There’s a maxim in crisis management: in moments of reputational jeopardy, go to “endgame” fast.
If someone must be fired or demoted, if an apology is owed, if a line must finally be drawn — do it as quickly and humanely as possible. Don’t dribble out half-measures and euphemisms. Don’t wait. Don’t hope the smell dissipates on its own.
Because it won’t. The longer you dither, the worse it gets.
The House of Windsor has demonstrated that truth in real time. Every extra year, month, minute Prince Andrew retained even a trace of title or privilege — and every cent that could be traced, directly or indirectly, to the public purse — the institution paid compounding interest on reputational damage.
Instead of moving decisively, the palace took the slowest walk to the most obvious conclusion. And they are now paying the penalty for that hesitation.
Let’s recap this slow-moving car crash. In 2011, Andrew’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein came to light, and he stepped down as the U.K.’s special trade envoy. Years later, in 2019, came the infamous BBC “Newsnight” interview — an exercise in self-immolation — in which he claimed he had “no recollection” of ever meeting Virginia Roberts Giuffre, despite the now-famous photo with his arm around her; insisted he could not sweat; and otherwise strained credulity through plain old blubbering.
In the aftermath, he was stripped of the “His Royal Highness” style.
But recent events delivered the coup de grâce. An email surfaced showing Andrew remained in contact with Epstein long after he suggested the relationship had ended — chummily and revoltingly promising they would “play more soon” and were “in it together.” On top of that, Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” landed in Britain with detailed allegations of her encounters with Andrew.
The result: Andrew has now been stripped of the “prince” title, all other honours removed, and he’s being shown the door at Royal Lodge.
I’m counting well past three strikes.
You could argue royalty does not play by the same rules as everybody else. But no one is exempt from the rules of public favour. And public favour is the monarchy’s oxygen.
By avoiding endgame and choosing a drip-by-drip discipline — another style stripped here, a privilege removed there, a wincing statement when the headlines flared — the Royal Family didn’t just fail to cauterize the wound, it allowed it to keep reopening and reopening. And each partial step invited the same question: Do they actually understand the gravity of this?
Moving to endgame fast matters because it signals just that understanding. It shows the people in charge grasp the scale of the wrongdoing and are acting — not managing optics, not protecting one of their own, but protecting the standard.
Linger, and you communicate the opposite: an irrational attachment to the person over the principle.
Of course, families are anything but rational. They are complicated, sentimental, and often forgiving to a fault. That may be the best argument for why it took so long; but it is no excuse. In leadership — especially where one’s legitimacy rests on trust — mercy cannot outrun accountability.
There’s another, frequently overlooked, reason to get to endgame: it is better for the person you’re cutting loose. It gives them a finality that allows them to move on, instead of living on permanent probation and relapsing into fresh embarrassments that drag everyone back to the beginning.
Several currents finally converged this week. The King was publicly heckledabout Andrew. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, broke with the usual kid-glove deference and endorsed proper scrutiny of Andrew’s peppercorn lease at Royal Lodge; the Public Accounts Committee duly asked for documents. And, if palace whispers are right, the generational gears engaged: William and Catherine pressed for a clean break.
They’re not wrong to see urgency. Only four working royals are under the age of 70. The institution’s future depends on a smaller, harder-working cadre who cannot afford reputational freeloaders.
Monarchy survives on public standing — and on the judgment to protect it. At last, the next generation seems to have decided that the endgame had arrived.
It should have been reached years ago. But late, I suppose, is better than never.
