 The Metropolitan Police have confirmed they will not be taking further action with regard allegations of sexual assault leveled at Prince Andrew. The investigation into Andrew, which was reopened in August, concerned claims made by Virginia Jafrey. She is currently lodging a civil case against the Prince in New York. Jafrey claims that convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his confidant Ghilane Maxwell forced her to have sex with Andrew on multiple occasions when she was 17. One of those assaults, according to Jafrey, was at the London home of Ghilane Maxwell. That's where, according to Jafrey, this photo was taken. Prince Andrew for his part denies all the allegations. Announcing their decision, the Metropolitan Police said the following. As a matter of procedure, Metropolitan Police Service officers reviewed a document released on August 2021 as part of a US civil action. This review has concluded and we are taking no further action. Ash, I presume Prince Andrew will take this as some sort of vindication. The Met Police have said we don't have enough evidence to investigate what might have happened within our jurisdiction. Do you think it would be too premature for him to breathe a sigh of relief, though? Realistically, the Metropolitan Police was never going to come to any other decision. It would be unprecedented to say that, look, we are actively investigating a senior royal for a sexual offence and for upholding what has been put in a civil claim outside of UK jurisdiction. It really would be unprecedented. The Metropolitan Police, you know, it's a political beast as well as part of the criminal justice system and maintains its own power and authority through proximity to other parts of the establishment and keeping them on side. So they were never going to do anything different. But this doesn't mean that Prince Andrew is in the clear by any stretch of the imagination. One, him and his lawyers still have until the 29th of October to respond to Virginia Gifrey's suit. Two, one of the things that they're banking on is that there will be something in the 2009 settlement between Gifrey and Epstein which would insulate Prince Andrew or could be interpreted to insulate him from any civil claim pertaining to Gifrey and Epstein. And even if, say, the civil claim is upheld, even if the kind of Hail Mary chance of hoping for a rescue by some detail that's in this Epstein Gifrey suit, they would then have to work out how they would either recover damages, you know, impose whatever penalty the court came up with in the US. And then still that's not the same thing as a criminal action. So I think that what is more meaningful here is the amount of negative publicity that this ongoing case is attracting according to a piece which came out in the Sunday times, other senior royals, most notably Prince Charles and Prince William consider Prince Andrew a liability. They don't think that his judgment is good. They seem as a net negative for the institution and resilience of the monarchy. It just so happens that Prince Andrew enjoys an awful lot of support from his mother, the Queen, who is said to be financially supporting him at this time and personally financing his defense against the claims brought by Virginia Gifrey. But the monarchy is headed for a crisis of legitimacy when the Queen does die. And that's why Charles and William are looking over their shoulders and going, well, how how much can we afford to be seen to be closing ranks around Andrew when this guy is, you know, clearly an idiot, you know, clearly his judgment can't be trusted. We saw that with the Emily Maitlis Newsnight interview and increasing sections of the public attending against him because they find that the claims which are brought by Virginia Gifrey completely credible. I'm glad you brought up the role of the Queen in this because it links to the next clip I want to show, which involves, I think it all puts on show anyway, how how ridiculously we discuss this in Britain or how how ridiculously elites discuss this whole issue in Britain. This was Nick Ferrari on Question Time speaking last week in response to a question about whether Prince Andrew should go to the USA to face cross examination. This is how I'm going to sum it up. The Queen has been through the most trying period of her life. I would imagine not that long ago. She lost her consort of goodness knows how many decades. She's also got the issues of one of her grandsons living in California, which we are also going to park there. I just think it's a terrible shame that as this woman continues to serve in a way that I don't know we will ever see again in this country that she is blighted by problems such as this. So whether it takes him to go to New York to Washington to do a video link, whatever it takes to put this out of the way to let the Queen power on and do the job that I think she happens to do, particularly, well, I would urge him to do that. I sort of introduced that in terms of the ridiculous way that elites discuss this issue, which, by the way, is a serious allegation about sexual assault, right, of someone who has been allegedly trafficked. Really, really serious issue. And Nick Ferrari gives that speech, which I think completely belittles the issue, because he makes it all about how relaxed the Queen can be. The real victim here is the Queen, who, as Ash said, gave loads of support to Prince Andrew. She hasn't exactly showered herself in glory in this situation. But not only did he say something, to my mind, completely ridiculous, but the audience laughed it up. Everyone in that audience really clapped for Nick Ferrari there. And there were periods in that same episode. We actually showed them on Friday in relation to the Cut to Universal Credit, where there were lots of people who had quite progressive views in that audience. But still, they thought the real victim of all of this was the Queen. Ash, did you find that clip as depressing as I did? Yeah, absolutely depressing. And it's also these contortions to defend the Queen as a sovereign and be really invested in this kind of decades in the making myth, which has become layered and entwined with her. So she's not just the head of state. She's not just this constitutional figure, but there's something about her which is like the grandmother of a nation. So it's inviting us to feel this very familial sense of attachment to what is essentially a non-agingarian aristocrat and appealing to an experience of grief, which I'm sure was absolutely devastating just as it would be for anyone else. And I think in quite a cynical way, leveraging that, to draw attention away from the fact that, well, maybe if it turns out that Prince Andrew did all the things that Virginia Dufres is alleging that he did, that he committed a sex offence, that the victim in question was a victim of sex trafficking and 17 years old at the time, that maybe if he did do those things, they were done because of his role as a senior member of the royal family, the levels of impunity and power and access that grants him and not in spite of it. So it's a way, I think, of trying to tug on the heart strings and distract from the fact that maybe Prince Andrew's position as a royal wouldn't be incidental to what's been alleged to have happened, but would have been central to it.