Opinion | Prince Andrew as 007

By Philip Yeung

How MI5 turns Prince Andrew into 007!

Out of the blue, Prince Andrew, a walking corpse since the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal broke, has come roaring back to life. He is reincarnated as the latest edition of 007. His perfect foil is a starstruck Chinese businessman named Yang Tengbo, who wakes up to find himself fingered as a spy, comedically referred to as H6. A spy is not a spy without a code name.

This far-fetched spy story with a code name is the figment of the overactive imagination of MI5. In spinning this spy saga, two parties stand to benefit: Prince Andrew and  MI5. Britain has been starved of espionage intrigues for years. The anti-spy agency finally has something to justify its murky existence. Except it amounts to no more than a puff of smoke and worth less than the used toilet paper in the Royal Lodge. The skullduggery exists only in the minds of its idle agents.

Key questions hover over this case. First, it is quite a stretch to describe Prince Andrew as belonging to the "heart of the British establishment", when in truth he has been rotting at the margins of royalty, out of sight, out of favor, and out of influence. He has been called everyone's "useful idiot", "a national joke", a "pariah", the least worthy target for any foreign spy, having never recovered from that train wreck of an interview and his multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlement with his underage sex partner Virginia Giuffre. Cut off from the Royal Grant, Andrew has no legitimate source of income to fund the royal lifestyle to which he is accustomed. Financially desperate, he "will grab on to anything". The Queen's youngest son, a virtual prisoner at the Royal Lodge, quickly grabbed onto the Chinese businessman with dollar signs flashing in his eyes. You know what this ridiculous spy story is really about? A desperate prince and an overeager Chinese businessman who wants to rub shoulders with royalty. Not exactly 007 stuff. The Duke of York has been infamous for befriending shady tycoons and sex predators. Nobody has ever accused him of betraying state secrets then. But put China into the equation, and voila, it is a big espionage case.

But somehow, by gross exaggeration and projection, a naive businessman is turned into a sinister secret agent. Except there is nothing secret about this putative operative. He has been publicly photographed with two former British prime ministers, David Cameron, and Theresa May, and was invited to Andrew's birthday party and had visited Buckingham Palace twice, as well as St James's Palace and Windsor Castle at the invitation of the prince. No spy worth his salt would flaunt his social credentials in such a high-profile manner. The best Chinese fortune-teller couldn't have predicted that Yang would one day become a world-famous spy. But thanks to MI5, he will wear this halo for life. A social climber hungry for business opportunities has been elevated to a big spy.

For his pains, Mr. Yang has been banned from Britain. He took his case to the UK's Special Immigration Appeals Commission which upheld his exclusion, choosing to always err on the side of suspicion. A suspected spy is guilty until proven innocent—an impossibility given the deep-seated anti-China bias. A real spy doesn't file an appeal. He goes into hiding. Exactly, what top secrets have been passed on to Mr. Yang? According to Andrew, "nothing of a sensitive nature (was) ever discussed". Andrew should know. He has zero access to state secrets, maybe to his own dirty secrets, yes. If Yang were an Indian businessman, he would have been honored for his diplomacy to advance bilateral relations. Unfortunately, he was born Chinese.

This low comedy was opportunistically turned into high drama. The prince, wallowing in the gutters after his epic fall from grace, is a sorry figure. On his best days, he is a hollow man, kept afloat only by his damaged royal title.

But that does not stop the desperate duke's advisor from trying to puff up his importance, massaging Yang's ego, by telling him that "Outside of (Andrew's) closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on." Smooth talk of a scammer with a royal title.

But there was no tree. Instead, Yang was nailed on a cross. You see, the royal family has hung Prince Andrew out to dry, leaving him to live by his own wits, mostly by marketing the mystique of his royal status. Yang, for his part, could go home to China and brag about being in the inner circle of a British prince. But state secrets? Not even a dog's nose can detect the faintest whiff of classified information. It is a tempest in an empty teacup. Yang paid dearly for his silly bragging rights.

Mr. Yang is a victim of the anti-China hysteria. The Chinese couldn't care two hoots about British national security. All they want is trade with the UK.

Prince Andrew is now strutting around as an unlikely heroic spy catcher, aided and abetted by a jittery MI5 which sees a spy under every Chinese bed. It can now flatter itself as an anti-spy agency worthy of James Bond.

The whole thing is a sick joke. You only have to know what the United Arab Emirates is doing to see through the charade. The UAE government is apparently offering Andrew a haven, craving like Yang to add luster to his royal status. The prince is toying with the idea of making a permanent move to this Arab state, as his financial options dry up in his native country.

But UAE better be forewarned. Just make sure the horny prince doesn't spill any non-existent state secrets. If  UAE were China, I would say keep Andrew at arm's length. British royalty doesn't smell all that good these days. Randy Andy might be disgraced, but MI5 just loves hovering over him, whatever the odor.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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