Even Prince Andrew deserves due process

There are few more chilling spectacles than the collective fervour of a nation gripped by scandal. I should know, having suffered my fair share as a former Conservative MP. Once again, the mob is baying – this time for the head of Prince Andrew, a man stripped of his dignity long before any crime was proven, or indeed even charged.

Yes, he is pompous, entitled and a poor judge of character. But since when were those vices criminal? Whatever the truth of his association with the late Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew’s greatest mistake may have been the company he kept and his blindness to the moral rot beneath the gilt. Foolish, yes. Criminal, no.

Let me say at once that my thoughts and sympathies are with the loved ones of the late Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein and Andrew’s most prominent accusers, and with all those who suffered grievously at the hands of Epstein and his circle. Their pain is real and enduring, and the search for justice in their name is entirely proper. But justice must not be conflated with vengeance.

We are all human. We are all fallible. We all can all be naive and misjudge character. We can also stand by those who have fallen. Prince Andrew did so with Epstein. After Epstein’s 2008 conviction, history may condemn Andrew’s continued loyalty as misplaced. But it was, at its root, an act of friendship. If a friend of mine were imprisoned, I would like to think I would stand by them, too. That is not complicity; it is compassion.

We have entered an age when the court of public opinion has supplanted the court of law. Trial by media now carries the weight of conviction. The ancient principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has been abandoned. It is an inversion of justice that would have made even Pontius Pilate blanch.

History, of course, is littered with fallen royals. Edward VIII abdicated in disgrace. George IV was a libertine. The future Edward VII nearly broke his mother’s heart with his philandering. Go back further and you find monarchs who executed wives, banished rivals and plundered treasuries. And now Andrew – who has not been charged let alone found guilty of a verifiable crime – has been metaphorically hanged, drawn and quartered.

The Ancient Greeks had a word for Prince Andrew’s behaviour: hubris, the arrogance of man inviting divine punishment. Yet in our modern morality plays, it is not the gods who mete out retribution, but us – the self-righteous chorus, drunk on indignation. We delight in watching the mighty fall, as though their humiliation might somehow absolve our own shortcomings.

Prince Andrew has become a mirror of our national psyche – an object of scorn through which we perform our own virtue. Yet when the hysteria fades, one wonders whether we will feel any cleaner for it.

No one is suggesting there should be a redemption arc for Andrew. Fading away into obscurity, perhaps, is punishment enough. But if we truly believe in fairness, we must afford even the foolish the right to be judged by facts, not frenzy.

Before casting another stone, we might pause to ask: what, precisely, are we punishing? His arrogance? His naivety? Or are we just satisfying our own pleasure in the spectacle of his ruin?

Let him who is without sin, indeed.

Harvey Proctor is a former Conservative MP and president of Facing Allegations in Contexts of Trust (FACT).