Emily Maitlis, the journalist and podcaster who did the car-crash Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew, has indicated that the Royals are at long last beginning to ‘get’ why the public is so angry about the way he has been indulged, despite the increasingly long – and sordid – charge sheet against him.
They appear to have got the message that it is unacceptable for Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson to go on living high on the hog in a 30-room mansion which is part of the Crown Estate – ie public property.
This week, Maitlis said on her podcast that it was Prince William who seized control of events by threatening his cousins, Eugenie and Beatrice, with being stripped of the title of princess if they did not persuade their awful parents to move out of Royal Lodge, Windsor.
I am told that this rumour is categorically untrue but, even if this particular bit of the story has been misrepresented, there is no doubt that William is a tougher nut than his father. And it is no longer a matter of choice: He must be tough. Indeed, if he is to save the monarchy, he must even appear to be cruel.
The kindly and conciliatory King has been dithering, making it clear to Andrew that he should give up the Royal Lodge while never quite having the guts to chuck him out.
Legally-minded folk point out that Andrew’s lease on the place has decades yet to run. But this is entirely beside the point. Public fury is at eruption-point.
The Palace has tried to brush aside the sentiments of those such as the heckler who called out an awkward question to the King in Lichfield on Monday about his brother and Jeffrey Epstein. But these hecklers were shouting what most reasonably-minded monarchists believe. Andrew and Fergie are a pair of greedy sleaze-bags who are dragging the monarchy into the gutter.
The royals appear to have got the message that it is unacceptable for Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson to go on living in a 30-room mansion which is part of the Crown Estate
Emily Maitlis said Prince William threatened to strip his cousins, Eugenie and Beatrice, of the title of princess if they did not persuade their awful parents to move out of Royal Lodge
In such circumstances we must be realistic and – come the sad day when we are informed of the current King’s death – the future of the British monarchy will lie with William and Kate. They simply cannot afford to be gentle with Andrew. They have to be brutal, to save the monarchy itself.
What began as a sex scandal has become a row over property. Now it is utterly toxic for the Royal Family.
Ever since the days of Queen Victoria, the monarchy has tried to blur the edges between property on loan – such as ‘grace and favour’ houses and buildings which come to the royals as part of their function, such as Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace – and places which they own.
The huge estates of Sandringham and Balmoral are the personal property of the House of Windsor and on each estate there are very many houses where Andrew and Fergie, together or separately, could be accommodated, at the expense of their extremely rich family (or ex-family in the case of Fergie). There is no reason whatsoever why the Crown Estates, ie the public purse, should go on financing them.
Most British people felt huge respect and affection for Queen Elizabeth II and did not want to peer too closely into her finances. She was a faithful public servant for decades, and no one felt the need to draw a clear dividing line between what she owned as a person, and what she held in trust as monarch.
As it happens, when Prince Philip retired from public life, it is noticeable that he chose to do so not in a Crown Estate property but in Wood Farm, a very modest house on the Sandringham estate.
Prince Andrew should do the same. When the brouhaha has died down a bit and there is no longer any suggestion that Andrew and Fergie, and their ludicrous extravagances, are being subsidised by the British taxpayer, then there will be the time for lessons to be learned.
I fear the King will never learn these lessons. His privileged upbringing has numbed him to any sense of what the public think of the royal property question. For years, as Duke of Cornwall, he went on regarding the profits from the Duchy as his private income and used almost £1million of it to buy his beloved Highgrove in 1980. The house is now leased to him and is ‘his’ until death.
The kindly and conciliatory King has been dithering, making it clear to Andrew that he should give up the Royal Lodge (pictured) while never quite having the guts to chuck him out
In such circumstances we must be realistic and – come the sad day when we are informed of the current King’s death – the future of the British monarchy will lie with William and Kate
This week – following the heckling on the streets of Lichfield – it has become clear that the public’s fondness for the royals is not limitless and we can’t go on allowing them to live on Crown Estate properties if they are not working royals. Nor can they expect to go on trousering the vast incomes from the two duchies: Cornwall and Lancaster.
By any standards they are not merely comfortable but hugely rich. Andrew may not have inherited anything substantial from the late Queen (or the Queen Mother) on her death but he is believed to have been given large sums during her lifetime and a handsome allowance from his brother the King.
We are yet to be told how much money he made while acting as our special ‘trade envoy’ – a period in which he earned the nickname ‘Air Miles Andy’ – but we do know that his enthusiastic sucking up to foreign potentates earned him various favours including – it is whispered – the use of a mansion in Abu Dhabi.
Meanwhile, his ex-wife recently sold a Belgravia house for over £3.5million. We are not talking here about people who would be plunged into poverty if they simply did the decent thing and stopped living on our money.
These things seem very obvious to us non-royals. And to Prince William. From an early age, he was brought up by his mother to see how ‘ordinary’ people lived. She took him to the homeless charity Centre Point. She bought him pizzas at the local pizzeria in Kensington.
His childhood was a world away from the rarefied, spoilt world in which Charles and Andrew grew up. That is why William is in a strong position to see that if – as most of us fervently hope – there is going to be a monarchy in the future, it has to be one based on a fair deal.
The Royals can keep the loot made over centuries out of public funds and public property. But enough is enough. And in the case of Fergie and Andrew, more than enough.
