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Senior British politician refused to support Andrew

Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister of the U.K., called Prince Andrew a “nonce”—British slang for a pedophile—as she furiously lobbied for him to be stripped of his ability to stand in for the king.

Her outburst is recorded in a new book called Get In, which charts the Labor party’s rise to power and is serialized in the London Times this weekend.

After the queen died, it emerged that scandal-scarred Andrew had retained his role as emergency stand-in for the monarch despite accusations that Jeffrey Epstein paid a 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre to have sex with the prince.

Rayner, a source says, “thought this was a huge problem, and that the government needed to address this, and that she would offer cross-party support to make sure it happened. That’s — to be stereotypical — her working-class view. She’s not anti-monarchist, but she doesn’t like a [pedophile].”

The palace came up with a non-confrontational fix: the list of so-called “counselors of state” was expanded to include Princess Anne and Prince Edward, so that Andrew would never be required to act on his brother King Charles’s behalf.

Rayner, realizing that merely adding new counselors of state would imply her endorsement of the existing ones, allegedly told her team: “I’m not going to vote to keep that nonce on … I can’t go back to my constituency and say, yeah, I support that.”

Andrew, who settled a lawsuit last year that Giuffre brought against him alleging sexual abuse, has consistently denied the accusations against him and said he had no memory of meeting her.

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Let’s play, Andrew told Epstein. Gross

Although Rayner ultimately capitulated on the above matter and signed up to the fix in the end, Rayner’s disgust at Andrew remaining, albeit technically, a counselor of state is widely reflected in the U.K.

It is unlikely to be assuaged by new revelations this week showing that he lied about the ending of his friendship with Epstein.

Andrew told the BBC that he had no contact with Epstein after December 2010 when he visited him in person to tell Epstein the friendship was over, because he was “too honorable” to do it via email or over the phone. Now it emerges that two months later he responded to a cheery email from Epstein with the message: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”

As The Daily Beast reported this week, the U.K.’s new ambassador to Washington was also up to his neck in the Epstein mess.

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Prince Andrew, the Chinese spy and the $3 billion fundraising scheme

All in all, then, a bad week for Prince Andrew—and that’s before you get to him authorizing an alleged Chinese spy to leverage his royal name to attempt to raise an eye watering $3 billion for an investment fund that would have invested in companies allied with his Pitch@Palace entrepreneurs’ scheme.

The permission for the alleged spy to raise the money in Andrew’s name was contained in a document found on Yang’s phone by British intelligence services and revealed by the London Times today.

The document said the fund would “leverage the role of the royal family” to “play a significant role in supporting China’s efforts to build international partnerships.”

“The foundation will rely on the traditional friendly relationships of the British royal family with certain countries to foster friendships and mutual trust between these parties and Chinese partners,” the Times reported that the document said. “The royal family, being above party politics and unaffected by election cycles, can pursue long-term visions and exert stable, enduring influence.”

The fund intended to establish a “golden triangle of friendship among the Duke of York, Middle Eastern nations and China” and to “break unproductive technological and talent blockades against China.”

Another newly released document shows that Andrew was viewed by the Chinese state as a “valuable communication channel.”

Yang was banned from the UK in February 2023. He denies any wrongdoing.

Andrew’s office said in December: “The duke met the individual through official channels, with nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed. He is unable to comment further on matters relating to national security.”