Prince Andrew giving up his Duke of York title has been described by one of the city’s councillors as “a long time coming”.
The prince’s announcement to stop using his remaining titles and honours comes in the wake of the Epstein scandal.
City of York councillor Darryl Smalley previously proposed a motion to the council to remove Prince Andrew’s freedom of the city status, which was unanimously voted through in 2022, and also campaigned for the prince to be stripped of the title Duke of York.
Liberal Democrat Mr Smalley told the PA news agency on Friday: “We’d obviously lobbied quite hard and sent several letters to the palace and to Prince Andrew himself, all of which via recorded post and none of which was answered, but obviously a few years later the pressure has meant that the palace has had to act.
“It’s obviously a long time coming but finally they recognised what a massive liability he is.”
Reacting to Friday’s announcement, Mr Smalley told PA: “Pleased that a long-running campaign has actually led to something. It’s not often in politics, particularly the royal family, that they seem to listen.
“However, obviously, it’s yet another moment where we need to think about those who are impacted by what Jeffrey Epstein did and all of his associates.”
He said the campaign to disassociate the prince from York was driven by a “unanimous feeling” in the city.
“There are people that are overt republicans in the council and people who are overt monarchists and it’s actually across political lines but also across those lines that we’d all agreed we really didn’t want Prince Andrew associated with our city anymore, and it wasn’t just the council,” Mr Smalley said.
“It’s a sort of unanimous feeling, really.
“It didn’t really matter who we spoke to, whether it was a local resident in the Dog and Bone or whether it was an important city stakeholder like the York racecourse, we were all pretty miffed that we have absolutely no power over this quite important position that Prince Andrew was holding.”
Mr Smalley’s motion in 2022 was brought following the settlement of Andrew’s sexual assault civil case with Virginia Giuffre.
