Yet one other Andrew disaster is unfolding behind the Palace partitions. Here, RICHARD KAY reveals how newest grotesque particulars stands out as the most damaging but for King Charles’s reign, and the complete monarchy…

Let us imagine for a moment the police ignore institutional reluctance and embark on a thorough and wide-ranging investigation into the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor affair.

Let’s further imagine that the outcome of these inquiries ends, as it quite conceivably could, in Court Number One at the Old Bailey.

Now picture the scene in the oak-panelled show court, the venue for criminal cases over the past century from that of Timothy Evans, executed after wrongly being found guilty of murdering his wife and baby, to Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ Peter Sutcliffe and fellow serial killer Dennis Nilsen, who cut up and boiled his victims’ remains.

All these trials, shocking as they were, would pale into insignificance if the King’s brother were in the dock. It would be a global sensation and would cause irreparable damage to the monarchy. It might even bring it down.

Never have the stakes in the Andrew saga, from its grubby beginnings in supposed sex-trafficking to the latest allegations of misconduct in public office, been so high.

Scrutinised

Eminent voices such as Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, have insisted the Met police must investigate trafficking claims after evidence emerged that the private jet of Andrew’s paedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein landed in Britain on at least 90 occasions.

The director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, has loftily pronounced that ‘nobody is above the law’, adding that he has ‘total confidence’ that detectives would examine any evidence suggesting criminality.

Fine words, but where is the action?

Many will feel that we have been here before. Ever since the sordid story of Andrew’s involvement with a young woman called Virginia Giuffre first became headline news 15 years ago, there have been countless opportunities to get to the truth. 

Why, when memories were still relatively fresh, were the then-Duke of York’s police bodyguards not properly interrogated about his movements?

They should have been interviewed as possible witnesses. At the very least, their pocketbooks, which would have held precise information about Andrew’s comings and goings, his associates, whom he met and where he stayed, should have been seized. 

Instead of the mockery that greeted Andrew’s bizarre alibis about being in a Pizza Express and of being unable to sweat, his claims could have been properly scrutinised.

Corruption

Don’t forget that two of Andrew’s protection officers stayed with him at Epstein’s New York townhouse for more than a week on his ill-judged trip supposedly to ‘break off’ his relationship with the paedophile.

Instead, there has been mostly silence and obfuscation from Andrew and the Palace establishment.

It is only now, when the gruesome business has been brought to light through the release of the Epstein files, that the public can finally learn what was going on. 

What was initially alleged to be a grubby episode of sexual exploitation is beginning to look like an affair embracing financial corruption at a significant level.

Day after day, more unsavoury and potentially incriminating details are being prised out of the heavily redacted files. They include emails showing that in 2010 Andrew passed a confidential Treasury briefing on the financial crisis then gripping Iceland to a banker friend with the helpful message ‘before you make your move’.

In July of that year, he forwarded to his adviser David Stern an email exchange he had had with an investment banker containing sensitive information about taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland. Stern in turn sent the material on to Epstein.

Stern, who was an adviser to both Andrew and Epstein, asked to ‘help’ plan an official visit to China by the duke – and after the visit told Epstein he was planning business deals thanks to Andrew’s trip.

It is further claimed Andrew tried to engineer a meeting between Epstein and the Libyan tyrant Colonel Gaddafi, that he lobbied for Epstein during an official visit to the UAE and that he forwarded the ­paedophile several other confidential briefings.

All these may turn out to be entirely innocent interventions. But until they are probed, we cannot know.

What we do know is that email by email, leak by leak, public trust in the monarchy is being eroded.

By stripping Andrew of his titles, royal style and every other aspect of his privileged birthright, King Charles has attempted to put a firewall between him and the rest of the House of Windsor. But the prospect of the former prince going on trial undoubtedly represents another threat to the institution.

Twice this year the King has been heckled in public about his brother. When he travels to the US in the spring to mark the 250th anniversary of America’s independence – a trip he is dreading – he is likely to face the questioning of TV and social media crews who will show him none of the deference displayed by the British media. Epstein’s victims may think nothing of ambushing the King, too.

How Charles must wish he had stuck to his guns 25 years ago when Andrew was first mooted as a UK trade envoy. When I revealed his concerns all those years ago, it was brushed off as another example of the rivalry that existed between two royal courts, one (representing Andrew’s interests) around his mother Queen Elizabeth and the other centred on Charles as heir to the Throne.

Andrew wanted a ‘big job’ when he left the Navy, one commensurate with his overblown view of his own qualities. With the support of his late mother, he was obliged.

Charles, who prophetically warned that the appointment would end badly, proposed putting him on his own payroll so Andrew could learn some much-needed skills of royal diplomacy first.

Hindsight is a fine thing, but public dismay has not been reassured by the King’s efforts to contain his brother. A full-blown police inquiry is not just the logical step: it is the only solution to restoring trust.

Uncomfortable

But will it happen? When Lord Mandelson’s dubious links with Epstein were laid bare, police turned up at his two homes and removed boxes of material.

Have police seized documents from Andrew? If they have, they’re not saying. With his move from Royal Lodge to a much smaller home on the Sandringham estate, it is possible Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s papers are being held in the ‘California stores’, the vast royal warehouse at Windsor.

If Andrew were to be charged, he would not merely become the first royal in modern times to face trial over a serious offence. 

A criminal case would bring back uncomfortable memories of another Old Bailey prosecution from several years ago, that of ex-butler Paul Burrell, who was charged with the theft of items that belonged to Princess Diana.

In 2002, Burrell’s trial sensationally collapsed when evidence was given that he had told the Queen he was storing some of Diana’s possessions for ‘safekeeping’.

Imagine if Andrew were to say that he had confided in Charles about his actions. The monarch cannot be a witness in his own courts and any case would collapse.

So, by all means let there be an investigation. But some might also wonder whether those who thought it okay to hand sensitive material to a royal described by a diplomat as a ‘buffoon’ should face questions of their own.