Independent MPs want the former prince, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, to be removed from the royal line of succession to prevent him ever becoming King of the Commonwealth that includes Australia.
King Charles stripped his younger brother of his titles and honours last week amid ongoing revelations about his long friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, sparking debate in Commonwealth countries about whether Andrew should keep his place as eighth in line to the throne.
The former prince has been stripped of his titles and honours.Credit: AP
Experts say Australia and the other 13 Commonwealth realms would require matching laws to ensure the former prince could not be considered an heir to the throne.
There is precedent for similar changes. More than a decade ago, Australia passed laws to strip male heirs of priority in the line of succession after Princess Charlotte, the second child of Prince William and Princess Catherine, was born.
Independent Australian MPs said Australia should advocate for the change to deal with Mountbatten Windsor. West Australian teal MP Kate Chaney said the prime minister should leverage his relationship with the UK prime minister to bring up the issue.
“Given Virginia Giuffre’s personal connections to Australia, Anthony Albanese should be encouraging his mate Keir Starmer to start the natural next step – removing Andrew from the line of succession,” Chaney said. “No Australian wants any possibility of Andrew being our head of state.”
Sophie Scamps, who represents Mackellar on Sydney’s northern beaches, said: “No matter what your position is on the royal family, I don’t think Australians would stand for a man that has allegedly used his power and position to prey on vulnerable girls and young women”.
Mountbatten Windsor has repeatedly denied meeting Roberts Giuffre, denied having sex with her and rejected her claims of sexual assault.
“I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever,” he told the BBC in 2019.
The national convenor of the Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, David Flint, said it was not Australia’s place to make demands of the UK.
“I don’t think it’s a matter for parliament to become hysterical. It would be only pandering to Republicans,” the emeritus professor of law said.
Flint said as a constitutional monarchy where several countries share a monarch, there should be “discrete, diplomatic consultation between the governments of the various realms… and a consensus should emerge before they do anything.”
“We don’t take a position on saying, he should go, or he should be in prison. We support the system,” he said.
Flint noted it was vanishingly unlikely the former prince would become the next regent.
“There’s no great urgency because the likelihood of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor ascending to the throne is so distant that only some major catastrophe would mean that it had any possibility of being applied,” he said.
“There are some precedents which suggests that there will be no difficulty in changing the succession, even at the time of ascension,” Flint said. When King James II fled England for France in 1688, the UK parliament took it as an abdication and appointed the next monarch, Flint noted.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said last week: “There are no plans to make legislative changes.”
But some UK Labour MPs publicly disagree. “In the event of an unimaginable family catastrophe, Andrew could inherit the throne,” MP Jon Trickett told the London Telegraph. “The British people would not put up with it and this ought to be resolved so that he isn’t in line at all.”
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