Photo by Maureen McLean/Alamy
On 30 October 2025 Buckingham Palace released a statement about the “Style, Titles and Honours” of the then Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Today it’s worth re-reading it in full:
“His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. His lease on Royal Lodge has, to date, provided him with legal protection to continue in residence. Formal notice has now been served to surrender the lease and he will move to alternative private accommodation. These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him. Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”
Yesterday, on his 66th birthday, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He denies any wrongdoing and the presumption of innocence must apply in this case as it always does.
Buckingham Palace marked the occasion with the release of another statement. Again, it’s worth reading the whole thing:
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“I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and suspicion of misconduct in public office. What now follows is the full, fair and proper process by which this issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and co-operation. Let me state clearly: the law must take its course. As this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter. Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all.”
What do you notice? These are the only statements the King has made about the rolling disgrace of his younger brother. (The fact that Andrew is Charles’s brother is mentioned in neither of the statements.) Other than briefings to newspapers and palace aides whispering to television correspondents, these two slight paragraphs are all we have to go on.
In the weeks between the statements our monarch has, according to the Court Circular: visited the Vatican and met the Pope; received the presidents of Ukraine, Romania and Germany when they came to Britain; received dozens of notables, flunkies, consequential religious leaders and various unappointed community spokespeople; “attended the L.G.B.T.+ Armed Forces Community Memorial Dedication Event at the National Memorial Arboretum” on 27 October; laid an enormous number of wreaths; handed out an enormous number of gongs; met some people who survived that knife attack in Huntingdon last year; witnessed a flypast of Falcon jets on 19 December and just generally done King stuff. He made his annual Christmas speech and surprised the nation by calling for unity and dignity, while mentioning World War II a few times. He’s been to church. He released a documentary with Amazon Prime called A King’s Vision.
At no point over those weeks was the King asked by any journalist: what did you know about your brother and when? Nine simple words that could bring down the monarchy. A high wall of deference and cowardice has shielded the King from the proper scrutiny those nine words would bring. The only people who have tried in recent months to get a straight answer from the House of Windsor are hecklers.
Is the question going to go away? Is the question addressed by those two statements? Yesterday the BBC called the second statement “unambiguous… offering no hiding place or protection”. The King’s statement, argued Simon Jenkins, was “scrupulous”.
Uh huh. Taken together, both statements are in fact deeply ambiguous because they answer nothing. They cannot be “scrupulous” – careful, thorough, attentive to detail – because they leave us entirely without detail. They are statements trotted out from the usual never complain, never explain Windsor stables. The only difference between them is a stylistic one – a shift from the second person to the first – the slight, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smoke signal that suggests things are getting a bit desperate in the palace. The BBC correspondent goes on: “This statement from the King will seek to draw a line under this and separate the Royal Family from whatever might happen to Andrew.”
But that’s not possible. Unfortunately for the Windsors, there are other questions, other details and other ambiguities in play here. Read the first statement from October again. Why exactly was Andrew being stripped of his titles? What was the reasoning? Were they stripped after an internal investigation into the connections between the Royal Household, Epstein and Andrew, or was this simply done on the whim of His Majesty? How the palace, the King, the Queen, the Prince of Wales and their private secretaries actually reach decisions is not for us to know. Can any of them be called to give evidence by a parliamentary select committee so we might be able to understand how this happened? No, they cannot. Would our current MPs even want to do that? Evidence for such courage remains thin on the ground.
Our monarch and his household instead exist in a realm of hocus-pocus rituals and make-believe titles, guarded by a corps of journalists who are so fierce that they roll over to have their bellies tickled whenever they see a Windsor, hacks who ask soft questions in exchange for access and would probably kill your grandmother to make a royal vanity documentary for Amazon Prime. The King’s existence appears to be a blithe one, where the fighter jet flypasts are only broken up by the occasional visit to the National Memorial Arboretum. He does not exist to be accountable, to be open to any process of formal review or to ever answer any real questions no matter how much his family embarrasses our country. Has this existence been good for the Windsors? Again: no. It is dragging their whole house down towards the rocks. The contrast with the exiled Prince Harry, who at least tries to make honesty and truthfulness his watchwords, even when the results are uncomfortable, is stark.
Has a line been drawn under the following: what did you know about your brother and when? What did the late Queen Elizabeth know about her son and when? How was Andrew’s £12 million civil settlement with Virginia Giuffre paid for in 2022? Was any public money involved? We do not know. We know about as much about the way royal finances work as we do about all the other questions raised by the events of the last few weeks.
No Windsor has spoken publicly about Jeffrey Epstein since then Prince Andrew told Emily Maitlis about his unusual appearance at that lovely Pizza Express in Woking back in 2019. As Lewis Goodall pointed out yesterday, that is a truly remarkable fact.
The King has promised to assist the police with their enquiries into his brother. I wonder how different their questions will be from all the hecklers the monarch has recently pretended not to hear.
[Further reading: Abolish the Monarchy]
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