It must be clear by now that this isn’t going to stop. It’s been nearly two decades since Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and over five since Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s car-crash interview on Newsnight. The story never dies. It just gets bigger, and ever more damaging, and increasingly corrosive of public trust.

Instead of subsiding, it seems to grow, like roots under the earth, touching everyone – politicians, royals, scientists, entrepreneurs, even leftist activists. Every sector of our cultural life has its own little mini-Epstein scandal, a subplot that plays into the main storyline. There is no point hiding, or concealing information, or fighting disclosure. The best possible approach is full transparency, get out in front of it, then deal with the fallout.

And yet even now there is hesitancy, reluctance, excuses. The Government and the Royal Family feel like they are dragging their feet, needing to be pushed into openness rather than engaging with it willingly.

The latest wrinkle in this story concerns emails between Mountbatten-Windsor, Epstein and a man named David Stern. They relate to the period when the then-prince was serving as trade envoy, between 2001 and 2011. Stern was Mountbatten-Windsor’s aide and confidant, but he called Epstein “my boss”. During Mountbatten-Windsor’s official duties in his taxpayer funded trips, when he was supposed to be representing British interests, he seems to have in fact been mostly concerned with Epstein’s interests, helping to pursue various deals as part of a complex network of foreign companies, money, energy and power.

Even now, after everything that has happened, securing access to information about his time as trade envoy is........

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