Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has launched a legal action against Thames Valley Police over search warrants issued for raids on his homes at the Sandringham Estate and Royal Lodge, Windsor, in February. He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, before being released without charge. The investigation remains ongoing, and Mountbatten-Windsor denies all wrongdoing.
An initial judicial hearing will take place in private on Thursday, though it is not known whether the former prince will attend.
This is the “first time a member of the royal family has challenged the lawfulness of criminal actions against them since Charles I in 1649”, said royal editor Hannah Furness in The Telegraph. “And we all know how that went.”
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The review is the “last roll of the dice” to rehabilitate Mountbatten-Windsor’s image, said Furness. Winning would at least “put the idea of his innocence, or injustice, back in the public imagination”. With silence and charity work, he could in time have been able to at least become “unremarkable” in public life. However, this legal action will break that “stalemate”. Ultimately, though, there is only one way Mountbatten-Windsor can re-emerge: by “actually clearing his name”. “No loopholes, no PR – just the truth in the eyes of the law.”
There is an “unusual” form of “gamesmanship” going on here, former senior detective Martyn Underhill told The Times. “In about 50 years in policing I’ve never known legal action against a warrant,” because the threshold required to obtain one is “really quite low”. This looks more like an “effort to try and change the dynamic and narrative, to show he’s fighting back”.
His “calculated gamble” could destabilise wider accusations made against him, said Andrew Tillett in the Australian Financial Review. He will be encouraged by the “weakness” of the police’s “faltering” case against Peter Mandelson, and the failure of US investigators to make the full, unredacted version of the Epstein files available to UK forces.
Mountbatten-Windsor has lost almost everything, and challenging the police “won’t get that back”. But, with “customary arrogance”, he thinks he can “ease some of the shackles on his life in limbo”.
What next?
The former prince will have to finance proceedings on his own, said The Times. Mountbatten-Windsor’s “counter-attack” was made “seemingly without the King’s knowledge”, and Charles has “made it clear” that his brother’s private stipend – “understood to be in excess of £1 million a year” – “should not be used to fund the judicial review”.
“There are several possible scenarios ahead”, said The i Paper. The High Court will establish whether police had “reasonable grounds” for the searches. But even if the police were deemed to have acted unlawfully, “any material gathered in those searches could potentially still be used” against Mountbatten-Windsor.
Alternatively, the court could order that materials from the search be excluded from any case against him, and in the extreme, could award Mountbatten-Windsor compensation and a police apology. However, even if this were the case, “I can’t see that this judicial review would be able to derail the criminal investigation,” solicitor John Hagan told the newspaper.
