‘Unprecedented’: Keir Starmer pushes Prince Andrew to face US Epstein questions

Joining us now is SkyNews.com.au columnist Louise Roberts. Louise, great to see you. Great to see you too, Gabriela. Let's start with the fallout over former Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. And UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has suggested that Andrew Mountbatten should give evidence to US politicians over Jeffrey Epstein. Now the Prime Minister said that a general principle I've held for a very long time is that anybody who's got relevant information in relation to these kind of cases should give that evidence to those that need it. What do you make of this? This is, on my view, unprecedented for a Prime Minister of the UK, Britain, to actually say he's getting himself involved in the royal family in this way. The only other time I can think of is when John Major announced that Diana and Charles were separating in the 90s and, of course, when Tony Blair talked about Diana's death in 1997. So it leaves Andrew no wiggle room at all. He's got the media. He's got US lawyers after him. And now another 10 have stepped into the breach, which is just stunning. And I think Keir Starmer's done this. He's a bit of a clean hands manoeuvre. So he's distancing the government from inevitably the next tranche of Epstein allegations, emails, et cetera. And believe me, I'm sure they're coming down the line. And he's basically saying to Andrew, step up voluntarily or potentially face stronger demands, legal demands even, in the future to actually put your side of the story forward and say what you mean. Yeah, it's extraordinary. What about what's next for Fergie? Because a Royal Insider has dropped a different clue about where Fergie may be heading, of course, after exiting Royal Lodge. She's spent more than 20 years living rent free at Royal Lodge with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, her ex-husband. But where is it believed to be that she might be going? Well, the latest is that she's going to move to the Cotswolds, because Beatrice lives there, of course, with her family. And the sort of rather unsavoury description of this place is that it's the next, you know, cattle shed in the Cotswolds. Of course it won't be. It'll be all bougie and lovely and it's all been done up. But it is quite the change, isn't it, from living rent free at the Royal Lodge to, well, a granny flat, basically, in the Cotswolds for Beatrice. But I don't feel that – I think it's good for her in a way because it's practical, it's discreet. She's also still within arm's reach of the royal machinery should, you know, she be required to do anything or need any access, unlikely as that is. I don't think Portugal's off the agenda either because Eugenie, of course, her other daughter has built a very interesting and solid life in Portugal with her husband. Fergie's been there. She's got a network. I think also she's got the type of network which is full of sort of European aristocrats and celebrities and people who don't really care about the drama of a royal scandal. She'll still be taken into that role, in a way, and that's what she loves. Fergie loves all the fating and the celebrity and all the luxuries of life. So possibly UK-based Cotswolds, discreet, obviously lots of security and stuff, and then Portugal for more visible when and if she manages to step back into any kind of public life. Okay. Well, we'll be watching that space very closely. Yes, we will. Now, there's a royal reportedly being lined up for a more visible royal role next year. As Prince William prepares a major shake-up of the monarchy's future, Zara Tindall has never held an official title and is not a working royal, but that may soon shift. Well, Zara, I think, is the perfect role model for William's new regime, let alone Charles's regime, but also William in the future because she's visible, she's relatable, she's a dependable ally of William's now. No drama. She has her own career. She's not only a successful equestrian, she's a businesswoman. I've met her and I've seen her at the Gold Coast for the, you know, World Standard Magic Millions event every year in January, and she is very impressive in person. I mean, her horse-riding skills are just exceptional. I mean, she's a former Olympian, but also the way she mingles with the crowd and the ambassador role she naturally has as a royal. And I think the suggestion of this story is that Anne is kind of training her up to take over some of her duties if that should be needed to be done. There's no suggestion of Anne stepping away from the spotlight. She is our hardest-working royal, but I think she'd like to maybe sort of sweep Zara into some of that play, and Zara's the perfect person for it. So a terrific ambassador, I think this is really good news. Yeah, that's exciting news, which the royal family definitely need. They do. Meghan Markle, we have to talk about this interview with Harper's Bazaar. I cannot believe it. So she's stunned fans revealing a new Harper's Bazaar interview. After a surprising behind-the-scenes detail about her conduct, it sent the internet into overdrive. So she appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar's December 2025 slash January 2026 art issue. She talked about how brave it was of her to sell jams. She dropped the fact, you know, countless times that she was a founder. And it was revealed in this interview that even if there were only two people in the room, that Meghan Markle needed to be formally announced, formally welcomed. I mean, that's extraordinary. It is extraordinary. And to me, it speaks to the contradiction in Meghan's brand, which is she likes to style herself as the anti-royal rebel. She didn't want to do any royal duties, but she still wants the title. She still wants to be feted as a member of the royal family, which technically she's not, although she's married, of course, to Harry. She wants the privilege without the workload. And I thought this piece was excellent because the writer herself, who was very diplomatic in the circumstances, it became satire unintentionally. Despite the way she described the interview, I think it was done in two parts for the feature, and no doubt that Meghan thought this would be a very loved-up piece about her philanthropy and, you know, being a working mum and giving everyone else advice on how to do that and running a global business, selling jams, et cetera, as you say. And the writer didn't need to mock her because there were the two incidents in the Brownstone in New York where, you know, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex is here, and then also elsewhere when she was going to talk to some schoolchildren in Los Angeles, some teenage girls about STEM, which is a great topic, and a golf cart swept into... There's great detail about the crunch on the gravel and stuff, and again, some poor sap had to say, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex is here. It's just a disaster. It is a PR disaster. But it says so much about her. Yeah, it says so much about her ambitions and her self-perception. You know, it's, yeah, it's bizarre. It's bizarre. It certainly is. I mean, some of the claims that she made, how brave she was being, you know, selling jams, being a working mum, it's painful to read. It's painful. Now, royal author Robert Jobson has revealed new details on why King Charles might have kept that meeting with Prince Harry quite brief after announcing his cancer diagnosis. He claims that the palace actually made up a medical procedure to wind up King Charles' meeting with Prince Harry after the cancer news. He wrote, he didn't actually have to have a procedure. He had to go on a helicopter to Sandringham, but it meant the meeting had to be cut down. Is that right? Yeah, that's Jobbo's information, and Jobbo's very well sourced on these, of course, and he's put this in his new book, The Windsor Legacy. I do feel there's no malice here on Charles' part. I feel that when Harry sort of rapidly flew back to London upon hearing his father's cancer diagnosis in February last year, so 2024, he kind of invited himself. It wasn't scheduled. He wasn't summoned over. Charles had already spoken to him on the phone and said that he had cancer. So I think that given Charles was newly being treated, chemotherapy or radiotherapy or whatever he was having, he was exhausted. It was also at the heart of the Netflix saga. Not long after Spare was released, everyone was on high alert for any snippet of information worried that it was going to end up in Spare 2.0. So the royal household would have been worried about this, but Charles himself would have been exhausted and probably more concerned about his health, of course. And so, yeah, the meeting was cut short with a procedure, which meant jumping on a chopper and sort of escaping to Sandringham. But, of course, later in September they had a longer meeting, I think it was about an hour, which I think did sort of pave the way to patching things up for them. But, yeah, I see this more as Charles trying to spare Harry's feelings, really, in a way. OK. Louise Roberts, thank you so much for joining us. Good to see you. Great to talk to you. Thank you.