The Spectator’s Notes | 12 March 2011

In common with, I suspect, many of those writing most censoriously about it all, I have no idea whether the Duke of York has done anything wrong. So far, the charges against him are that he is friendly with a convicted sex offender, and that he has met Saif Gaddafi and given lunch to the son-in-law of the then president of Tunisia. The first accusation proves nothing against him, but the newspapers are trying to hint, without stating evidence, that the Prince himself may have committed sexual offences. The other accusations prove even less: the Duke is this country’s informal trade ambassador, and he met people with whom the British government happily did business, so he was performing his official role. These people may well have been disgusting, but that is a question above Prince Andrew’s pay-grade — an unfair phrase, actually, since, in this role, he is unpaid. His mother, in her time, has had to confer an honour upon Ceaucescu of Romania and be nice to the mass-murderer Robert Mugabe. No one has been so stupid as to suggest that these were personal errors on her part: they were acts of state policy, and the Queen was merely doing her constitutional duty. The only disgusting behaviour so far in the Prince Andrew case has been that of ‘government sources’ briefing the press on Sunday. They said that Downing Street ‘would shed no tears’ if the Duke chose to leave his post: ‘We won’t be giving a full-throated defence of him.’ Whoever said these things should be sacked. The government does not seem to understand the rule that members of the royal family, in their official capacities, act only on the advice of ministers. The government must therefore always defend them full-throatedly, as it should all who do government work and cannot answer back.