It’s not only Prince Andrew who is out of touch with the spirit of our age. The royals must modernise or die

His world was still that of the old-style aristocratic house party or officers’ mess, where ‘conduct unbecoming’ could stand for a multitude of sins

It felt as if the prince was being shoehorned into a modern lexicon that really did not represent what he meant (EPA)

It took four days, start to finish. That is the time between the broadcast of Emily Maitlis’s BBC interview with Prince Andrew, last Saturday evening, and the prince’s announcement, in a formal statement from Buckingham Palace, that he was “stepping back from public duties for the foreseeable future”.

It is hard to imagine that his official life will resume. The rush by organisations and individuals to dissociate themselves from his patronage had left him with little choice. A spell of charity work, a long way from the public eye, might be in order.

As it happens, I was not among those who judged the prince’s interview to be a “car crash” – or, at least, it could have been quite a lot worse. He did not lose his cool; he was not caught out on any specific facts; for the most part, he answered the questions.

Was it a good idea for him to give the interview at all? Clearly not. Discreet agreement to give evidence to the various enquiries in train might have been better for him and his family than a public attempt at self-explanation.

What struck me more was the extent to which the prince was insensitive to, and indeed seemed totally to lack awareness of, the public mood as it relates to the law, young women and sexual conduct today. The key passage – now much quoted and replayed – was about his continued association with the New York financier, Jeffrey Epstein, after his conviction for procuring an under-aged girl for prostitution in 2008.

“Do I regret the fact that he has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes.” “Unbecoming?” Maitlis shot back; “He was a sex offender.” To which Prince Andrew, responded: “Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m being polite, I mean in the sense that he was a sex offender.”

Except that you could sense he was being shoehorned into a modern lexicon that really did not represent what he meant. His world was still that of the old-style aristocratic house party or officers’ mess, where “conduct unbecoming” could stand for a multitude of sins, and the idea of an officer being upbraided, let alone court-martialled, for what might today constitute the crime of sexual harassment was beyond anyone’s ken.

That mindset is surely why it did not occur to him to start his interview by expressing sympathy for the young women who had fallen victim to Jeffrey Epstein – or even to add any sort of regret, when Maitlis asked him at the end whether there was anything else he would like to say. It may also be why he apparently drew no conclusions from all the comings and goings he observed at Epstein’s quarters – which he described as being like a railway station – simply accepting that this is how it was.

That sort of acceptance, those sorts of assumptions, are no longer permissible. Indeed, they have not been permissible for some time – which is one reason why Epstein came to justice and was imprisoned in 2008. And they are even less permissible now, with the #MeToo movement cutting a swathe through boardrooms and bedrooms, exposing once-powerful men for the corrupt and predatory abusers they were. Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew’s longtime friend, was a part of that world.

Now I must also admit to having had certain misgivings about how some of this is culture shift is playing out – reflecting, no doubt, a degree of old thinking on my part.

I am not at all sure, for instance, about the way attitudes to flirtation and the crime of sexual abuse seem to have been melded into one. I also wonder about how broadly the words “paedophile” and “trafficking” are now used. Prince Andrew’s accuser, Virginia Roberts (now Giuffre), was 17 – that is over the age of consent – at the time she said she was first forced to have sex with him. Most of all, though, I cannot accept – as some seemed to do in the wake of the prince’s interview – that someone accused of a sexual offence should be excluded from the presumption of innocence. We saw where that led with Carl Beech, otherwise known as “Nick”, when the police accepted his pernicious fantasies as “true”. The claims on both sides have to be tested in court.

Just now, it is hard to gauge how long lasting any shifts in public attitudes will be. Will #MeToo decline as the circumstances that prompted it (one hopes) become a thing of the past? Perhaps. On the other hand, the extent to which younger women are standing up for their rights, and the extent to which younger men are prepared to defend them, marks a positive shift that could well be permanent.

Permanent, or not, however, it is a hallmark of today – and one that only someone with the deafest of social ears could have failed to heed.

Instructively, perhaps, the last time the palace was shaken – really shaken, to the point that questions were raised about the very survival of the monarchy – also stemmed from a catastrophic royal misjudgement of the public mood. This was the Queen’s response in the days after Princess Diana’s death. The stiff upper lip and protocol ruled, which included flying the Royal Standard at full mast above Buckingham Palace. Protocol yielded (a little), and the stiff upper lip became (a little) less rigid, with the Queen giving a sorrowful broadcast and the flower mountains being left to decay.

Efforts were made to open up the monarchy – a process that was helped along by the maturing of princes William and Harry and their efforts to show a softer side. On occasion, there has been the hint of a pared-down royal family. But only on occasion.

Prince Andrew’s BBC interview was a reminder of how far the royal family still has to go. The younger members may be reasonably well attuned to today’s mores, but how they spend their considerable time out of the public gaze remains a mystery, especially now that Prince William has given up his air ambulance service and Prince Harry often seems to be casting round for something useful to do. His service in the Armed Forces was admirable, and his his work for the Invictus Games continues. But is there no longer-term cause that would give him a purpose, now that he is well down the order of succession?

The Queen had four children, all of whom now have children (and some grandchildren) of their own. Is it not time to define the royal family in a new, more Scandinavian or Dutch way, and exclude from an obligatory public – and publicly funded – life all those outside the direct line of succession?

Prince Andrew, who made a promising start as a Navy pilot in the Falklands War, stands as a warning of how comprehensively a branch of the royal family can come to look at once superfluous and out of touch. If the institution is to survive, it must be radically pruned, lest the dead wood threaten the health of the whole more than it already does.