Amidst all the ceremony and gravity of the Remembrance Day service on Sunday, one salient fact could not be ignored. The King has long talked of his desire for a ‘stripped-down monarchy’, and now he has his wish. The only male figures from the Firm who were out on show alongside him were the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, who together had the effect of making the royals look a rather paltry selection compared to the grander gatherings of the past.
We all know about Harry, but although some would like to see him, too, stripped of his royal title, Montecito’s second most famous resident continues to be able to refer to himself as a prince. This is not a luxury that his disgraced uncle enjoys any longer, as he adjusts to life not as Prince Andrew, Duke of York, but plain old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. As he prepares to leave Royal Lodge for a more modest existence in a grace and favour home tucked in some obscure corner of the Sandringham Estate, he may look around and wonder if his disgrace is yet over. Well, judged by recent events, the bad news for him just keeps on coming.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is as maligned as anyone in public life today
During his ‘heyday’, Andrew liked to present himself as a swashbuckling, entrepreneurial figure, thanks to his Pitch@Palace initiative, which invited would-be moneymakers to come to Buckingham Palace and get their businesses off the ground. Unsurprisingly, given his shame, this is no longer a going concern. Documents seen by the Guardian show that the last remaining part of the business, Pitch@Palace Global, has been wound up after its UK side foundered in 2021.
Admittedly, after Andrew’s disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview, it is doubtful that even the most desperate would-be businessman would have seen the soon-to-be banned old Duke of York as the answer to their prayers, but the knowledge that this beleaguered endeavour is no more shows how total, and terminal, his disgrace is. (Lest we forget, it was from the Chinese arm of Pitch@Palace that the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo emerged, suggesting that Andrew’s judgement when it comes to those he kept company with has always been terrible.)
And what of middle England? Well, Andrew has a few supporters who argue doughtily for the presumption of innocence before guilt is proved. Yet the overwhelming majority of the country consider that enough wrongdoing has now been established to regard the former prince as unspeakable, and they are not afraid to make their feelings felt. Residents of Prince Andrew Road and Prince Andrew Close in Maidenhead are hoping that the names of their streets will be changed, to avoid the taint of association. One long-sufferer local, Kelly Pevy, told the Daily Telegraph that:
If you’re giving someone the address, it’s the first thing [they’re] going to say. When I speak to energy companies and they ask for the address, they make a little joke. It’s mentioned more and more, and so then you start thinking about it more.
It remains to be seen whether the dwellers of Maidenhead succeed in their petition to the local MP to end this little joke, but if Andrew takes a moment out from a head-down routine of self-pity and video games, he may by now be seeing the enormity of the disgrace he faces. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have asked that he be summoned to the United States and Congress to answer questions about the precise nature of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Although they have no legal power to compel him to attend, Andrew knows that to do so would be potentially hazardous. Not only could he be prosecuted for perjury if any part of his testimony is false, but his presence in America would open him up to investigation, even arrest, for his alleged activities with the then-17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – there is currently some debate as to whether his surname will be hyphenated or not – is as maligned as anyone in public life today. Yet if he had stopped playing Call of Duty on Sunday and watched his elder brother and nephew remember the fallen, he would have been aware of what real courage and real sacrifice look like. Andrew, by contrast, is an insignificant figure, too sinister and grim to be pathetic and too boring to be laughable. His downfall, in all its embarrassing little details, reflects the man perfectly.
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