"You might think this is about Andrew," a senior Whitehall figure wonders out loud. "But put this in your diary as a pivot point in the relationship between Palace and Parliament." Will this royal mess usher in a new era? And despite their conventional refusal to comment, could politicians become quicker to point out the monarchy's flaws, and more willing to speak out?
The royal family was always a disaster waiting to happen. Its creation as a marketable entity in the 1960s by the late Queen Elizabeth II was meant to modernise the monarchy for the 20th century. It worked, but only up to a point. Her son Prince Andrew has long been its biggest liability, this week in trouble yet again due to his alleged behaviour within that ghoulish circle, the friends of Jeffrey Epstein.
Are representation and resemblance their own mandate of heaven? Or, as Jordan Tannahill's Prince Faggot puts it, what would happen if, just a few steps down the line of inheritance, there were a guy who loved being a little bitch in bed?
