After the death of Prince Philip, MPs queued up in Parliament to recount what a terrific fellow he’d been, visiting their constituencies and making off-colour jokes that everyone agreed only showed what a laugh he was. That debate came to mind on Tuesday afternoon, as MPs discussed the late Prince’s son, no-longer-Prince Andrew. The structure of the anecdotes was the same, but their purpose now was to demonstrate that the former Duke of York had been a total git.
“He insisted on coming by helicopter,” stormed Chris Bryant. “He left early and showed no interest in the young people.” If only Andrew had taken a similar approach to Jeffrey Epstein’s parties.
Bryant was speaking on behalf of the government, in his capacity as a trade minister. In the olden days (by which I mean December) he would have been obliged to show an appropriate level of deference to the King’s brother. These days? Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, we learned, is “rude, arrogant and entitled”. Blimey, minister, tell us what you really think.
But until a few weeks ago, it was impossible to imagine this debate happening at all. Indeed, it’s hard to think it happened even now without at least one call between the Speaker’s office and the Palace, just to check HM’s feelings.
If we were in any doubt, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, who had secured the slot, gave a fascinating account of being in the minister’s shoes back in 2011, for a much more constrained discussion of whether then-Prince Andrew was really such a great choice as trade envoy. “I set out the government’s position, as it had been for a decade, in support of the prince’s role,” Davey confessed. “Looking back and knowing what we all know now, I am horrified.”
The timing was happier for Bryant, who was in opposition in 2011, and could say what he wanted. Or could try to, anyway. “I was rebuked,” he told the chamber, by then-Speaker John Bercow, who ruled that mentions of any Royal in Parliament should be “very rare, very sparing and very respectful”. Bercow has, for his own reasons, since become a villain as well. MPs really were getting a whole rogues’ gallery to hurl their rotten fruit at.
I say “MPs”, but only the Lib Dems had really bothered to turn up. Kemi Badenoch has made it clear that she feels Royal misbehaviour is a sideshow, got up by the government to distract from the brilliant job™ that she has personally been doing all by herself™ at exposing Peter Mandelson™. The rest of us, however, can cope with two or more wrong ’uns at a time. Not least after all the practice we got under the last government.
Just about the only Conservative present was Alex Burghart, who opened by thanking Bryant for “the humble way in which he reminded us that he has been right all along.” Burghart, who wears his PhD in the Mercian Polity lightly, couldn’t resist chiding Davey for suggesting that this was the first global political scandal. “I think of the Dreyfus affair, the XYZ affair and the Panama scandals,” he explained gently. He’s actually tremendous fun at parties.
Aside from that, the most significant Tory intervention was the arrival of Desmond Swayne, who had lost his glasses, and thought they might be under his seat (they weren’t). Labour scarcely offered more. Had the whips told the backbenchers to stay away?
If they had, Rachel Maskell ignored them. As MP for York, she feels the city is shamed by having had Andrew as its Duke. She also asked a good question: what had the intelligence services known about the prince’s activities, whom had they told, and how had this decision been reached?
Lib Dem Monica Harding continued the Anecdotes of Shame. She had been working for the British Council in Tokyo when Andrew arrived on one of his trade missions. “I was told this was a containment exercise, that he was arrogant and that he wasn’t on top of his brief.” Although if we were to start chucking people out of government jobs for that, where would it end?
More excitingly, she revealed that Andrew always travelled with “an ironing board”. A what? “This was a euphemism for a massage bed.” Oh.
Brendan O’Hara, of the SNP, was full of Scottish fury. “There have been reports he’d requested that the public purse cover the cost of his ‘massage services’,” he said, spitting the final two words out as though he were denouncing the sinner from a pulpit. He had questions about Andrew’s job: “What in his previous life made him uniquely suitable for the position of UK trade envoy?” We knew the answer to this question, and Maskell’s too: do you know who his mum was?
Well, she is no longer around, and Andrew’s brother has thrown him overboard in an effort to save the rest of the family. Will it be enough? Several MPs wanted to know about the multi-million-pound pay-off to the woman who was suing the former prince. Pull on this thread and there’s no telling how much of the jumper will unravel.
Sian Berry, for the Greens, asked whether the Royal family had “an effective whistleblowing policy.” Traditionally, unhappy members decamped to the North of England and raised an army, but the procedure probably needs to be updated.
“Who in the Royal Household knew what and when?” Berry asked. A decade ago, the Speaker would have stopped her right then. Now, there wasn’t a peep. Daylight may be the best disinfectant, but it can also destroy magic. Where will all this end?
