Paul Johnston

So I think he has a grow, a reverence for the royal family for a variety of reasons, but I think that's probably part of it as well.

And the palaces and the military and all the rest of it.

I think the King would rise above it, but I would hope the chances of that are fairly slight and that people will be advising him that it will be in his interest for this to be a very

smooth, positive, uncontroversial event.

And I think the Prince of Wales and the Princess of Wales are due to be visiting, I think it's during the World Cup, which will also be close to the actual moment of the 4th of July, the 250th anniversary.

So he wouldn't want to imperil that follow-up visit either.

I think what's happened to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has clearly been, I imagine, very distressing for members of the Royal Family personally and for the Royal Family as an institution.

And when he was taken into police custody, the King issued a statement saying, you know, the law will take its course.

And he's been absolutely clear about that.

And I think because of that primacy being given to the law taking its course and criminal investigations, as you say,

They won't be meeting any of the survivors or victims' families, but the Queen, I think, or perhaps both of them, are meeting campaigners against domestic violence and sexual violence.

In the same way as the Queen, when she was Duchess of Cornwall, came here and came to Ireland in 2022.

And if you remember, it was only a few weeks after the terrible murder of the schoolteacher, Aisling Murphy.

And the Queen privately met with her family just to express her condolences.

And it's a cause that's close to the Queen's heart, which I think has made the whole Epstein business even more awful for the family.

It's a curious business in the sense that there seems to be almost like two versions of the substance and two versions of the process.

So on the substance, what Ollie Robbins said to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee was that he'd been advised from the Cabinet Office security vetting part of the exercise, which is not the definitive part because he is the Parliamentary Secretary of the Foreign Office, was the decider, that it was a borderline case on Mandelson's vetting.

They were leaning against it.

Whereas what we hear from other sources is that with a clear sort of two ticks in the red boxes, you know, he's high concern and he shouldn't be granted betting.

So there's a different perception on that, which hopefully the investigations will clarify.