Tim Stanley is a columnist and podcaster for the London Daily Telegraph.
The arrest on Thursday of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the fool formerly known as a prince, marks the definite end of public reverence toward the British monarchy. I write that as an Englishman who is rather fond of it.
The brother of King Charles III was “nicked,” as we like to say, on his 66th birthday — for unspecified misconduct in public office. The police had previously said they were reviewing claims that he passed sensitive government information to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while working as a trade envoy.
Mountbatten-Windsor crossed a line in his reckless friendship with Epstein. The police crossed a line by arresting him. This is something we haven’t done in England since 1647.
That year, King Charles I was arrested for treason and later executed — a reminder that Mountbatten-Windsor is not the first, or worst, controversial royal. Fat, drunk George IV physically barred his adulterous wife, Queen Caroline, from his coronation in 1821. She died weeks later; during protests at her funeral, two subjects were shot dead.
By the early 20th century, as the world flirted with revolution, the monarchy chose to adopt an image of middle-class sobriety. Any royal who threatened that brand might be kicked out — as Edward VIII discovered when he proposed to marry a divorcée (worse, an American divorcée) and was forced to abdicate in 1936.
Our model monarch became Elizabeth II, mother to the current king his detained-and-released-by-the-police younger brother. Her motto was supposed to have been “never complain, never explain.” She was visible yet terse; stoical and devoted to public service. Many of us adored her.
Yet, the late queen left a ruthless legacy. The royal family, which refers to itself unlovingly as “the firm,” today consists of a tight nucleus of Charles and Queen Camilla; the heir and his spouse, William and Kate; and the heir’s heirs, George, Charlotte and Louis. Relatives beyond that group are dispensable; exile, as William’s brother, Harry, has found, is cold and financially unstable.
This is the gilded cage that Mountbatten-Windsor was born into in 1960. Rude and stupid by breeding, he was raised to be a “spare to an heir,” and as soon as Charles produced William, Andrew was left without a constitutional purpose. That gulf was filled with money and sex.
My country forgets that it once encouraged him. Handsome Andrew was decorated as a hero of the 1982 Falklands War and dubbed “Randy Andy” by journalists who used to find such things hilarious. His marriage to Sarah Ferguson, in 1986, was celebrated as modern; Sarah, noted the press, had a job.
The government found Mountbatten-Windsor a role as a trade envoy, a position he is accused of using to furnish Epstein with inside information. The oleaginous Peter Mandelson, until recently the British ambassador to the United States, is alleged to have done something similar. Both of these brothers-in-Epstein deny wrongdoing.
When the Epstein scandal spread to Britain, it looked to many of us like the moral indictment of an establishment we have long suspected of being rotten. The greatest hurt came from the suggestion that Elizabeth II might have contributed funds toward an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim who claimed Mountbatten-Windsor sexually abused her.
If she was a hypocrite, at least Elizabeth was a competent one. Prince Andrew, as he was then known, before being stripped of his title, made the mistake of breaking the queen’s golden rule of silence and granting an interview with the BBC in 2019, professing his innocence in wild and unconvincing terms.
Parts of his defense have since been contradicted; the Epstein files have proved the depth and length of their relationship. In these emails, the elites in general appear to be two-faced, lecherous and money-obsessed. Sarah Ferguson, long divorced from Mountbatten-Windsor, allegedly wrote to Epstein while he was in jail to ask for advice on handling debts worth $8 million.
The royalty is in danger of appearing to have no class.
The firm understands this. It has adopted the old-fashioned technique of kicking Mountbatten-Windsor out of the club, removing his titles and house, even his invite to the annual Christmas party. But they have also been unusually willing to comment upon events and express sympathy with victims.
Mountbatten-Windsor embodies a monarchy that is reduced in stature in a country that is itself getting poorer and crasser, and has inherited a set of institutions — Crown, a state church, House of Lords — the purpose of which it can’t recall.
If we’re not careful, if their reputation sinks any lower, we might finally join the U.S. and wipe them away in a fit of revolutionary disgust. This would be a terrible mistake.
Is America any more democratic, or its elites any more accountable, for being a republic? The ex-prince perhaps faces jail for his connection to Epstein; U.S. presidents, intellectuals and billionaires do not. Post-Elizabethan Britain has no illusions about its rulers and, regarding its elite as a soap opera, feels zero embarrassment at arresting its aristocrats.
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