A tale of two brothers: could the Andrew crisis bring down King Charles?
Former prince’s arrest was most damaging event for the family firm in centuries – and the questions keep coming
London fashion week was probably the last public place King Charles III wanted to be on Thursday, admiring the suits and costumes that no one he knows would dream of buying, and making light conversation with designers he would have difficulty in recognising at a royal garden party.
Charles must have been contemplating the crumbling of all his plans and hopes for his reign. He always knew it would be short, even before his cancer diagnosis, but he probably never thought it would be upended by the alleged behaviour of his own brother.
Thursday was the most consequential and damaging day for the family firm in centuries, perhaps since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, or the capture of King Charles I in 1647 and his execution two years later. Certainly it is worse than Diana’s death and more threatening than the 1936 abdication crisis, because it undermines the institution itself.
The Andrew crisis has not been over in a week or a fortnight – it just goes on posing questions, not only containable ones limited to Andrew’s apparent behaviour, but wider ones seeping through whole aspects of the monarchy: its money, its privacy, its unaccountability, its character and, crucially, its popularity with the public.
If Charles really did warn their mother about appointing his brother as a trade envoy back in 2001 – if that is not just a piece of retrospective palace spin – why did it take so long for the palace to take action?
It must have known about “Airmiles” Andy’s extravagance, freeloading and general boorishness, which has been publicised for years. Did Mountbatten-Windsor’s staff and royal protection officers know of his other alleged proclivities?
If they knew and nothing was done, that was taking deference to him and the late queen too far. As she well knew, the monarch’s chief duty is to preserve the institution for the succession. She seems to have protected her favourite son and paid at least some of his debts at the cost to Charles’s inheritance.
As it is now, every gradual step – the removal of public duties, military ranks, aristocratic and royal titles and the eviction from Royal Lodge – has come too little too late, where earlier it might have staunched the coming flood.
In Charles’s statement, rushed out in the wake of his brother’s arrest, not having been told about what was going to happen in advance, he ended with a plaintive reminder of his role. “My family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all.”
Hence his appearance at the fashion show and Princess Anne’s dutiful tour of Leeds prison – ironically, on the same day her brother was in police custody.
In the circumstances, Charles’s assertion that the law must take its course was the least that he could say: he can scarcely try to hide Andrew from prosecution as earlier monarchs did in less intrusive, pre-social media ages.
If the case ever comes to trial, Mountbatten-Windsor will be appearing in the king’s court, in front of a judge sitting under the royal coat of arms. If convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, he will serve time at His Majesty’s pleasure.
Again, such an eventuality is a long way off.
Duty and service are two lodestars that Andrew apparently failed to observe. “I’m not doing this trade envoy business for my own good,” he told an interviewer in 2010. His own good seems precisely what he was trying to do.
The king’s mind at the fashion show must have been elsewhere, probably 100 miles away in Sandringham where, at Manor Farm on the Norfolk estate, his brother had been rooted out by plainclothes police officers at 8am – over breakfast? In his pyjamas? – to be cautioned and arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, alleged to have passed on confidential information about business opportunities gathered ostensibly for the British government.
Normally such investigations in a difficult crime to prove take months, if not years – this one still might – and involve junior officials and police constables, not the man who is still eighth in line to the British throne.
The former prince spent most of the rest of his 66th birthday being questioned by detectives at Aylesham police station. When he was released to be driven back to the farm in the early evening, Mountbatten-Windsor, far from his usual appearance of arrogant and complacent disdain, looked shell-shocked and frankly scared, an eye glowing red in a camera flash’s glare, as he sought to slump down as far as he could in the rear passenger seat.
It was the equivalent of what the Americans call the Perp Walk. The picture, which went round the world in minutes, has already taken its place in a growing gallery of royal portraits, alongside that of the former prince with his hand around Virginia Giuffre’s waist in 2001 and poised lubriciously and sweatily over a recumbent female figure at some unknown date, published in the Epstein files.
We can’t of course know what was going through his mind on Thursday. It must be uncomfortable to realise that, thanks to the Epstein files, many of the things he said to Emily Maitlis in his notorious BBC interview in 2019 – the one he thought had gone so well at the time – seem to have been proven untrue. He did not end his association with Epstein – in fact he knew him rather well. He did know Virginia Giuffre. He can sweat.
Did he even go to Pizza Express in Woking?
It is one of the ironies of the whole scandal so far that the release of the files has had a greater effect in Britain than it has in the US. The only person so far convicted is Ghislaine Maxwell, who is British. Meanwhile Donald Trump is insisting that he has been totally exonerated himself, so totally that he keeps repeating it.
In the US it’s a political football, in the UK it is a constitutional one. It may be the first time that US lawmakers have ever praised the British police and legal system.
Hanging over all this and so far unaddressed is what happened to the young women trafficked by Epstein, some of them allegedly sent to England in a private jet to meet the then prince.
If that is the case, what happened at Stansted and Luton airports when the jet and its personnel landed? Were the passports checked, were questions asked (“Where are you staying?”) or were they just waved through?
The former prime minister Gordon Brown has written to numerous police authorities in the past week asking for an investigation. Presumably no one further down the chain noticed, or took an interest at the time.
And what of Mountbatten-Windsor’s extant roles? He is indubitably eighth in line to the throne and he remains a counsellor of state with the potential to stand in for the monarch in their absence.
Neither is remotely likely to happen. The first would require a sort of Kind Hearts and Coronets scenario with the king and the next seven in line – William and his children, George, Charlotte and Louis, and Prince Harry and his two, Archie and Lilibet – to be wiped out first (there is a reason they don’t travel by air together).
Similarly, Andrew would never be called upon in any circumstance now to perform a royal duty. But still. After the fuss the palace made about how difficult it would be to remove Andrew’s titles and then how easily it was done, his removal could be waved through even if it required parliament to do it.
The palace always pores over its own opinion polls to gauge its continuing popularity, and public polls have marked a decline in recent months. Ipsos shows 25% saying it would be better for the monarchy to be abolished, up 10% in 10 years. Asked whether the monarchy will survive, 50% reckon there won’t be one in 50 years.
When one asks even firm monarchists about the situation, they nervously respond that they hope the Andrew scandal doesn’t damage the crown. Very, very few seem to feel sorry for him, while very many think he has brought the trouble on himself.
The monarchy is not rocking yet, though a lot of hopes rest on Prince William. People, particularly the older generation, still like the pageantry and the street parties, but another serious scandal would push the family nearer the exit. The age of deference is past, and questions of accountability need to be answered.
To paraphrase the Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot, the full glare of public scrutiny needs uncomfortably to be let in on the magic.
Stephen Bates is a former Guardian royal correspondent. His books include The Shortest History of the Crown and Royalty Inc. Britain’s best-known Brand.