Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's arrest this week on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and his close relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has led to an outcry over him still being in line to the throne.Petr David Josek/The Associated Press
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has lost titles, his honours and his standing in the Royal Family. He remains eighth in line to the throne, but there are growing calls for him to be stripped of that, too, something Canada could help make happen.
When he was born 66 years ago, Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, ranked second in the line of succession behind his older brother, now King Charles III. Over the years, he’s fallen further down the list, behind the King’s sons and their children.
In the top eight are Prince William, followed by his children: George, Charlotte and Louis. Prince Harry is fifth and his children – Archie and Lilibet – take up the next three spots, ahead of Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor.
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Removing a successor requires an Act of the British Parliament. The change would also have to be approved by every Parliament in the 14 countries where the King is the head of state, including Canada and Australia.
So far, the British government hasn’t been keen to devote parliamentary time to the issue. Officials in Downing Street believe that given his eighth-place ranking, Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor will never be king anyway.
But his arrest this week on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and his close relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has led to an outcry over him being in line to the throne at all.
A snap poll of 7,200 adults in Britain by YouGov released on Friday found that 82 per cent of those surveyed said Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor should be removed from the line of succession.
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Thames Valley Police are investigating whether Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor gave sensitive government information to Mr. Epstein while serving as a trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. The former prince spent 11 hours being questioned by officers on Thursday, and police were still searching his onetime home in Windsor on Friday.
Several other British police forces are investigating whether Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019 in New York prison while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking, used British airports to traffick young women.
“The public will be rightly angry that a man who lied about being mates with Epstein could still be on course to be head of state,” said Stephen Flynn, who leads the Scottish National Party at Westminster.
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said on Friday that, for now, the government must let the police conduct their investigation. “But clearly this is an issue that Parliament is going to have to consider when the time is right. Naturally the monarchy will want to make sure he can never become king.”
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George Gross, who founded the British Coronations Project at King’s College London, said it’s likely that calls to drop Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession will grow louder, even though doing so would be a largely symbolic exercise.
“So much of this is down to both semantics, but also image. There may be a view that it would be just better to have him out,” Dr. Gross said. “He’s never going to be king.
Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, a royal commentator in London, said the process of removing Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor would be lengthy and complex. It could also spark debate about the monarchy and its relevance.
“You don’t really want to get involved in constitutional wrangling between different countries,” he said. “That will open up an entire new can of worms and many countries may start questioning the value of the monarchy together.”
Given Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor has been stripped of nearly all of his titles and is unlikely to ever be king, “there’s absolutely no reason to change the law of succession,” Mr. Heydel-Mankoo added.
The Thames Valley Police, an agency that covers areas west of London, including Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home, said it was “assessing” reports that the former Prince Andrew sent trade reports to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2010. The assessment followed the release of millions of pages of documents connected to a U.S. investigation of Epstein.
The Associated Press
Along with his position in the line of succession, Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor is also, at least technically, still the Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh.
Those peerages can only be taken away by Parliament. Still, the King has gone as far he can. Last October, he issued a Royal Warrant instructing the Lord Chancellor, who is a cabinet minister, to remove the Duke of York from the Roll of the Peerage.
“Removal from the roll is not the same as removing the peerage, because a peerage can only be removed by legislation,” said an analysis posted by Robert Hazell, a professor of government and the constitution at University College London.
The warrant “merely means that Andrew will no longer be referred to by his peerage title in official documents. He can still be referred to as the Duke of York in Debrett’s Peerage, Who’s Who and any media which care to do so, and they will not be wrong,” Dr. Hazell wrote on his UCL blog.