Andrew is still seven accidents away from being head of state, says Brian Reade, so serious questions need to be asked about the monarchy. First up: what to do with the arrogant cretin?
I was a squatter for a few months in an empty London flat back in the early 1980s and it felt liberating. No rent, no bills, no decorating, no need to worry about the neighbours’ scummy behaviour as I was evidently acting scummy myself.
So I sort of get how Prince Andrew now feels squatting in his gratis 30-room cross between Downton Abbey and a five-star golf hotel. Although, unlike Andrew, I was conscious that bailiffs could one day hurl my gear out the window and change the locks. And, if they did, unlike Andrew, I couldn’t hand them a peppercorn at the tradesman’s entrance and say “there you go, my annual rent in full. Oh and here’s a grain of salt for your trouble.”
One day I just picked up my stuff, left and rejoined the paying society, which also felt liberating. Which is something I guess Andrew will never do of his own will even though the unanswered questions about his paedophile links and dodgy finances are piling up higher than the mountain of slurry he is mired in.
Questions like how does a man on a naval pension of £20,000 pay the annual £5million bill for staff, security and a fleet of luxury cars? A sum almost as puzzling as the £18million he forked out for a ski chalet in Verbier and the £12million he found down the back of his mummy’s couch to legally silence Virginia Giuffre.
Who signed off on his rent-free life in the Royal Lodge, which was gifted to him by the Crown Estate, an independently-managed trust that is supposedly run in the taxpayers’ interest? Who is allowing his ex-wife, shameless Queen of The Begging Bowl, permanently unemployed Fergie, to be waited on hand-and-foot in this mansion?
How foolish does every MP elected between 1960 and 2022, forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen and her heirs, including Andrew, now look? Why, despite all the talk of the Royal Family removing his title and privileges, is he still seven accidents away from being our head of state? And why aren’t our elected representatives able to debate him and the shame he brings on his country?
The fact that the British people and their politicians rarely ask serious questions about the family that rules them means we deserve arrogant cretins like Andrew Windsor because our sycophancy created him. Our institutionalised deference encouraged his entitlement. But back to the urgent questions and the biggest one of all: What should we do with him? Ideally, turf him out of the Royal Lodge and turn it into a hostel for the homeless. With Andrew free to take a bunk.
Make him cash in on his fame to earn his crust by going on the BBC’s Traitors or even better, Pointless. Maybe encourage him to launch a singing career under the pseudonym The A***hole Formerly Known as Prince. Or maybe allow him a shot at redemption by forcibly returning him to the scene of his one patriotic act, the Falkland Isles.
There is a precedent. In 1815, after Napoleon met his Waterloo, the British government exiled him to the South Atlantic island of St Helena. Let’s send our very own Napoleon, and his Josephine if she can cadge the air fare, to a different South Atlantic piece of rock. Squatting with penguins should bring about some much-needed humility.
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