hearing the right thing. We’re always grateful for it, but it has to be followed up by action, deeds, not words.”
Mountbatten-Windsor has been approached for comment.
