Happy Birthday, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor!

In a delicious twist of fate, a man born into velvet and ceremony now finds himself beneath fluorescent strip lighting. No balcony. No anthem. No gloved handshake. Just likely fingerprints, a custody desk and the slow click of a heavy door.

I used to work on Channel 4’s 24 Hours In Police Custody, so I know what those cells look like: the soiled mattress, the stainless-steel toilet, the scratchy grey blanket. They are aggressively ordinary. They don’t care about who your mum is.

On Thursday, six unmarked police cars and eight plain-clothed officers arrived at Sandringham to arrest Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of public misconduct over his alleged sharing of confidential material with Jeffrey Epstein.

And if the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor tells us anything, it’s this: institutions can feel untouchable until they aren’t.

A sentiment echoed by the late Virginia Guiffre’s family who said: “At last. Today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty. For survivors everywhere, Virginia did this for you”.

I have never been a monarchist. Even as a child, I struggled to understand what the Royal Family actually did. I saw ribbon cuttings and gloved waves from palace balconies but what I really saw was a family born into unimaginable privilege, treated like the sun shone out of their arse.

Make no mistake, Andrew can still bring the royals crashing down with him

But, throughout my life, the aunties used to joke that they kept a separate China set “for the Queen”. I remember thinking: why? She’s not popping round for a samosa anytime EVER. The idea that royalty might one day grace our (council) estate was laughable and yet the admiration was real.

As the child of a formerly colonised land, I also grew up watching older South Asians revere the Royal Family and reserve a particularly die-hard affection for Princess Diana. The devotion has always fascinated me. Why do communities shaped by empire cling so tightly to its symbols?

Part of the answer is conditioning. Empire wasn’t just about land and loot; it was about storytelling. It sold a narrative in which proximity to the Crown meant legitimacy, civilisation and status. Be close to the throne, be close to whiteness and you are elevated. Repeat that story for decades, centuries and it becomes entrenched. It becomes nostalgia. It becomes tradition.

It has always frustrated me that despite the royals’ history and legacy, older generations still put them on a pedestal. No matter the scandal, the damage or the evidence, loyalty endures. They are blinded by the belief that they can do no wrong simply by virtue of their lineage, never judged on merit or character like the rest of us are. Perhaps this arrest is a wake-up call for the “children of the empire”: a reminder that this isn’t just one bad apple, but an institution that is rotten to the core.

But perhaps something is shifting. I was genuinely surprised to hear my mum, once a quiet admirer of the royals, describe the entire family yesterday as “selfish”. Even my mum, who speaks no English and grew up in the shadow of the Bangladeshi war has got “woke”, seeing the royals for what they are – a symbol of colonial power.

We have a saying in the Asian community that cripples us: What will people say? It’s a social straightjacket we deploy with ruthless efficiency. Step out of line, fall in love with the wrong person, speak too loudly, dream too differently. Shame becomes surveillance. Reputation becomes currency.

I want to see that applied to the royals. We reserve astonishing levels of grace for the Royal Family, arguably the most publicly scandal-prone dynasty in modern British history.

There will be die-hard royalists even now, waxing lyrical about the “good they do”. But what do they actually do? Despite Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Epstein, despite the treatment of Meghan and despite the long shadow of empire, some of the British public continue to romanticise them and channel their anger elsewhere.

We are encouraged to resent migrants. To blame refugees, benefit claimants and the marginalised for economic stagnation and social decay. Meanwhile, billionaires in tailored suits, aristocracy donning stolen crowns, remain largely untouched in the public imagination.

This is why Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest, whether it leads to charges or not, feels symbolically potent. If Mountbatten-Windsor can sit under fluorescent lights like any other man, and think he is above the law, then he is sorely mistaken.

Let this be a wake-up call to the public: the Royal Family, like everybody else, is not above the law. You can’t have your cake and eat it; custody suites aren’t known for their Victoria Sponge.

© iNews