King George V, pictured in a field marshal’s uniform, drew up the current rules on who can and cannot be a prince. Credit: W. and D. Downey
Bogdanor said there were multiple obstacles to the government getting involved, including the fact that Andrew, 65, has not been convicted of any crime. He has strongly denied the allegations made by Giuffre, who committed suicide in Australia in April. In 2022, Andrew settled a sexual abuse lawsuit brought by Giuffre without acknowledging wrongdoing.
On Friday, Andrew announced that he would stop using one of his titles, Duke of York, a move he took under pressure from his brother Charles. But he did not formally lose either the dukedom or the title of prince, to which he is entitled under a 1917 royal prerogative, known as Letters Patent.
Under that decree, issued by King George V, the title of prince or princess is limited to the son of a monarch, the son of a monarch’s sons, and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne.
Experts have said it is possible to amend the Letters Patent to strip Andrew of his title, but it would be such a serious and unusual step that it would probably only happen if the King and the government agreed beforehand.
The last time a prince was stripped of his British titles was in 1917, when Prince Ernest Augustus, head of the House of Hanover in Germany and Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in Britain, was demoted after pledging allegiance to an enemy, Germany, during the First World War.
Beyond the legal obstacles, experts said there were political risks for the government in acting against a royal, even a disgraced one.
Recently discovered emails show how Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson kept in contact with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Credit: AP
“The temptation will be there for some,” said Robert Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester. “But any government would be concerned about the precedent this would set in terms of politicizing the monarchy, particularly an instinctive institutional conservative like Starmer.”
That would be even more true if Charles had opposed the attempt to demote Andrew from the status of prince. Ford noted that the Government does not want to distance itself from the monarchy at any time, but especially when it has deployed the “soft power” of the royal family to deepen ties with US President Donald Trump.
The government has left the task of punishing Andrew to his family. In 2019, after giving a calamitous interview to the BBC about his links to Epstein, he was forced to retire from official duties. In 2022, after Giuffre sued him, he renounced his honorary military titles and agreed to stop using the honorary title of His Royal Highness.
However, the accusations keep coming. On Sunday, the Metropolitan Police said it was investigating reports that Andrew attempted to dig up damaging information about Giuffre in 2011 through a police contact. Andrew did not respond, but Buckingham Palace said the reports should be investigated.
On Tuesday, the BBC and other news organizations reported details of a tenancy agreement that allows Andrew to live at Royal Lodge, a stately home on the Windsor estate. Instead of an annual rent, he paid a large sum up front (around £8 million ($16.4 million), the BBC said) to renovate the 30-room residence. That sparked a fresh firestorm of protests from critics who said the state was subsidizing Andrew’s stately lifestyle.
The drumbeat of bad publicity is set against the backdrop of Giuffre’s book, nobody’s girl which paints a tragic portrait of a young woman trafficked by Epstein to many men, including Andrew.
Epstein committed suicide in prison in 2019.
Charging
Given the complexities of the parliamentary action against Andrew, Bogdanor suggested a simpler form of redemption.
“Andrew should spend the rest of his life doing good works,” Bogdanor said, noting that Britain had a tradition of disgraced political figures – the most famous case being John Profumo, a Conservative minister forced to resign in 1963 after a sex and spy scandal – who regained some respectability by doing good.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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