Notwithstanding The Fact?

Myself, a prince by fortune of my birth,

Near to the king in blood, and near in love

Till you did make him misinterpret me,

Have stoop'd my neck under your injuries,

And sigh'd my English breath in foreign clouds,

Eating the bitter bread of banishment;

Whilst you have fed upon my signories,

Dispark'd my parks and fell'd my forest woods,

From my own windows torn my household coat,

Razed out my imprese, leaving me no sign,

Save men's opinions and my living blood,

To show the world I am a gentleman.

Now that there is a vacancy for the position of Prince Andrew, then it should be filled by Andrew Parker Bowles. Note that, as in Newcastle upon Tyne, there is no hyphen in Parker Bowles. Nor in Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. Yet his niece and nephew are Mountbatten-Windsor, although they would be entitled to use Her and His Royal Highness, Princess and Prince, as is more than can any longer be said for their uncle. They should avail themselves of their Styles and Titles.

Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet were also Mountbatten-Windsor before, oh, something or other about those parents of theirs, although the Princess, born in the United States, will long have been going by Lily Markle when she welcomed her first cousin, King George VII, to the White House for the Tercentenary in 2076. Elizabeth II made Mountbatten-Windsor the surname of her descendants in need of one. Although Princess Anne used Mountbatten-Windsor to sign the register at her first wedding, her brother seems to have been given Mountbatten almost as a middle name in honour of distant relatives, as if that were the extent of his connection to Prince Philip.

The former King Juan Carlos II of Spain, a third cousin of Elizabeth II, has long been resident in Abu Dhabi with his wife, a first cousin once removed of the late of Duke of Edinburgh. Andrew also has a bolthole there, so the House of Nahyan might cannily insist that if it were to let him move in permanently, then it would be permitted to acquire the Daily Telegraph. Andrew would be forewarned that, as Marcus Fakana discovered, the age of consent in the United Arab Emirates was 18.

By contrast, if Andrew really did have sex with the 17-year-old Victoria Roberts either in London or in New York, then he did not break the law. The accusation even of that seedy but lawful conduct comes from a single individual who is dead, and who was thoroughly unreliable when she was alive. Yes, she did also accuse him of certain undeniably criminal acts. But only she has ever done so, and he has never been convicted. He has never been charged. He has never been arrested. Cardinal Pell's accusers tried to argue, and for a time succeeded in doing so, that their drug addictions, schizophrenia, and so forth somehow made them more rather than less credible. But that did not survive contact with the appellate process. Andrew's mother should not have paid off his accuser, who would have been destroyed in court.

That is what this is about. Money. Andrew's financial arrangements were coming under scrutiny, and they were not looking good in the sunlight. The only connection to Virginia Giuffre was that that scrutiny had followed, almost accidentally, from Andrew's having been shown to have lied about when he had broken off contact with Jeffrey Epstein. But Tony Blair met Epstein as Prime Minister. Blair, Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer have all had Epstein's closest friend as the de facto Deputy Prime Minister; Peter Mandelson is still listed on page 110 of the Roll of the Peerage. Even while he was still Prince Andrew, that man had to give up his Garter, so what about Blair's?

And what are we to make of, "These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him"? When, 70 years ago today, Princess Margaret let it "be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend," then Philip Larkin wrote to Monica Jones that he had assumed that any announcement would have been an engagement, "since you couldn't announce nothing. Well, apparently you can." You can't censure nothing, can you? Well, apparently you can.