I have posted below my analysis of the Andrew imbroglio that I have submitted for publication. I welcome any comments (including the inevitable personal attacks).

"There appears to be considerable rejoicing among many at the downfall of the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, Duke of York. The indelicate triumphalism of Virginia Giuffre’s relatives is matched by the delight of republicans everywhere. Beyond this, however, the imbroglio that has unfolded in Windsor and London has important constitutional and legal implications.

"The King has announced that he has stripped his brother of his princely title and of his peerages. Although the definition of princely status has long been a privilege of the reigning monarch, exercised through Letters Patent, until now the power to remove peerages was considered to have rested with Parliament. Since the UK’s constitution develops organically and by precedent, if the King’s assertion of his power to strip peerages from alleged malefactors is accepted, he has significantly extended his privileges at the expense of Parliament. King Charles I was beheaded for this.

"More uncertain for the monarchy, however, is the responsibility that the King, absurdly, has now assumed as the moral arbiter of the peerage. There are many hereditary and life peers whose private lives or financial dealings would not withstand scrutiny. Is the King to remove the peerages of his cousin, Simon, Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, who has been convicted of and jailed for rape? Or that of Lord Mandelson, who has twice been forced to resign Cabinet posts and was recently dismissed as Ambassador to the USA because of his close links, including financial, with Jeffrey Epstein? The King has assumed responsibilities for moral policing which are politically fraught and for which, moreover, he, himself, is unsuited. Linking royal status to perceptions of virtue is dangerous for a self-confessed adulterer.

"The King’s actions in stripping Andrew of his princely status constitute a direct abnegation of the hereditary principal on which the monarchy rests, the Act of Settlement notwithstanding. His actions constitute precedents which threaten the very foundations of the monarchy in the UK and his other realms, including Australia. There are many who would consider the King and Queen to be unfit to hold the positions they do, if their positions were to depend on moral virtue. Does the King seriously believe that in the UK or in any other of his realms he would be freely chosen as head of state? If so, he is seriously deluded. His actions attack the very principle on which his authority, and the monarchy, itself, rests. The King’s own abnegation of the hereditary principal not only gives succour to republicans in all his realms, it denies monarchists of the very grounds on which the monarchy rested and on which that institution was defended.

"However unsavoury Andrew might be, the King’s actions have denied him any form of natural justice, to which even the highest born, most repellent people are entitled. None of us knows whether Virginia Giuffre’s claims are accurate, exaggerated, distorted or fabricated, but Andrew, like everyone, is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Andrew has been ‘convicted’ on the untested word of a woman who was, until she travelled to Bali where she met her husband, a key member of Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘entourage’. Her testimony was regarded as so unreliable by American authorities that the prosecutors of Ghislaine Maxwell forbore from calling her to give evidence.

"Part of the reason that Giuffre’s evidence has not been tested in court is because of interference from the Palace. Andrew has been ill-served by the late Queen, the King and his advisors, and particularly, if reports are true, by the urgings of the present Prince of Wales, who is said to have persuaded Queen Elisabeth that an out-of-court settlement with Virginia Giuffre would ensure that the scandal did not overshadow the Queen’s platinum jubilee celebrations in 2022. The scandal was never going to go away, but the out-of-court settlement seriously undermined Andrew’s denials of wrongdoing.

"A better course would have been to have allowed Andrew to bring a defamation action against Giuffre in Australia, where defamation laws are particularly strict. After all, when the American lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, began action against her in the American courts, Giuffre withdrew her allegations with qualification.

"The King’s attempt to appease public opinion by sacrificing his brother will not assuage the baying masses. It will simply inflame them. The consequences of that, and of the King’s foolish disregard of the hereditary principle, for the monarchy could not be any more dire."