00:00Michael, straight to the point in this one. Prince Andrew, should he be stripped of this dukedom?
00:03I want to preface it by saying it's tricky. And it's tricky because from a legal point of view, there's nothing that Prince Andrew has been convicted of.
00:11This is all allegations at the moment.
00:13Absolutely. And the accuser is dead. And so nothing will be able to be resolved in a court of law.
00:22But he's damaged his reputation. He's damaged his family's reputation. He's damaged his country's reputation.
00:29And I would argue that in the court of public opinion, there is no way that he is he would be able to rehabilitate his image,
00:39which tells me that it would be a losing battle if you are trying to defend Prince Andrew having any advantage over an average UK citizen.
00:50So as things stand currently, we had the announcement from Prince Andrew, not from the king,
00:55which has sparked a little bit of controversy as well, just before the weekend, saying that he will renounce his dukedom.
01:00Officially, the parliament will move to do that. He'll retain the title of Prince as that is his birthright.
01:07But he will lose HRH as he's titling beforehand and will no longer be allowed to use that.
01:12Would you see him being stripped even further?
01:15Because it is possible under parliamentary rules that they could strip the title of Prince and simply he'd be Andrew Windsor, a commoner.
01:20Well, the three of us are in media and I believe we don't necessarily have to think Prince Andrew is not guilty or even innocent.
01:29But it is frustrating that his PR team has not advised him properly.
01:34This is one of those situations. It's a story that you want to get ahead of.
01:38And you need to be if you want to slide under the radar, if you want to be able to have a normal life for whatever number of years you might have left,
01:46you need to be proactive. He should be saying, I will allow or I will encourage or I will support parliament as they strip me of HRH.
01:59He keeps Prince, as you said, because that's his birthright. He is the son of a queen. Fine.
02:03But to be proactive, but he isn't being proactive, it seems as though everything that is being talked about is something that he begrudgingly, so it would appear,
02:16is willing to maybe have a discussion about. That's the impression.
02:21And I think when you're not going in proactively to try to make amends for someone who is, even if you had nothing to do with it,
02:29this woman died by suicide and the accuser, and she was treated horrifically.
02:35You need to have a little bit more self-awareness that you have been tied to this woman and you need to be proactive so that you can try to save whatever grace you might have left in your career.
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