Is Andrew’s Downfall the Tipping Point for the House of Windsor?

Wood Farm holds a cherished spot in the hearts of the Royal Family. It served as the retreat where Prince Philip settled into retirement after stepping back from public life. During their time there, he and the Queen would often enjoy reminiscing by looking through old family photographs.

Such sentimental moments now seem deeply poignant. Recent events surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have cast a shadow over the farmhouse, stripping it of the rustic charm so adored by his parents and thrusting the monarchy into a turbulent crisis that threatens its very stability.

For centuries, the monarchy has endured scandals, uprisings, regicide, and abdications, yet managed to survive. This resilience was largely due to pragmatic adaptations and consistently strong public support, aside from occasional lapses. However, the current situation feels distinctly perilous.

In my four decades of reporting on the Royal Family, I’ve witnessed other periods when the institution seemed on shaky ground: notably, after the tragic loss of Diana. The overwhelming grief over her untimely death was nearly eclipsed by widespread public anger at what many perceived as the Royal Family’s indifferent response to the beloved princess.

At that time, the failure to lower a flag to half-mast over Buckingham Palace or to publicly address the nation’s grief was seen as a reluctance to show solidarity with a mourning public desperate for a sign of royal empathy.

Earlier still, the annus horribilis when dismay at three failed royal marriages was supercharged by the conflagration of Windsor Castle and who was to pay for its repairs – us or the non-taxpaying Windsors – raised awkward questions. 

And later there was the spectacle of Prince Harry’s spiteful exit from royal life, domestic tantrums and his venomous treatment of his own family.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor leaves Aylsham Police Station after he was released from custody on Thursday

A group of police officers in plain clothes arrive at Wood Farm on Thursday morning, where searches began

All these were significant and damaging moments, and they all registered one common denominator: that, for all its faults, monarchy was still preferred.

If anything, there was a recognition that the privileges of royalty, the palaces and the bling was no protection against the grim realities of life experienced by so many others.

But the affair of the ex-prince Andrew is of a different scale. Its unsavoury allegations involving money, sex and his abandonment of patriotism, have permeated every crack of the royal fabric, overshadowing good intentions, obliterating hard-won reputations and somehow trapping the family in an endless cycle of sleaze. With it too has gone public sympathy.

It is now quite likely that however long or short, the King’s reign will be remembered for one thing and one thing only – Andrew and how he dealt with him.

Yesterday some of the King’s more reliable supporters rushed to the airwaves to claim that Charles’s interventions – commendable as they undoubtedly are – demonstrate the resilience of the monarchy and that his statement in which he said ‘the law must take its course’ was a sign of both his and the institution’s openness and honesty.

I cannot agree. As this whole saga has unfolded it has felt more and more like a symbolic moment that has struck not just at the public’s affection for the monarchy but at something far more fundamental – our trust in it.

It is easy for those of us who were not there and have no memory beyond the history books to compare what has happened with the seismic events surrounding the Abdication crisis of King Edward VIII in 1936.

Andrew was arrested on his birthday. He is pictured on all fours over a woman in an image released in the Epstein Files 

Certainly, there are some parallels: many have likened the greed of Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson – as detailed in the Epstein Files – to the acquisitive life Edward and his American wife Wallis assumed as Duke and Duchess of Windsor as international freeloaders.

For Andrew, it was a craving for access to the gilded world inhabited by Jeffrey Epstein.

But there are some startling differences. Edward was an immensely popular king and before that Prince of Wales. 

There was no public clamour to drive him from his throne. And when he went into exile, he did so with all his royal titles intact – HRH included – while his Order of the Garter banner continued to hang at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, until his death.

Andrew, lacking his great uncle’s magnetism or popularity, despite his selfless Naval service in which he saw action in the Falklands War, is seen as entitled, arrogant and ignorant.

He has been deprived of everything: style, titles, honour and home.

But the pre-War world of the Abdication, where 90 per cent of the population would identify as monarchists, is so very different from modern Britain. Today that support is at a tipping point. 

When the latest British Social Attitudes Survey, which since 1983 has asked the same question – ‘Is the monarchy important to the UK?’ – released its report last September, it showed just 51 per cent thought so, compared with 81 per cent four decades ago.

Among young people – the crucial 16 to 24 age group – it has dwindled far more. Make no mistake Andrew’s grotesque story has been a gift to republicans who gleefully sense that Britain’s long love affair with the Royal Family if not ending, is in terminal decline.

Andrew’s arrest is therefore a moment of profound challenge to Buckingham Palace. Regardless of the titles and styles he has had removed, he is still the King’s brother, the late Queen Elizabeth’s son and for 22 years, remember, the heir in line to the throne.

There is, I believe, a very real sense of vulnerability. And the decline in public support is pivotal.

It has been building for some time. The King has been heckled twice in public on official engagements and in recent days journalists have been emboldened to shout questions at both Charles and Prince William as though they are politicians on the stump.

When news that Andrew was to no longer be a prince broke on television, the audience on BBC’s Question Time broke into spontaneous applause.

Ever more questions are being asked about the wealth of the Windsors, their extensive properties and their many privileges. All this can be traced back to the Andrew imbroglio.

Yesterday’s arrest, however, is not the end of the issue, but rather the beginning.

Windsor: Police officers are seen at the gates of Andrew’s former home in Berkshire, Royal Lodge

King Charles seen on the front row at London Fashion Week on Thursday next to Stella McCartney 

It is true that, in dealing with his brother, Charles has been ruthless in a manner that the late Queen could never bring herself to be.

The Andrew problem did not begin on his watch, it had been there in plain sight for almost 12 years up to Queen Elizabeth’s death. But then there were never any serious banishments at all during her reign. No disgraced relatives were ever cast aside.

Perhaps tempered by her compassion for her sister Princess Margaret, first over her thwarted love for dashing equerry Group Captain Peter Townsend and then for her divorce and scandalous affairs, the Queen chose understanding and restraint in all domestic matters.

In her speech that bookended 1992’s annus horribilis, and just days after the Windsor fire, the Queen famously accepted the criticism which had descended on the royals but asked also for a ‘touch of gentleness, good humour and understanding’.

Thirty-four years later, public attitudes towards Andrew show reserves of ‘understanding’ are spent. And quite possibly so too are gentleness and humour.

Many have been left wondering why she did not act sooner. Surely the time to act was when the Mail on Sunday published that photograph of the then Duke of York with his arm around the bare waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.

Instead, she installed him as a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, the most senior knighthood below the Garter.

Only with Epstein’s death by suicide and Andrew’s grossly offensive self-justifying interview with BBC Newsnight and its astonishing absence of remorse, did the Queen feel compelled to make a move. 

But even sidelining him from royal duties and forbidding him from wearing military uniforms was simply too little, too late.

Matters were not helped by obfuscation and what I can only describe as a blind faith that Andrew’s truth was the truth. 

Only through the revelations of the Epstein emails do we now know that so many of his claims, such as when he broke off contact with the financier, were not true.

At the heart of this reluctance to properly address the growing catastrophe was Andrew’s uniquely close relationship with his mother.

Even in his disgrace, she permitted her favourite son to take her arm at Prince Philip’s memorial service – a highly public and symbolic moment. And it triggered considerable anger. It suggested the royals were not listening.

By then, even within the Royal Family, there was consternation. When Andrew attempted to make a public return at the Garter ceremony at Windsor in 2022 William effectively issued an ultimatum to his grandmother: if his uncle appeared publicly in the procession, he would withdraw. 

The Queen conceded and Andrew was quietly removed from the public elements of the day at the last minute – so late his name was still printed in the order of service.

As his mother vacillated, Charles could do nothing. As Prince of Wales, he had strongly objected to Andrew’s elevation to the post of trade envoy back in 2001, warning that it would be a disastrous appointment. 

His brother, however, had a powerful ally in Peter Mandelson, now facing his own Epstein reckoning.

All the same Charles had to overcome fraternal and blood ties. One area where he could still act is to remove his brother as a counsellor of state and his position in the line of succession – he is currently eighth.

Both are still seen by the public as indulgences which should and could be taken away.

The swoop by plain clothes police on Wood Farm yesterday changes everything. Events are no longer under palace control. They are also extremely complicated.

Should Andrew be charged after his arrest – and his arrest has already placed us in uncharted territory – the legal terrain would be treacherous in ways rarely discussed publicly.

It would lead to a court case and would be a global sensation. Just imagine the brother of Britain’s sovereign on trial in one of His Majesty’s courts where judges and magistrates sit beneath the royal coat of arms. Verdicts of guilty or not guilty could be equally damaging to the monarchy.

But consider this: were Mountbatten-Windsor to claim, for example, that he had kept the King informed of any part of his conduct, the implications for the constitution would be extraordinary.

As monarch, Charles cannot testify or be a witness in his own courts. A prosecution could collapse – just as royal butler Paul Burrell’s case imploded in 2002.

Then it emerged that Princess Diana’s butler, charged with theft, had told the Queen that he had taken some of Diana’s personal items and papers for safekeeping.

On that occasion, the Crown could not call its own monarch as a witness. The case fell apart. Those who understand how these things work have not forgotten that precedent.

Not so long ago on February 19, flags would have been flying on public buildings to mark Andrew’s birthday and church bells would have pealed. 

Yesterday it was the sound of unmarked police cars crunching up the Wood Farm gravel that were the only background noise to his 66th birthday.

His fall may now be complete. The question is whether he brings down the House of Windsor with him.