King Charles last week stripped his younger brother of his Royal titles following more embarrassing revelations over the prince's friendship with late US paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Royal sources told how the King had grown “weary and furious” over the continuing tide of scandal plaguing the monarchy and told Andrew that drastic action was needed to stem it. Andrew agreed following the phone call to give up his titles except prince. He will no longer be Duke of York or a Knight of the Garter – the world’s oldest order of chivalry.
The bombshell came seven months after the suicide of Virginia Giuffre who was trafficked by billionaire Epstein and says she was forced to have sex with Andrew three times.
However Prince Andrew is still a vice admiral in the Royal Navy. He was given the rank by his mum for his 55th birthday, in an act of blatant nepotism. Any other officer would have been dishonourably discharged by now.
No real consequences for this little shit. He stated in that now infamous interview with Emily Maitlis that "he learnt alot from Epstein" His ex-wife is no better. The fact that Andrew and Fergie have stayed living together is like two addicts mutually feeding each other’s awfulness. Fergie is at least as morally bankrupt as him - she’s the ultimate hanger-on. Anywhere there’s free food, a free holiday and a money-making opportunity you’d find Fergie. They absolutely deserve each other. Disgusting pair.
Giuffre's memoirs claim Andrew insisted she sign a one-year gag order to prevent details of her allegations tarnishing the late Queen's platinum jubilee. It was only ever about protecting their reputation and not protecting the victim. The Queen paid for her silence, the monarchy itself financed silence in a sex abuse scandal. Unprecedented.
The Royals are only asking Andrew to stop using his titles to protect themselves and ensure that William can take the throne having moved on from a scandal. Charles and William have protected Andrew for all these years.
Now the media is making them out as heroes for slapping him on the wrist. The Royal family didn’t do anything about Prince Andrew, like they didn’t do anything about Lord Louis Mountbatten before him. Prince Andrew isn’t a one off. It’s a pattern of privilege and abuse of power, which at its core, is the definition of this monarchy.
Buckingham Palace has issued a statement encouraging people to focus on the King's work rather than other matters. Translation - Hey plebs stop holding the Royal family to account for their crimes and get back to blindly worshipping them. They are all complicit including the late Queen, the Prince Andrew scandal shows very clearly that the monarchy puts its own interests first, not country.
This statement will do nothing to limit the ongoing reputational damage to the Royal Family. Much firmer steps need to be taken. Especially as we are likely have weeks and months of more drip-feed revelations to come.
Prince Andrew not using a handful of titles, that shouldn't even exist in a modern democracy is an empty gesture to keep 'The Firm' in business. Epstein's pal will continue his gilded existence in a £30m mansion on the Windsor Estate.
Only an Act of Parliament can remove these titles but these politicians in Labour and Tories are not willing to do so. Seems like the government protects the Royal family so the public think they are above the law, Parliament must now show leadership and remove all Prince Andrew’s titles. It shouldn’t be a voluntary matter.
The latest scandal has highlighted the fact that the monarchy is an undemocratic, antiquated relic that serves no useful purpose in the 21st century. Far from uniting the country, the monarchy's role is seen by many people to be illegitimate and offensive, and simply entrenches hereditary privilege at the heart of public life.
While our government patronisisingly preaches democracy to the rest of the world, they still preside over an undemocratic system at home with an unelected head of state .With their vestiges of privilege, the royal family continues to award themselves medals, appoint themselves to top military ranks that they simply they do not deserve. Allow themselves to be nominated as patrons of charities , degrading the real efforts of those who have really made general contributions.
While the Royals get there houses refurbished at tax payers expense, so many people cannot afford to heat their homes or put enough nutritional meals on their tables. In this context this continuing fawning to members of the Royal family and their hangers on, I simply find offensive.
It certainly reinforces my feelings that some people are born better than others. It's the pinnacle of the class system which has held our society back for so long, enforcing the idea of an elite ruling class. Their nauseating displays of riches, power and privilege ,is simply an affront to human decency.
The Monarchy has absolutely nothing to offer anyone. The only stability it provides is to entrench the UK class system. The monarchy is a relic of feudalism, perpetuating a system of privilege and inequality.
The British monarchy also has a global history of the slaughter and destruction of indigenous people. Their rapacious greed consumes them, they are a curse on humanity. Broken? Dysfunctional? That’s the monarchy in a nutshell a gilded mess propped up by scandals and shady deals, cozy with Middle Eastern money while the public pays the price.
Sir Keir Starmer once wanted to abolish the Monarchy, and King Charles hates socialism. Only one changed their mind. And it wasn't Charles.
Charles is an advert for the failures of hereditary power, whether it’s his temperament or his hypocrisy on the environment, flying by helicopter to Cambridge to lecture scientists on the need for the rest of us to cut our carbon emissions.
King Charles will also avoid inheritance tax on his mother’s vast estate, estimated to be worth in excess of £650m. There is absolutely no moral justification for this tax avoidance, and the new monarch could voluntarily pay his due, but doesn’t.
The palace itself is not fit for purpose, falling well short of the standards in public life against which we measure other institutions, such as spending vast amounts of public money on private residences, something MPs lost their jobs for during the expenses scandal.
The Royal family are an outdated and Dickensian afterthought from the empire, They cost us more than they actually bring into the economy and are not representative of today's modern society.
The monarchy is supported financially by UK taxpayers via the Sovereign Grant, which covers central staffing costs and expenses for the monarch’s official households, maintenance of the royal palaces in England, and travel and royal engagements and visits.
Accounts for 2024/25 show that the Sovereign Grant that financial year remained at £86.3 million. Yet the “real cost” to taxpayers is nearly six times more, said anti-monarchy campaigners.
Republic, which calls for the abolition of the monarchy, claims the official figure does not account for security, and other "lost income" for taxpayers, including from property businesses controlled by the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, which go directly to the King and the Prince of Wales respectively. Republic says the royals' total annual bill is in fact £510 million. "How can we talk about cutting the winter fuel allowance while wasting half a billion pounds on the royals?" Republic's chief executive, Graham Smith, told the BBC last September.
Republic and other anti-monarchists argue that "hereditary public office goes against every democratic principle". The public cannot hold the royal family to account at the ballot box, so "there's nothing to stop them abusing their privilege, misusing their influence or simply wasting our money".
Rather than notions of fair play, the monarchy perpetuates notions of nepotism, feudal concepts of bloodlines and elitism.
I believe in a society, where we can all look into one another's eyes as equals , whatever our purpose or position in life. This continuing deference to them is embarrassing. Support for the monarchy is now at its lowest level with more people than ever questioning the future of an institution we have never voted for and that many feel increasingly alienated from.
The cost of living crisis and the increasingly obvious chasm between the struggles of ordinary people and the taxpayer-funded luxury of the royals is just one reason opinion polls have been shifting.
Your energy bills went up recently - again. Your food bills are continuing to rise steeply. Your council tax went up but the services go down. Yet in the last month we’ve seen golden carriages travel through London and displays of obscene inherited wealth with the monarchy celebrating the presence of a fascist.
An unaccountable billionaire family bankrolled by the public purse. To become a fairer egalitarian country it’s time to finally abolish the parasitic monarchy and confine these pointless ornaments to the dustbins of history once and for all. Open up all their private millions of acres to normal citizens. Enough is enough!
Before anyone mentions ‘tourism’ Versailles welcomes more tourists after the Royal families hasty departure in 1789 following the French Revolution. Today the Palace of Versailles is the most visited Palace on the planet.
The Royal family and tourism is a myth perpetrated by the Royal Family. It is long past time for them to go and leave the money taken from us, behind them. Bring on the republic.
