Prince Andrew is no more. Henceforth the king’s younger brother will be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. With the Thursday night announcement, and the news that Mr Mountbatten Windsor will quit his 30-room home in Windsor, the monarch hopes to draw a line under the shame of the former prince’s friendship with the dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and alleged sexual assault of Virginia Giuffre when she was 17, which he has always denied.
These “censures” – as Buckingham Palace termed them – were made necessary by Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s poor judgment and deceit, including the lie that he had broken off contact with Epstein in 2010. But the real damage was done by his grotesquely entitled behaviour and appalling choice of friends. It should not have taken the painful details in Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, an extract of which was published in the Guardian, to make it obvious that the shelter this arrogant man enjoyed had to be removed.
Evicted from the crown estate, Mr Mountbatten Windsor will now live on the king’s private property at Sandringham estate in Norfolk, at the king’s expense. Thursday’s statement asserted that royal sympathies lie with the victims of abuse, while avoiding any mention of perpetrators. In 2022, £12m was paid to Ms Giuffre on behalf of the then Prince Andrew, and the late queen is believed to have stumped up the cash. There was no admission of liability.
Given all this, and the extent of Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s contacts with Epstein and the sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, it is unlikely that the latest attempt to move on from this sordid chapter will succeed. Nor should it. It is six years since the notorious BBC Newsnight interview that led to the then prince giving up his public duties. Ever since, outrage at his conduct and impunity has formed part of the febrile mix of emotions around the royal family.
If and when files relating to the cases against Epstein are released in the US, there may be new questions to answer. One UK government minister, Chris Bryant, has already said that he would expect Mr Mountbatten Windsor to cooperate with any investigation. Ms Giuffre took her own life in April, but her family have made clear that their commitment to “accountability” for the wrongs done to her is ongoing.
Other ministers have mostly stuck to a script that puts the king in charge of damage limitation. But the public accounts committee thought Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s tenancy of a royal palace required greater scrutiny. It may be this threat of renewed attention to royal finances that finally prompted action. It is highly unlikely that the king would welcome reforms that would increase transparency and accountability around royal funding and influence. Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s continued reliance on the public purse could have made them harder to resist.
The Guardian has long been critical of the royal family, and Mr Mountbatten Windsor has come to represent everything that makes it hard to defend: entitled, venal and out of touch with the people it seeks to serve. The king has acted in an attempt to stop the slow haemorrhaging of support and credibility that his brother’s behaviour has caused. Yet this saga may not be over yet. The king’s actions may prove to be too little, too late. Recent events point to the need for a wider reset of Britain’s relationship with its royal family.
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