Prince Andrew’s Chinese ‘spy’ blunder is no surprise

It is fair to say that Prince Andrew has always had poor taste in friends. Notoriously, and reputation-shreddingly, he consorted with Jeffrey Epstein long after the latter’s disgrace. There is a rogue’s gallery of potentates and sheikhs who have been only too happy to provide what one royal biographer euphemistically called “alternative sources of income” for the not-so-grand old Duke of York. Yet today’s news that an alleged Chinese spy, who has now been banned from Britain, had close personal and financial links to Andrew is still, even by the standards of his previous behaviour, something of a marmalade-dropper.

The facts are both predictable and outlandish. Andrew has openly been looking around for money in places high and low since he was forced to step down as a working (read: publicly funded) member of the royal family after his disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview.