An unfortunate consequence of the humiliating and very public demotion of the artist formerly known as Prince (Andrew) to the supposedly more common title of Andrew Albert Christian Edward Mountbatten-Windsor is the amount of hate being generated. Not that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor doesn’t deserve every ounce of opprobrium that’s come his way, because frankly he does, but I can’t help thinking we really do have enough hate going on already. Then again, this thick, arrogant, entitled nonce, the friend of a serial paedophile and people trafficker, has brought it all upon himself.
The defenestration of the late Queen’s ‘favourite son’ has dominated the media to the extent that all other news seems to be regarded as less important. Being kicked out of this most dysfunctional family must have taken some doing but, hey ho, Mr Windsor has managed to do it, having supposedly never met a woman he paid off for £12 million – who hasn’t done that? – and then lied through his teeth about his relationship with paedo in chief Jeffrey Epstein. Now his brother, the King no less, is paying him circa £100,000 to move from one enormous house to a slightly less enormous house, plus an annual stipend to supplement his meagre £20,000 pension he earned from his service in the armed forces. Nice work if you can get it.
While the media demolition job is certainly well-deserved, this whole sordid episode eclipses the real sadness and suffering in our country. At the last count, some 14 million people are living in poverty in this green and unpleasant land, which is 21% – a fifth – of the entire population. 8.1 million of that number are working-age adults, 4.3 million children, and 1.9 million pensioners. While there are different measurements for poverty – one is relative poverty and the other is absolute poverty – the vast majority of the 14 million are in absolute poverty. From where I stand, as a small volunteer cog in a vast foodbank network, poverty in the UK is very real. And I find it hard to square the circle in a place where a fallen prince, undone by his own stupidity, greed and arrogance, will live in absolute luxury for the rest of his days and the little people will live in a state of squalor for the rest of their days, almost certainly dying much earlier than the better off.
On a weekly basis, I see people who cannot feed or heat themselves. Some have no cooking facilities, many appear in poor health, suffering from poor physical and mental health. Thanks to the generosity of strangers, we can help tide them over, temporarily, with an emergency food parcel but the desperation and insecurity, and I don’t just mean food insecurity, must feel permanent. And here we are, debating the situation faced by a man, still of immense privilege, who will never need to work, to fret about where his next meal is coming from, who won’t need to turn the heating down for fear of not being able to pay the next bill and who lives on an enormous guarded estate with the most expensive private healthcare money can buy.
Having previously been agnostic about the royal family, not least because of the late Queen Elizabeth’s long and loyal service, I’m afraid I am now lurching towards at the very least a pared back royal family, rather like the ones in Europe who live more like the rest of their citizens or even the abolition of the monarch full stop. The only thing that stops me is the thought that we might end up with a President Farage or President Yaxley-Lennon. Better have a head of state whose job is to wave and shake hands with people than someone who signs executive orders to close down any opposition. One thing is for sure: we cannot go on like this forever.
I fear the story of Mr Windsor will drag on and on, distracting the country from the things that really matter. From where I stand, both he and his family are becoming distant and less relevant to the country they purport to reign over. King Brian and his PR team have sought to expunge his troublesome brother from any involvement in The Firm in order to resume business as usual. I’m afraid that isn’t going to happen because sooner or later someone is going to inspect under the carpet where all the scandal has been swept and it will be demanded of Brian what he knew about Mr Windsor, when and what, if anything, he did about it.
This one is going to run and run and if the end result is that the House of Windsor collapses all the rest of us can say is, oh well, welcome to the real world. Here’s the address of the Job Centre.
