Over the course of this week, we’ve gone through another round of “Prince Andrew should be punished, but how?” The problem seems to be that King Charles and his advisors really don’t want to punish Andrew any further, regardless of Andrew’s lies about Jeffrey Epstein, regardless of the newly discovered email from Andrew to Epstein in 2011, regardless of the growing body of evidence that Andrew really was and is a depraved, degenerate sexual predator. Charles and his aides have mostly dithered, publicly questioning whether Andrew really should be denied his shooting-party privileges (which he still has) or have his Garter-Knight honor removed (he’s still a KG) or whether Andrew should really be excluded from church events (he’s still invited). Well, finally, one columnist says the quiet part outloud: “The monarchy is rotten to the core – not just Prince Andrew.” Written by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, via the i Paper.

Prince Andrew’s latest, leaked missive suggests that the favourite son of Queen Elizabeth II is amoral, egotistical, and, like his ex-wife, a liar. The day after the photo of the good-time Prince, with a young, smiling Virginia Roberts (later Giuffre) and Ghislaine Maxwell, was published, Andrew allegedly wrote this email to Jeffrey Epstein: “Seems we’re in this together. Let’s play again soon!!! A, HRH The Duke of York, KG.” Andrew’s outrages come and go, but he is still His Royal Highness, Knight of the Garter.

The email published by the Mail on Sunday has sent more shockwaves through the nation. The patrician historian A N Wilson declares it “a major crisis for the monarchy… perhaps the gravest since the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936”. Royal correspondents are busily soothing royalists.

And I am having seditious thoughts. I now think the rogue Prince is a useful foil for the King and rest of the Windsors. Those same, tired speculations about his income, role, house and ex-wife serve to distract subjects from the many other scandals in that family, which come, shock and mysteriously evaporate. Here are some of the most recent examples.

Michael Fawcett, the King’s former trusted aide and confidante, was surreptitiously “welcomed back into the King’s charmed circle again” earlier this year, according to the Mail on Sunday. There has been no public disquiet about that. In 2018, Fawcett was the CEO of what was then the Prince’s Foundation. An independent investigation in 2021 found he had co-ordinated with “fixers” over honours nominations for the Saudi billionaire Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz. Fawcett resigned following the allegations. The Metropolitan Police dropped an investigation into the charity in 2023.

Norman Baker, the former Liberal Democrat minister, rightly, in my view, suspected that “no action is being taken because of the nature of the potential offender, rather than a proper assessment of the potential crime”. If this had been Andrew, trust me, there would have been a swell of disapproval.

Next problem. Last November, a joint Sunday Times and Dispatches investigation revealed staggering examples of royal greed and exploitation. The King’s Duchy of Lancaster and Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall extracted substantial amounts of money from the Armed Forces, schools, prisons and fire and ambulance services. The King’s Duchy estate, for example, was making £829,000 a year renting one warehouse to an NHS trust for housing ambulances – a social necessity. The Mirror found rental properties in the Duchy of Cornwall were damp, mouldy and didn’t meet minimum legal energy efficiency standards. The duchies have denied any wrongdoing. What did the owners know? And what has been done to put things right? Those questions will keep on hanging in the air. And life moves on. But grubby stories keep on coming.

This summer, The Sunday Times reported an exodus of gardeners from King Charles’s Highgrove estate, following complaints over unmanageable workloads, low pay and demoralising comments from the King. Richard Kay of the Mail, a royal acolyte, added some spin: “Of course, stories about Charles as a demanding, pernickety fusspot – together with a lavish, pampered lifestyle – are not new. Over the decades, his relentless pace led to a high turnover of senior advisers whom he exhausted with round-the-clock demands… while he is a much calmer person thanks to a happier second marriage, some things haven’t changed. He can still be testy.” Where is the outrage?

Lets go back to the 2023 coronation. Millions of Britons were barely able to eat properly, or heat their homes as the cost of living bit into their lives, and our state squandered £72m on the spectacle. Camilla even had her dogs embroidered on to her dress. Such profligacy in such hard times, and no accountability.

A final point: the Budget looms and taxes need to be raised. Labour could upend the existing royal tax arrangements and get the King – among the richest 100 people in the UK – and his family to pay corporation and capital gains taxes. That won’t happen. Their hold over us is unchallengeable. The royals resist change, because, observes Norman Baker: “They’re arrogant. They think they can get away with it and they think they have an entitlement, and they carry on regardless. They sail on.” Andrew is not the biggest problem. The monarch, his family and allies and the system are.

[From The i Paper]

I agree with all of this and we’ve seen much of it unfold in real time. I’d also like to point out something which goes unsaid here – not only is Andrew being used as a cover for the rot of the monarchy, the performative outrage over the Sussexes is the biggest cover of all. The monarchy AND the press use Harry and Meghan to deflect FROM Andrew, nevermind the rest of the left-behinds. In 2023, Buckingham Palace’s courtiers even admitted as much, that they used the speculation of “will the Sussexes come to the coronation” to distract from all of the agita over the cost of the Chubbly and the unpopularity of the new king and queen consort. Also: William and Charles never really responded to the stories about their slumlording and profiteering from social services and taxpayers via the Duchy of Cornwall and Duchy of Lancaster. Those stories just… went away. Because Harry & Meghan were in California, you see, and that was the bigger issue for the palace and the press.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.