Epstein, Mandelson and Andrew have exposed the rotten state of the UK’s constitution

It didn’t take much. In one corner, a charismatic, manipulative paedophile. In the other corner, two ancient and barnacled pillars of the British state. The House of Lords and the monarchy are still standing, but both have taken quite the battering over the past week.

From beyond the grave, Jeffrey Epstein has unwittingly shone an unforgiving light on the make-believe structures that sit at the pinnacle of our constitutional arrangements. A dud prince and an iffy peer were both charmed and corrupted by their contact with the serpentine Epstein.

And now we don’t know what to do about them.

Andrew is the greater embarrassment because he mocks the hereditary principle by which monarchs have been chosen since… was it King Aethelstan, in 927? He may be plain old Mr Mountbatten-Windsor now, but he is still technically the Duke of York and eighth in line to the throne.

A House of Commons Library briefing note on how Mr M-W should be addressed reads like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan. Andrew is (still) the Duke of York by royal prerogative – that is, under powers held by the monarch using letters patent or a royal warrant. He could, but chooses not to, call himself duke, a title which will be kept warm for some future spare royal. But he’s not allowed to call himself HRH, or “prince”. Same goes for Harry.

But it’s trickier to extract Andrew from the line of succession because of some legal mumbo jumbo from 1931, which would require the consent of every other Commonwealth realm. Who knows how Tuvalu [pop 10,643] would vote? In Shakespeare, dodgy noblemen are banished to foreign realms. Today, we pack them off to Norfolk.

The King’s brother is, we can all agree, a wrong ’un. We are supposed to defer to one bro and despise the other. William seems nice enough, but the odds of getting a “good” monarch are much the same as tossing a coin. And yet the hereditary system is all we have.

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As for Mandelson, he seems to have decided to leave the upper house, but clings onto the right to call himself a lord. The prime minister wrings his hands and has instructed some of the finest legal minds in Whitehall to work out how to go the whole hog and return him to the rank of commoner.

In the meantime, there have been late-night machinations on how to winkle Mandelson out of the Privy Council, a medieval body whose membership theoretically advises the monarch (who is, you’ll recall, also the Tuvalu head of state). That can only be done by the King, but Keir Starmer seems to have had a quiet word.

In other words, these two men – one a bit dim, grubby and entitled, the other sinuously mesmerised by money – have drawn uncomfortable attention to our make-it-up-as-you-go-along constitution.

An illustration of just how incoherent things have become: at the very same time that their lordships bellow their disgust at a peer who consorted with a known sex offender, they rolled out the welcome mat to Baron Doyle, a modestly talented ex-spin doctor, who campaigned for a paedophile.

You read that right. Matthew Doyle, said to be a protege of the man we must apparently still call Lord Mandelson, was admitted to the House of Lords on 12 January, bedecked in silk robes and ermine, despite his support for Sean Morton, a former Scottish councillor charged with (and later convicted of) possessing and distributing indecent images of children.

Lord Doyle now says: ”I regret supporting him.” You bet he does. An unhappy echo of almost exactly the same mea culpa used by Mandelson, Gates, Branson, Mountbatten-Windsor, Sarah Ferguson and co in relation to Epstein. But, no matter, Doyle – who clocked up all of nine months as No 10 comms chief for Starmer – can now collect £371 a day for the rest of his life. For just turning up. And his mentor, Mandelson, has shown just how difficult it would be to get rid of him.

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Even in Tuvalu, I bet they don’t put up with that kind of nonsense.

On one level, then, this is a story of a couple of grifters who have played the system and been spectacularly caught out. The royal family has always had bad eggs, and we’ve known for generations that the House of Lords should either be abolished or drastically reformed.

But the grifters are now in the ascendancy, and the question should always be What Would Nigel Do [WWND]? The possibility that Farage might end up in Downing Street becomes more salient by the week. WWND if he became prime minister? You have to believe he would stuff the upper house with his mates and cronies.

And why not? David Cameron appointed 245 peers during his time in office, Boris Johnson 87, Theresa May 43, Rishi Sunak 51 and Liz Truss 29, despite being prime minister for just 49 days. Keir Starmer, who’s described the bloated House of Lords as “indefensible,” has himself created 96 new peers.

Back in August, Farage asked Starmer to address the “democratic disparity” of the Reform Party having zero lords. Starmer said no. The BBC’s account of the exchange quoted sources familiar with the appointment process as saying: “There are no set rules and the decision is ultimately up to the prime minister of the day.”

Given “no set rules”, WWND? Would he create tens of new peers to balance out the numbers in the upper house? Dozens? Hundreds? If he were elected by a landslide, wouldn’t he deserve to have something like the Conservatives (280-odd), or Labour and the Lib Dems (209 and 75 respectively)?

Who, honestly, would have the right to complain?

Epstein seems to have had a ruthless capacity for spotting the titled and entitled grifters at the top of British society and exploiting them for all he was worth.

Of course, the files now spewing out into public view involve numerous personal tragedies; they are, rightly, front focus. But Epstein has unwittingly shown us in our true Ruritanian colours. And only the naive can imagine things changing.