Prince Andrew has been accused by a former Downing Street adviser of using the N-word during a meeting at Buckingham Palace in 2012, the UK Evening Standard had reported.
According to the report, Rohan Silva, who was David Cameron’s key aide and now an Evening Standard columnist, said the remark was made during a discussion about trade policy.
The claim comes as the Duke of York faces an ongoing backlash over his “car crash” interview with Emily Maitlis on BBC Newsnight about the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal.
The prince had hoped he could address the accusations against him head-on but the interview has been widely criticised, with commentators condemning his unsympathetic tone and lack of remorse for the friendship with Epstein
Swinson added:
“I understand that he has expressed regret that he hadn’t said those things, but I think there was an opportunity there to do so and it was an opportunity that wasn’t taken.
“And there were other parts of that language that I found very difficult, talking about sexual abuse as behaviour that was ‘unbecoming’.
“And, the point were he said it is a positive act for a man to have sex. That would suggest for a woman it is not a positive act.
“Actually, it’s a positive act for anybody, man or woman to have sex, because if it’s not a positive act, then there is not that consent, and that’s rape.
“Some of that language I also found really hard to listen to.”
Jo Swinson has again spoken on the subject of Prince Andrew’s interview, calling it “disheartening”.
Adding:
“I watched that interview, I’m sure many people did, and what struck me was that what wasn’t really discussed was the people who are most important in all of this, which are the victims.”
It comes as Buckingham Palace dealt with the backlash from Prince Andrew’s car crash interview with Emily Maitlis in which he failed to express any sympathy for the victims of paedo pal Jeffrey Epstein, who was found hanged in jail in August while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
He called the billionaire’s behaviour “unbecoming”, to which Maitlis replied: “Unbecoming? He was a sex offender.”
The Duke was also ridiculed over his repeated denials of any sexual relationship with then 17-year-old Virginia Roberts.
He claimed he had taken his daughter Princess Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking on the night he is accused of sleeping with Roberts, a “sex slave” of Epstein.
Roberts has claimed she met Andrew at London club Tramp, where he “sweated profusely”, before sleeping with him in 2001.
But the Duke claimed that was factually wrong as he had a medical condition at the time which meant he did not sweat, the result of being shot at during the Falklands conflict.
Prince Andrew also said he did not regret having been a friend of Epstein, who killed himself in jail aged 66.
He said: “The people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful.”
His private secretary Amanda Thirsk had pushed him to do the Newsnight interview in a bid to draw a line under the controversy.