Opinion | Ex-Prince Andrew Arrest: Why Only Andy And Not Mandy?

Last Updated:February 20, 2026, 13:09 IST

There is something fishy about arresting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor for ‘misconduct in public office’ but letting Lord Mandelson off the hook.

Without an iota of sympathy for “former" Prince Andrew, it would not be unfair to say that he is as much a fall guy as he is an entitled and rather stupid blueblood. The Jeffrey Epstein documents have certainly cooked his goose by revealing that while he may or may not have consensual sex with trafficked girls, underage or otherwise, supplied by the American hustler, Andrew then repaid him by passing on confidential business information to Epstein. But therein lies the rub.

Andrew is hardly the only privileged person who supplied information to Epstein and facilitated access; indeed, that list is huge and many of them had far more important bits of information to pass on. There is overwhelming evidence of Lord Peter Mandelson passing on confidential information from the very highest echelons to Epstein almost as soon as he got it. Yet there is a deafening silence right now about action against him, given that the Labour Party is in power.

Lord Mandelson—who leaked information to Epstein while a minister in Gordon Brown’s Labour government—had two houses raided by the police on February 6, but rather inexplicably—or perhaps not so inexplicably—has not been arrested. The hapless and now title-less Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, however, was arrested on the very day detectives from the Thames Valley police arrived at his new abode in Norfolk, which also happened to be his 66th birthday.

Is this “special treatment" for a disgraced member of the Royal Family? Was this an attempt by arms of the state—the monarchy and the government—to show they had not been shielding him for far too long? There are very few royals whom everyone loves, despite their very competent public relations teams. Letting the least popular of them draw all the fire would suit many of Andrew’s own relatives as well as certain key ‘commoners’ caught in the Epstein maelstrom.

Throwing a thoroughly unlikeable person under the metaphorical bus would definitely make life easier for Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer who has been beset by crisis after crisis including a rebellion among his own party backbenchers. Starmer claims he had no idea how deeply Mandelson was involved with Epstein before he hastily appointed him as ambassador to the US last year, which indicates naivete or mendacity—both unacceptable.

Moreover, as a largely ceremonial ‘trade ambassador’, Andrew was never privy to really important business and government decisions; but as a cabinet minister for business, Mandelson most certainly was. It is therefore abundantly apparent that the “misconduct in public office" that King Charles III’s brother is suspected of committing are not of the same gravity as those of Lord Mandelson. Yet the axe fell on Andrew rather than Mandelson. Coincidence or trade-off?

King Charles and Queen Camilla are now cocooned by the protocols of majesty, their crowns burnished by stories of lifelong ‘love’ and ‘devotion’ to each other. The Prince and Princess of Wales and their children are also enveloped in a fluffy cloud of familial faith. The Princess Royal (Princess Anne) and the current Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Edward) and their families are shielded from any criticism by their deep devotion to their ‘duties’ toward their King and country.

Andrew is the one with no fallback virtue, compounded by his evident inability to behave responsibly and decently. He took full advantage of reportedly being the late Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite son and was not at all clever or discreet about who he socialised with. He had no qualms about bartering his privilege of birth to fund his base predilections. His former wife Sarah Ferguson’s unabashed obsequiousness to Epstein showed how desperate they were for money.

Their need or greed also revealed the huge systemic flaws in the monarchical system in the UK. The heir to the throne has financial security from the enormous revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall; his or her eldest progeny do too, by virtue of their rank in the line of succession. The rest have to survive on designated payouts from state coffers in lieu of “public service" in the form of patronage of charities and other official duties to support various aspects of British life.

In exchange the Royal Family is provided not only fully staffed palaces, estates, country homes, offices, transport, security etc but also deference, protocol and ceremony that can give some of them ideas above even their already elevated station. Andrew and his wife suffered from that; and the mismatch between entitlement and finances led them to recklessly and amorally seek freebies from willing hustlers in return for access. And later baldly lie about doing so.

Revelations of Andrew’s perfidy and perjury could not have come at a worse time as the Royal Family is facing a validation vacuum as an institution after the death of the long-reigning Elizabeth II. Even her dogged devotion to duty did not save her from public ire after Princess Diana’s death, and Charles III’s reign has hardly been marked by insightful leadership. His own moral compass had been seriously compromised earlier, and he is often irascible too, so he is vulnerable.

His son William has not been inspirational either, seemingly more inclined to focus on his wife and kids rather than the nation that he ‘serves’. So how can the British monarchy redeem itself? By showing that despite their privileges they are aware of public concerns. But what are those concerns? Britons seem less irked by Andrew passing insider information to Epstein than by his unabashed assertion of royal privilege, which his relatives handle with more subtlety.

Crucially, there had been mounting suspicion that Andrew was being protected by the royal system, if not on the express orders of Queen Elizabeth II and later King Charles III, to protect the nonagenarian monarch from unpleasantness in her twilight years. So while King Charles III has shown none of his mother’s softness towards Andrew, it is far from clear whether he defenestrated Andrew out of concern for the “victims" or to save the monarchy—and his son’s job.

The media’s coverage of Andrew’s arrest has been garbled, perhaps reflecting the public’s own perception of his crime—and his punishment. Was Andrew stripped of his titles and honours because he passed on insider information to Epstein? Or because the public was disgusted by Virginia Guiffre’s revelations that he had sex with underage girls supplied by the American “financier"? Was he cast aside to prevent his wider family being spattered by the mud thrown at him?

Even if Andrew is the fall guy, no one can say that he is innocent or undeserving of punitive action. But it is also true that he is not the only person—even in Britain—who has indulged in wilful “misconduct" to befriend and benefit Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew being singled out for speedy arrest even as investigations continue, however, smacks of over-zealousness given that Epstein’s highest placed contact in the UK, Lord Mandelson, has so far remained scot-free.

The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.

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