“These censures are deemed necessary…”

Herald on Sunday, Sunday National, 2nd November 2025.

The phrase “these censures are deemed necessary” gives the game away. Notice the emphasis on necessity. In the third palace press release since 2019 to announce that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor would be stripped of his magic names, Charles and Camilla confirmed on Thursday that a “formal process” had been initiated to “remove the Style, Title and Honours of Prince Andrew” “notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against him.”

They didn’t say that this third stab at an effective degradation ritual was merited, or just – but only necessary. You might ask yourself – necessary for what, exactly? For justice? For survival? And if so, whose?

This weekend, Britain’s halfwit media organisations are stampeding to praise King Charles for his “bold action,” recognising the harm done to victims of sexual crime in a “decisive” way, and even more risibly – providing international leadership on the Epstein scandal by symbolically vaporising his unpopular younger brother and forcibly decamping him from a 30 room mansion to another royal villa in the arse end of Norfolk. The word “ruthless” is also being thrown around, approvingly and uncritically.

But back in reality, the truth is, after years of evading, intimidating, protecting, silencing, minimising, coddling and excusing the actions of the late Queen Elizabeth’s favourite child – Britain’s tarnished royal house has only done what became necessary and expedient after multiple attempts to temporise their way out of it, with the minimum possible concessions.

They’ve acted to save their own skins, and only after every other attempt to get everyone to shut up about the story failed. Doing the right thing when you’ve cynically exhausted every alternative isn’t leadership.

If this gambit is designed to deflect scrutiny of who knew what and when about Andrew’s Epistein links and whether palace muscle was deployed to hush it up – then I’m sorry to say it has a good chance of success, because this is just the kind of fairytale the British political class absolutely love, avoiding telling any kind of structural or institutional story, but instead – focusing on a Shakespearean clash of personalities.

There’s the cloak and dagger aspect too, which adds to the fun. For the enterprising hack, you can throw in plenty of references to talking to “my palace sources” in a suitably Delphic manner gives you the opportunity to dress up the wild speculation of other people as proof of your own status – insiderish, canny, proximate to power, and in-the-know.

The official line is that Andrew accepted his castration, root and stem. The scuttlebutt is that he had to be pried out of royal lodge like a limpet. Several news sources have claimed that the Sandringham exile was being driven by William as son-and-heir. This too appears to be hokum. As an exercise in pure propaganda based on the square route of bugger all in terms of actual evidence, the yarn was biddably reported and repeated in the echo chamber of the British media, all deeply excited by the idea it was scooping the real motivations and relationships underpinning the week’s developments in Britain’s pre-eminent dysfunctional family, giving readers and listeners a unique insight into the emotional and family dynamics behind the formal palace prose, even if it was a cynical fiction.

Implicit in all this is the cheerful assumption that the official press releases are meretricious garbage spun by loyal but astonishingly insincere Buck House courtiers. Amongst the many privileges they feel entitled to exercise on behalf of this family – lying to the public about what’s really going on and a congenital lack of candour is treated as just another birthright.

These public servants seem to regard bamboozling the public as part of their job description – and the media seems only too delighted to play its court role, content to be lied to, content to dig up the gossip, and disinclined to point out how cynical, self-serving and dishonest this PR routine really is.

What’s significant is that none of this is framed as problematic in most of the mainstream commentary on what’s going on. Take another example. On a recent episode of the News Agents podcast, Emily Maitlis outlined that one consequence of Andrew’s exile and exaltation as a commoner is that the local polis might now feel more confident about bringing him in for questioning or for foreign powers to seek extradition in connection with the Epstein affair.

I’ve no idea whether or not that’s true. One suspects, neither does she really. But what’s more stunning – and in its way, much more telling, is that the idea that the royal establishment has tacitly protected one of its own, intimidating the police and foreign administrations to keep a safe distance, and this is treated as a matter of bland reportage.

This revelation was shared as if this is just another commonplace fact of life we’re all expected to nod along wisely with, accepted as a reasonable price to pay for the privilege of stabling this misfit family, gratefully putting up with their various impunities, crediting them all with being public spirited characters consumed with duty and honour despite all the evidence to the contrary suggesting they’re a rack of corkscrews.

It is a testament to how saturated the House of Windsor is in celebrity culture, and how reporting of its internal dynamics has now been almost entirely cannibalised by an outlook and approach which would be at home with the Kardashians.

I’m really not interested in celebrities, but celebrity culture is a phenomenon characterised by interesting characteristics. The first thing to notice is – being a celebrity isn’t the same thing as being famous. As Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer must be recognisable to most people in the UK by now, but he isn’t a celebrity is any meaningful sense.

When you think about celebrities, you might naturally think first about high-profile actors, writers, musicians and athletes – but you don’t need to have fronted a film, written a novel, or had a breakout fit to be a celebrity. Talent is neither a necessary nor a sufficient qualification.

Instead, celebrity is rooted in what has been usefully described as parasocial relationships. The media tools used to generate these one-sided relationships may have changed and diversified since the mid 2000s – from a chat show appearance or tabloid exposé toa confessional Instagram posts and TikToks – but the defining quality of celebrity remains the illusion of intimacy it promises. The psychic energy of celebrity relies – not just on an individual or their family being recognisable, or well-known, or notorious – but on the illusion of intimacy between the public figure and their audience.

Most of us will, from time to time, find ourselves wearing social masks and sometimes taking consolation from them. In work, we aren’t quite the same people you’ll find at home. We make strategic judgements about where and when to share our vulnerabilities, and when circumstances call for a good front instead.

Back in 2019, Lorraine Kelly’s lawyers successfully argued she wasn’t an ITV employee but was instead an independent “theatrical artist,” performing a warm and chatty version of herself featured on TV. When the cameras were rolling, she wasn’t Lorraine Kelly but the performance artiste known as “Lorraine Kelly.”

Perhaps surprisingly, this argument found favour with the tax tribunal. “We did not accept that Ms Kelly simply appeared as herself – we were satisfied that Ms Kelly presents a persona of herself, she presents herself as a brand and that is the brand ITV sought when engaging her,” the judge said, holding that “all parts of the show are a performance, the act being to perform the role of a friendly, chatty and fun personality.”

“She may not like the guest she interviews, she may not like the food she eats, she may not like the film she viewed but that is where the performance lies.”

Although Kelly’s case was primarily aimed at reducing her income tax and national insurance liability – saving her a stonking £1.2 million in liabilities to HMRC – the nature of her tax defence risked giving the game away, not only for relentlessly cheerful figures specialising in light entertainment – but for the celebrity swindle more generally, which relies on perceptions of authenticity above almost everything else.

Admitting that the person you think you know so well on screen is manufactured, curated and managed to create only the illusion of reality, risks losing your audience’s affection and interest in a manner which is fatal for your public standing – whether you’re a musician whose best tunes are behind you, a faded actor, or a washed-up minor royal, who has managed to misplace his HRHs as a result of conduct unbecoming.

If what you’re flogging is essentially yourself – being exposed as inauthentic and deeply insincere puts your business-critical assets at immediate risk of catastrophic depreciation. In this respect, the royal fakery now has more institutional support, but all the same vulnerabilities.