In her comic novel The Queen and I, Sue Townsend imagines a future republican Britain where the Royal Family has been stripped of its wealth and titles and ‘relocated’ to a Midlands council estate.
To keep him out of the way, Prince Andrew is returned to the Royal Navy and stationed on a submarine underneath the Arctic ice-cap.
While life hasn’t exactly imitated art this week, the family may well have wished that same option was available. As it is, Andrew is being banished to the rather more hospitable climes of the Sandringham estate.
The King’s decision to evict him from Windsor, remove his hereditary title of Prince and send him into internal exile was both decisive and necessary.
However, it can’t have been easy. For all his squalid behaviour, Andrew is still his brother. Subjecting him to such public humiliation must have been painful.
But to have Andrew’s indiscretions continually plastered across front pages here and abroad was debasing the monarchy. There could be no compromise; he had to be isolated.
So how this notoriously entitled man adapts to being plain Mr Mountbatten-Windsor will be interesting to see. All his life he has been cosseted, waited on, deferred to and subsidised.
Many will relish the idea of him having to make his own way – albeit living rent-free on a 20,000-acre country estate. Ideally, he would vanish into obscurity but, sadly, that’s highly unlikely.
To have Andrew’s indiscretions continually plastered across front pages here and abroad was debasing the monarchy. There could be no compromise; he had to be isolated
There are calls from the US for him to be brought to book for his alleged involvement in the organised sexual abuse of young women. We have not heard the last of him.
The King and Queen have acted with commendable resolve to draw a line under this most damaging and sordid of royal scandals. Whether they have succeeded, only time will tell.
Pattern of dishonesty
Rachel Reeves probably breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when the ultimate shaming of Andrew distracted media attention from her own dubious behaviour. But she would be foolish to think she’s out of the woods.
It remains the case that she committed a criminal offence, misled the Prime Minister over the circumstances, and may yet have to pay up to £38,000 in penalties over failing to buy a licence before renting out her south London home.
For a second time in two days, Sir Keir Starmer and his toothless ethics watchdog had to issue two hasty public statements saying his hapless Chancellor didn’t mean to break the law.
Had she not been due to present a Budget in under four weeks, he might not have been so desperate to protect her.
As usual, she blames others for her transgressions, but this steaming mess is hers alone. Along with her other deceptions, such as embellishing her CV and plagiarising other authors for her book on female economists, it suggests a troubling pattern of dishonesty.
After her last disastrous Budget, which lumbered families and businesses with an extra £40 billion in taxes, she said she wouldn’t be back for more.
Yet all the signs are that that promise will be trashed on November 26, when she is expected to take the tax burden to a new high.
She will no doubt blame the Tory legacy, Brexit, global forces, tariffs – anyone and anything but herself and her own economic incompetence.
But given her record of dissembling and falsification, why should we believe a word she says? Her credibility is damaged beyond repair.
