The House of Windsor has an admirable Teflon quality that has enabled it to survive constitutional crises from the abdication of Edward VIII to the death of Princess Diana. But the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor may yet prove to be the downfall of the monarchy and the British establishment which it props up.
The prospect of the former prince, who for now remains eighth in line to the throne, standing in the dock of an English crown court that bears his brother’s coat of arms, while detectives continue to extend their investigation across the royal estate, is likely to ignite a constitutional crisis that the royal family cannot survive. For the tax-paying public, watching aghast, it is hard not to sense a decades-long conspiracy of silence and self-interested self-protection as well as a strong whiff of rotten corruption at the heart of the state.
