Punish Prince Andrew? This is no meritocracy, I’m afraid – you get the royal family you didn’t vote for | Marina Hyde

Reading the extract from Virginia Giuffre’s tragic memoir in the Guardian this week, I was struck again by the fate of each of those people involved in that infamous photograph taken at Ghislaine Maxwell’s London house.

The teenage girl at the centre of the picture is dead, having taken her own life at a remote Australian farmhouse earlier this year, unable to outrun her trauma. The person who took the photograph is dead, having somehow killed himself in a New York jail while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking. The grinning woman in the background is in prison herself, exalting Donald Trump’s impeccable purity in the hope of getting moved to a nicer jail or even pardoned. And the smiling lunk with his arm round the teenage girl – who he denies he had sex with later that evening – is living in a 30-room mansion on a 98-acre estate (which even his monarch brother reportedly doesn’t know how he pays for), joshing away at family funerals, and just sort of … riding it out, each time another of his lies about this story is exposed. That, truly, is the royalty bonus. Don’t call it a doghouse! It’s a dogpalace.

Amazingly, even as I was typing that paragraph, a story dropped revealing that Andrew met the extremely senior Chinese Communist party official at the centre of the collapsed Beijing spy case at least three times. Remember, the duke is already under fire for unwittingly hiring an alleged spy as his representative in China. Is there anywhere he doesn’t get? He’s like the Forrest Gump of appalling decisions.

We are now, yet again, at the stage where “royal watchers” must speculate on what could be done about the endless slow-motion gilded-coach-crash that is the Duke of York – the possible sanctions that the royals supposedly still have recourse to. Wait, Andrew might get stripped of the chance to attend the annual Order of the Garter lunch? OH NO NOT A DELUNCHING?! Wait, he might not be allowed to be a counsellor of state, one of the members of the royal family over the age of 21 who would deputise in the event of the king’s incapacity, a lineup which currently comprises Camilla, Princess Anne, William, Harry, Andrew, Prince Edward and Princess Beatrice? (Can I just say – incredible sitcom, would absolutely watch.) But again: OH NO NOT A DECOUNSELLORING?!

All of these punishments are so absurd that they read like deliberate satires on the entire institution of the monarchy. As perhaps they should. We might as well be realistic about what “loving the royal family” has got to mean, philosophically speaking.

But we’ll return to that later, as we’ve got more Andrew denials and lack-of-denials to cover off. We know the Duke remained friends with Jeffrey Epstein after he’d gone to prison for soliciting a minor for sex. We know Andrew flew to New York, post Epstein’s release, to spend time with this Tier 1 sex offender. We know everyone else knew he was a Tier 1 sex offender because when the pair got papped on a walk in Central Park, the New York Post published the picture with a front page headline even Andrew could understand: “PRINCE & PERV”. We know it took a few years and Epstein’s unfortunate suicide before Andrew gave an interview to say that the pap photo (and four-day house-stay) was the last time he had any contact with the guy whatsoever.

And we now know he is still lying about that, after an email from Andrew to Epstein surfaced, dated well after the event, and coinciding with the publication of the aforementioned photo of him with his arm round Giuffre. “I’m just as concerned for you!” wrote Andrew. “Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together” – well, you said it – “and will have to rise above it.” Well … you didn’t do that. “Otherwise keep in close touch,” concluded Andy, “and we’ll play some more soon!!!!” it was signed “A, HRH The Duke of York, KG.” Surely the world’s naffest email signature, even counting the “Founder/Futurist/Father” crowd on LinkedIn.

Today, however, let us sign off by facing up to the big philosophical question. If you are going to have a royal family, and believe them unique and other, then surely you have to take them as you find them? It’s deliberately the opposite of a meritocracy, after all. If you get into pseudo-managerial ideas about hiring and firing, then you just make it all sound like any other small business. Who cares about that? Britain is full of small businesses, despite the chancellor’s efforts, and the royal family must be something different and special. Plus, business is the one thing we all realise that the rarefied royals know absolutely nothing meaningful about. The “slimmed-down Firm” we keep hearing about from Charles and William’s courtiers honestly sounds like a week four task from The Apprentice.

Can Andrew be put in a black cab with his wheelie suitcase to tell the cameras that King Sugar has made a big mistake in letting him go? In the practical and philosophical interests of the monarchy, it’s not at all clear that he can. And yet, it’s very clear that there might be all manner of embarrassing revelations to come in a number of different areas. A lot of known unknowns, and a lot of unknown unknowns. Quite the bind for Charles and William. However richly deserved it would be, I suspect part of them fears that booting Andrew out of the tent is a slippery slope toward there being no tent at all.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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