The Palace was wrong to issue a further denial over alleged claims of under age sex (depending on local laws) and to expand it to deny all sex, just at the time the Sunday press comes out with new claims and photographs.
This has now become a contest of claim and counter claim. The media will whip up a frenzy. People will start to believe anything. All that is known for sure is that Prince Andrew befriended a billionaire who went to prison for procuring girls for sex. That is the known fact and it is quite enough. One polite denial is pushing it, not least because it has ignited the story world-wide, but on balance was probably unavoidable. A second simply stokes the fire and makes the first less credible. This is now a mess and not for the first time, the Palace demonstrates a lack of judgement about how to handle personal scandals in the Windsor family. Which is odd because there have been quite a few.