The Duke of York has pulled out of tomorrow’s pre-Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace, can reveal.
After speaking to his ex-wife the Duchess of York, Prince Andrew has decided not to join 70 members of the Royal Family at the palace.
The Duke’s decision will be a relief to his brother King Charles III amid the ongoing furore over Andrew’s relationship with alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo.
It had been claimed Andrew was insisting on going to the lunch, telling friends ‘he should be there’, and that as it’s a family occasion, ‘why shouldn’t he go?’
And even as of last night, royal officials were still in the dark over his plans. But understands Sarah has now persuaded him not to attend.
It comes after Andrew also agreed not to attend the Royal Family’s Christmas celebrations at Sandringham next week.
Royal aides couldn’t hide their relief on Monday after it was revealed the Duke had decided to ‘do the decent thing’ and spare the King’s blushes by pulling out of the official festive celebrations and the walk to church.
However, each year the monarch also invites his large extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, husbands and wives – who don’t make the cut to Sandringham, to meet up for a big festive meal in London.
Sources said as recently as yesterday that they still had ‘no idea’ whether the beleaguered royal would show up.
In the meantime, senior royal aides had been optimistically operating on the ‘working assumption’ the Duke would ‘see sense’ again and decide to ‘keep his head down’.
They felt his presence at ‘monarchy HQ’ would send a ‘conflicting and confusing message’, having taken what was described as ‘the gentlemanly option’ over Sandringham.
The lunch is private, but guests are usually photographed going in and out of the palace gates.
Privately, there are grave concerns about the depth of Andrew’s involvement with Mr Yang who, it has emerged, referred to himself as the ‘special envoy of Prince Andrew’ and was appointed by the royal as head of his Pitch@Palace China, a Dragons’ Den-style initiative from which the Duke took a cut.
Andrew insists he has done nothing wrong, despite a judge raising questions about how the alleged spy could have become such a ‘close confidant’.
It follows on from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and concerns over the Duke’s role as an official UK ‘trade ambassador’.
But the most damning revelation of recent days was the emergence of correspondence in 2021 from his ‘senior advisor’, Dominic Hampshire, found by security services on Mr Yang’s phone.
Mr Hampshire emphasised the ‘strength’ of the relationship with the Duke and his family, adding: ‘Outside of his closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree many, many people would like to be on.’
More worryingly for palace officials, Mr Hampshire wrote that after a meeting with Andrew, they had ‘wisely navigated our way around former private secretaries and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don’t completely trust’.
He added that ‘under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor’ – a reference to Royal Lodge, Andrew’s Berkshire home.
There is no clue who these individuals are – or why they would be so keen to circumvent security to smuggle people into his home.
Investigations continue into what access Mr Yang had when he visited royal residences several times on Andrew’s invitation.
Mr Yang, a businessman who forged close ties to the Duke of York and met senior politicians including Lord David Cameron and Baroness Theresa May, has been banned from the UK since last year.
He challenged his ban on entering the UK at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission in July, but lost his appeal last week.
He has insisted he has ‘done nothing wrong or unlawful’, and said it is ‘entirely untrue’ to claim he was involved in espionage, and claimed he is a victim of a ‘political climate’ which had seen a rise in tensions between the UK and China.
In a statement after a High Court judge lifted an order granting him anonymity, he said: ‘Due to the high level of speculation and misreporting in the media and elsewhere, I have asked my legal team to disclose my identity.
‘I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.’