00:00The former prince was returned home last night, UK time, after essentially spending his 66th birthday with the police.
00:08The allegation against him, the arrest was made on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
00:14And while we don't know the details of what the police are looking into,
00:19the broad assumption is that this relates to the former prince's time as a UK trade envoy
00:24and what appeared to emerge from the Epstein files, that there were confidential documents that he appears to have passed
00:32to Jeffrey Epstein.
00:33Those were documents that came to him through his role, essentially details of investment opportunities
00:39and reports on visits to different parts of the world that he had undertaken.
00:44This morning, as things stand, there is a search that is continuing in the Windsor area at Royal Lodge,
00:52which is the property that he lived in for many years and which essentially his brother, the king,
00:58forced him to move out of just in the last few weeks,
01:02which is why he is currently living on the king's private estate at Sandringham in Norfolk in the east of
01:08England.
01:08Essentially, this is an ongoing investigation, but there are no charges at the present time.
01:15And Michelle, what does this arrest and the investigation mean for the royal family?
01:24Well, it's worth remembering that the former Prince Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing
01:29in association to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
01:32But this does put the royal family into difficult and uncharted territory.
01:36However, after news of the arrest came yesterday, they made choices.
01:41And you can see that most clearly in the statement that was released in the name of the king himself,
01:48which essentially, when it referred to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor,
01:51made no reference to him being his own brother, to being part of his family.
01:56It said that he learned of these events with the deepest of concern.
02:00Some of the crucial lines, I think, was where the king said in that statement,
02:03let me state clearly the law must take its course.
02:07And also right at the end where he said,
02:10my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all,
02:14essentially separating him and the immediate family from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
02:19And that, in essence, is part of a distancing that has been continuing for some years now,
02:24including during the reign of his mother and Andrew's mother, the late queen.
02:28She was the one, after he gave a disastrous interview to the BBC in 2019,
02:33who removed his royal patronages from him,
02:36who said he couldn't wear military uniform in public anymore.
02:40Nevertheless, when she died, one of the ceremonial occasions was a vigil around her coffin.
02:47And Andrew, alongside his three siblings, were part of that.
02:50The four of them stood at the four corners of her coffin as the public filed past.
02:55I remember commentating on that occasion at the time.
02:58So there has been a distancing, but still where things stand now is at another degree entirely.
03:06He does remain eighth in line to the British throne.
03:10And even while that is largely symbolic,
03:12he's down below Prince William and his children and Prince Harry and his children.
03:17Nevertheless, that remains part of his status.
03:20So there's an interesting question about whether the UK government,
03:24in association with the monarch, takes step to change that.
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