The steady drip of information paints a picture of a group of people living high on the hog while the rest of us struggle. It’s not unpatriotic to demand change, says Chris Blackhurst
Will anyone give me the rental value on three cottages in Windsor Great Park?
Increasingly, the royal family and their living arrangements resemble a high-end car boot sale where anything is up for grabs, and everything has a price.
The latest revelation, courtesy of the National Audit Office (NAO), is that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been coining it from three properties on the Royal Lodge estate. He leased from the Crown Estate and then sublet them. Nice.
We’re also informed that the King pays the rent for Andrew’s daughters, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, even though they are not working royals.
Doubtless, there will be more to come. Because this is where we’re at with the royals: we’re being invited to try to make sense of a steady drip-drip of information that paints a picture of a group of people living high on the hog – and makes the blood boil. While the rest of the population struggles with cost-of-living anxieties, they sail on regardless.
It’s been like this for centuries. For most of that time, we did not shine a light on their finances, regarding them, as we’d been taught, as being above and beyond. Those who did – the occasional inquisitive journalist, author or MP – were treated with a certain disdain; there was a notion that somehow, they were being disloyal and unpatriotic; that even by the act of inquiring, they were intent on bringing down the royalty, one of the historic bulwarks of Britain.