Fallen Prince
SO much for Prince Andrew’s claims of his total innocence over 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.
So much for his adamant and repeated denials to the nation, including in his disastrous 2019 TV interview.
Now he has bought off a sex abuse victim . . . using a seven-figure fortune the Royals will claim is theirs — though the public won’t see it that way and neither do we.
Some argue that Andrew had to settle to prevent salacious details overshadowing his mother’s Platinum Jubilee year.
We get that.
It is the one saving grace from yesterday’s decision.
But who believes Andrew’s protests now?
There might still have been a sliver of doubt when he was vowing to contest Ms Giuffre’s case in court.
Not now he seems to have surrendered.
He befriended paedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his sleazy socialite girlfriend and fixer Ghislaine Maxwell.
Now he has paid hush money to keep one of the vile pair’s most wronged victims from detailing in court her claims that he had sex with her three times, she in her teens and him over 40.
A man truly determined to clear his name of such heinous allegations would have fought tooth and nail . . . and then, if he won, tried to rebuild his life.
That is all over.
Andrew is finished — undone by his insufferable arrogance, entitlement and staggering naivety.
He must retreat entirely from public life and live out his retirement in ignominy.
ANDREW IS FINISHED
We feel for his family, Beatrice and Eugenie especially.
But the less we hear or see him the better.
His tawdry antics have disgraced the Royals and broken his mother’s heart, even as she reluctantly stripped him of his titles and roles.
Andrew remains ninth in line to the throne and would never realistically become King.
But the Government should change the law to remove him from the line of succession.
The Queen will always love her son.
But his continued presence in our monarchy, even as a disgraced recluse, is a black mark that must be erased.
Nick the lot
LET us hear no excuses from police if and when eco-anarchist loons try to block the M25 this weekend.
The “raves” by innumerate morons — some from Insulate Britain — are being organised in plain sight.
Cops must be ready to seize hundreds if need be, lock them up and swiftly process them through the courts.
If injunctions are needed, get them today.
These middle-class idlers are terminally stupid people with little to no understanding of the issues about which they protest — and even less regard for those they endanger.
Cressida Dick may be a lame duck . . .
But the Met chief can at least go out with some credit if she orders the instant arrests of an extremist mob trying to shut down London’s orbital motorway.
