Angela Rayner described Prince Andrew as “that n****” and tried to prevent him from being eligible to deputise for King Charles over his links to Jeffrey Epstein, a new book has claimed.
The deputy prime minister reportedly contacted Buckingham Palace and senior civil servants in a bid to remove the disgraced Duke of York from a list of royals who could step in for the King if he is abroad or incapacitated.
After the death of Queen Elizabeth, before Labour came to power, the list of those who would serve as counsellors of state were Camilla, Prince William, Prince Harry, Prince Andrew and Princess Beatrice.
Expanding the list, which the Palace and Downing Street decided on as a diplomatic fix to avoid Andrew and Harry deputising for the King, required new legislation, which Ms Rayner would have been required to deliver a statement on and potentially to vote for.
While negotiations were ongoing, Ms Rayner reportedly walked into her office and told staff: “I’m not going to vote to keep that n**** on … I can’t go back to my constituency and say, yeah, I support that.”
The claim is the latest revelation in the upcoming book Get In by journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, which tells the story of the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer.
And it comes as newly surfaced messages revealed that the Duke of York was in contact with notorious paedophile Epstein for longer than he had previously claimed.
Emails between Andrew and Epstein handed to a court in London reportedly show he remained in contact with the disgraced financier until February 2011, despite having claimed to have cut him off in December 2010.
In a message sent in February 2011, the duke wrote: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”
In an extract of Get In, published in The Times, an adviser to Ms Rayner details her outrage at Andrew’s desire to play an active role in public life.
The aide said: “She was very actively reaching out to the palace, the upper echelons of the civil service and said she 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 paedo.”
Ms Rayner reportedly showed sympathy for the royal family, describing it as “dysfunctional”, but called for Andrew to be axed from royal duties altogether.
The latest tranche of messages between Andrew and Epstein show they were in contact on the same day a photograph of Andrew with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently behind bars for recruiting and trafficking underage girls for Epstein, was published, Bloomberg reported.
Ms Giuffre has accused Andrew of sexually abusing her on Epstein’s private island Little St James as a teenager, which the prince “unequivocally” denied.
In 2022, he agreed to settle her civil claim for a multi-million pound sum, without admitting liability.
