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One news story that fuels the appetites of hungry consumers of juicy television programmes in Australia is the continuing troubles of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew.

He was regarded as the favourite son of Queen Elizabeth II. The Epstein files reveal the late Queen was fully supportive of Andrew, even after photos emerged of him with accuser Virginia Giuffre.¹

In contrast, the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, “reportedly felt that Andrew never lived up to his expectations. Andrew was “berated” by his father for being pointless” and “a danger to the very fabric of the Royal Family”.²

Prince Philip was not without controversy himself. He once notoriously commented: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation”.³ Clearly, he felt so strongly about overpopulation that he later stated the following:

“I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers that it was in danger of extinction.

“What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist… I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.”⁴

Overpopulation, Climate, and Christianity in the Royal Family

Philip’s neo-pagan predilections for reincarnation could be dismissed as just another example of the eccentricities of the British royal family. However, his son, King Charles III, is reported to talk to plants and to blame Syria’s horrific civil war on climate change!⁵

At the Copenhagen climate change summit in December 2009, then Prince Charles warned that the survival of mankind itself was in peril and a mere seven years remained “before we lose the levers of control” over the climate.⁶

And his son, Prince William, has now notoriously expressed ‘discomfort’ with Christianity in the UK. When he becomes king, William does not want to be called the ‘Defender of the Faith’ any longer.⁷

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the British Empire collapsed and structures of absolute and unaccountable power emerged. She witnessed a cultural revolution that dispossessed the native population of her country of their fundamental human rights.

Currently, the likely and impending removal of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession is the subject of much discussion in Australia. Eager journalists opine that Andrew’s membership of ‘The Firm’ is unlikely to protect him from the application of the law. Indeed, the charges stem from his time as the UK’s Trade Envoy between 2001 and 2011, involving claims that confidential state information has been leaked to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile who was found dead in his cell in 2019 in New York.

Andrew and Virginia Giuffre

As is well-known, these claims are in addition to persistent allegations that, in Epstein’s cesspit, he had sexual relations with a 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who later received a massive payout in a mediated settlement. Reports estimate the figure at around £12 million (roughly $22–23 million USD at the time), partly funded by his mother, the late Queen, and his brother, King Charles.⁸

Giuffre discussed the practice of sexual enslavement in her memoir Nobody’s Girl (2025) before committing suicide in April 2025.⁹ In 2011, Giuffre made headlines as the most striking victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – the woman whose decision to speak out helped land both serial abusers in prison and whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalysed his fall from grace.

The recent images — part of the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice — of Andrew, hunched over a young woman, whose face is redacted, is now already one of the defining pictures of the 21^st century. And it is the first time since 1646 that a highly placed royal, the brother of the King no less, has been arrested. It led in 1649 to the regicidal execution of King Charles I.

Albanese, Andrew and ISIS Brides

The Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, wrote to then-UK’s Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, indicating that the Australian government is fully supportive of any decision to excise the former Prince from the succession list. It has been reported that Albanese said in his message to Starmer that “the law must now take its full course and there must be a full, fair and proper investigation” and that “these are grave allegations and Australians take them seriously.”

Albanese later boasted that he was the first Commonwealth leader to support the proposed removal of the disgraced former royal from the line of succession to the British and Australian crowns.

But surely, the Australian government’s decision to support the defenestration of Mountbatten-Windsor, whilst understandable, fails some basic standards of justice.

This is because the former Prince has not been charged, and even if he were charged, he has not been convicted. In other words, the rule that a person is deemed innocent until proven guilty is discarded because of the public’s perception of his guilt and the expectation that support for his removal from the succession list is an astute political decision.

Although many Australians certainly agree with the substance of Albanese’s letter to Starmer, they may find it hypocritical, not because of his clear contempt for the former Prince, but for the perceived righteousness which discloses an erratic moral vision.

Indeed, the eagerness to act on the Mountbatten-Windsor succession is in stark contrast with the Australian government’s repeated assurances that it did not assist in the repatriation of eleven ISIS brides and their children to return to Australia. The veracity of this claim, of course, very much depends on the meaning of ‘repatriation’.

There is evidence that the return had been planned for months and that, therefore, the government’s claim may be as untrue as it is misleading. A facetious comment, both amusing and serious, circulating in Australia, is that the government’s claim of not assisting the ISIS brides simply amounts to a refusal to arrange their transport to the airport!

Disrespect for the Presumption of Innocence: A Sign of Our Troubled Times

The disrespect for the presumption of innocence, as displayed in Mountbatten-Windsor’s case is emblematic of the challenges faced by Australia. In recent years, a subtle but profound transformation has been unfolding in this country.

A new wave of public policy, rooted in collective welfare and economic justice is reshaping the contours of governance, all in the name of protecting “social cohesion”. Much of this public policy is entrenched in socialist traditions, involving the adoption of regulations and programmes that prioritise social equity, public provisioning, and market accountability.

Australia is well on the way to abolishing free speech and criminalising the expression of ideas critical of social cohesion. While political rhetoric varies, Labor’s policy direction allocates a growing role to the State to mitigate market failures.

Warning to the West

It would be prudent for Australia to take seriously the prediction made by Professor David Betz in a UK context. Betz’s main area of academic research is warfare in the modern era. He came to public attention when he published a two-part academic paper titled The Civil War Comes to the West. In these two academic papers, he contends that there is a significant chance of a civil war breaking out in Western European countries, and especially in Great Britain, where mass immigration and multiculturalism risk civil unrest verging on civil war.

In these two articles, Betz argues that the ruling classes are increasingly disconnected from the common people, and therefore that there is a real potential for civil unrest and possibly civil war. According to Betz, the three largest European states — France, Germany and the United Kingdom — are now in this predicament and things are rapidly getting worse.¹⁰ For him, inter-tribal conflict manifests itself in physical violence in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. A good example is the city of Leicester, which in the not-too-distant past has witnessed recurrent violence between local Hindu and Muslim populations, both sides animated by inter-communal tensions in far-distant South Asia.¹⁰ The main threat of civil war in Britain, therefore, “emanates from its own terrible instability, structural decline, cultural desiccation.”¹⁰

Ominously, we have seen the stabbing of three children in Southport in July 2024, demonstrations at asylum hotels where illegally arrived migrants were treated to free accommodation, meals, phones, and welfare benefits. Hate speech laws have been weaponised to punish people who pray in public (but not enforced against Muslims going about their devotions in roadways and public spaces), walk around with contentious posters inviting people to talk to them about Jesus, or make statements that are interpreted by their recipients as vilification and harassment.

Australia experiences nationwide demonstrations, often involving brutal clashes between centre-right and anti-racism or Palestine-friendly groups, fuelled by uncontrolled or ineffective immigration policies and suppression of a free speech culture.¹¹ Members of the growing immigrant population are often unable or unwilling to embrace the values of the host countries, including the rule of law and the presumption of innocence, trashed in Mountbatten-Windsor’s case.

Multiculturalism: A Menace to the West

The combination of mass immigration and the doctrine of multiculturalism has fuelled the conviction that it is racist to restrict immigration or impose the culture of the host countries on newcomers. This development is reminiscent of an influential article, The Menace of Multi-culturalism, published in 1980, by the late Professor Lauchlan Chipman who, in an Australian context, described multiculturalism as a doctrine that prescriptively seeks to impose rules of behaviour on the native population. He argued that ‘hard’ multiculturalism,

“… is not about folk dancing, interesting food, and free-flowing wine. Nor is it about experiments in living and the open-minded and sensitive quest for improved or alternative life-styles. … Rather, it is about the preservation of ‘ethnic integrity’, the reinforcement and imposition on the new-born of sets of traditions, beliefs, and values which include, as well as those which are noble and enlightened, some which are at least as inhuman, as grotesquely ignorant, and as racist, as sexist, and as bigoted as any that can be squeezed from even the most appalling of ockers.”¹²

Chipman implied that ‘multiculturalism’ is an ideological movement opposed to Western principles, culture, and identity. Sceptics of multiculturalism bemoan that Australia may never again be culturally united in beliefs and practice.

In a UK context, it is evocative of an ill-conceived statement, once made by Keir Starmer, that Britain is becoming an “island of strangers”, a comment he has since apologised for.¹³

Young Muslims Brits Want Sharia Law; Emphasise with Terrorists

But his comment is certainly apposite. Indeed, in the United Kingdom, a study commissioned by Policy Exchange reveals that, because of celebrating ‘cultural diversity’, four out of ten young British Muslims wish to live under Sharia law.

In answer to the question, “Do you personally have any sympathy with the feelings and motives of those who carried out terrorist attacks?”, 24 per cent answered in the affirmative, with 13 per cent expressing a lot of sympathy towards the terrorists.

In answer to the question, “How loyal would you say you personally feel towards Britain?”, 16 per cent of these young British Muslims feel ‘not at all loyal’ or ‘not very loyal’.¹⁴

Australia: A Nation of Competing Tribes

According to the late British historian Paul Johnson “multiculturalism has been, and will be, exploited by a few social engineers to dismember the elements of existing societies, especially those of the West with their deep Christian underpinnings, and reconstruct them according to new blueprints — to provide legal accommodation, for example, to practices such as polygamy.”¹⁵

Knowledgeable observers may argue that Australia can no longer be described as a socially cohesive country with a considerable sense of common identity and heritage. On the contrary, that country now only has incohesive political entities formed by competing tribes based on a sense of identity of their own, living largely in virtually segregated communities and competing for social resources in an increasingly excessive and violent way.¹⁵

Returning to Mountbatten-Windsor, his alleged offences, including those for which he was arrested and any indiscretions due to his friendship with a notorious paedophile, could thus be seen as evidence of the loss of a social moral compass, and emblematic of a nation in decline and social decadence.

We are talking here of a partial moral collapse of Australian society which has decimated the confidence that people once had in their institutions.

Perhaps we are about to experience a new ‘Era of Revolutions’, where the final destiny of some active players might very well be the same as that which was envisaged by the other King with the same name as King Charles III.

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Republished with thanks to Quadrant. Originally titled, “The End of Innocence”.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Footnotes

1. ‘Epstein Files Reveals Late Queen’s Support to Disgraced Ex-Prince’, 9 News Australia, 7 February 2026, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP-8CO_Ra2s. [↩]
2. Web Desk, ‘Prince Philip’s shocking verdict on son Prince Andrew emerges amid row’, The News, 16 June 2025 at https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1321793-prince-philips-shocking-verdict-on-son-prince-andrew-emerges-amid-row. [↩]
3. Deutsche Presse-Agentur, August 1988. Quoted from Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power (Encounter Books, 2011) 229. [↩]
4. Prince Philip, foreword to If I Were an Animal (Robin Clark Ltd., 1886). Quoted in Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power (Encounter Books, 2011) 300. [↩]
5. ‘Prince Charles: ‘Climate change to blame for terrorism’, News.com.au, 24 November 2023, at https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/prince-charles-climate-change-to-blame-for-terrorism/news-story/bcf87d5197129873f933fc4e22c49ce0. [↩]
6. Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power (Encounter Books, 2011) 14. [↩]
7. ‘Prince William Reflects Discomfort with Christianity in UK’, GB News, 17 January 2024, at https://www.gbnews.com/royal/prince-william-christianity-faith-church. [↩]
8. Leah Stanfield, ‘Andrew Borrowed Millions from Late Queen, Philip and Charles to Pay Off Virginia Giuffre – And Never Repaid a Single Penny’, Sky News Australia, 12 February 2026, at https://www.skynews.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity-life/andrew-borrowed-millions-from-late-queen-philip-and-charles-to-pay-off-virginia-giuffre-and-never-repaid-a-single-penny/news-story/552a5ecfc1e0b614c4d7dc2aa5555957. [↩]
9. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice (Random House, 2025). [↩]
10. David Betz, ‘Civil War Comes to the West’, Military Strategic Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 1, at https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/_read/volume-9-issue-1/22/. [↩] [↩] [↩]
11. See for a UK view: Ranson Lo, ‘Nationwide Civil Unrest throughout the UK’, Bloomsbury Intelligence & Security Institute, 12 August 2024, at https://bisi.org.uk/reports/nationwide-civil-unrest-throughout-the-uk. [↩]
12. Lauchlan Chipman, ‘The Menace of Multi-culturalism’, Quadrant, Vol. 24, Issue 10, October 1980, 3-6. [↩]
13. Jim Picard, ‘Starmer apologises for island of strangers’ remark’, Financial Times, 27 June 2025, at https://www.ft.com/content/475ae68e-5ab4-4556-91bc-293249aa926a. [↩]
14. Munira Mirza, Abi Senthilkumaran and Zein Ja’far, ‘Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism’, Policy Exchange, 29 June 2007, at https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/living-apart-together-jan-07.pdf. [↩]
15. Paul Johnson, ‘Christianity: New Challenges’, Festival of Light, Adelaide/SA, February 1992, 11. [↩] [↩]