MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Andrew is not worthy of ANY royal money

Published: 00:55, 9 August 2026 | Updated: 02:08, 9 August 2026 Every family has to think, from time to time, about funerals. It may not be welcome, but it is usually wise.  It is certainly not the taboo it used to be – some TV stations nowadays are full of advertisements for funeral plans. For the Royal Family, the problem is rather bigger. The death of any senior royal raises delicate and intricate questions of protocol and precedence. Where will the service be held? Where will the interment be? We must all die, even if the current Royal Family has developed a reputation for longevity.  The well-oiled machine of the British monarchy does not wish to be unprepared for any eventuality, and quite right too. So inevitably the awkward question of the funeral of the former Duke of York, now Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, has come up.  And currently there are plans for him to have a funeral thought to be similar to that accorded to the late Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret.  Prince Andrew, Duke of York and Queen Elizabeth II attend the funeral of Patricia Knatchbull, Countess Mountbatten of Burma in 2017 Let us not be vindictive here, but the former Prince, by his behaviour and attitude in the Epstein affair, has surely forfeited any entitlement to such ceremonies. Plainly, in common decency, he should be buried with his forebears, and his unquestioned bravery in the Falklands will not be forgotten by the Navy. But the British public will be dismayed if his obsequies take place in royal surroundings or with the trappings of monarchy.  He is now a private citizen and his funeral should be private too. Has Labour under Andy Burnham quietly become the party of the super-rich? Roughly 21 per cent of Mr Burnham’s Cabinet went to private schools, which are now increasingly beyond the reach of the aspiring middle classes. This is thanks to tax changes – VAT, National Insurance increases and business rates – imposed on them by Labour Party chairman and former Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. Even those ministers who went to state schools seem to have been fortunate in their education. An impressive 54 per cent of the Burnham Cabinet attended either Oxford or Cambridge, as 99 per cent of British children do not do. And now we learn that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Miatta Fahnbulleh, is educating her own three children privately. We do not know how much she and her husband – who is said to be ‘in finance’ – pay.  Miatta  Fahnbulleh (pictured with Andy Burnham) championed Labour's decision to slap VAT on public school fees - despite sending all three of her own children to private school But Ms Fahnbulleh’s own former school, Beechwood in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, currently charges boarders almost £45,000 a year and day pupils up to £24,597. There is nothing wrong with that. The Mail on Sunday supports aspiration and ambition. We only wish more children could go to independent schools. The problem is that Labour’s own actions are currently devastating much of private education across the country. We must assume they know what they are doing, when they make private schools too expensive for the middle class while continuing to use such schools themselves. Even if they do not make the same choice as Ms Fahnbulleh, they must surely grasp that Ms Phillipson’s fierce taxes have reinforced the privilege of wealth, not weakened it. 'Best day of his career!': Met Police officer drives off in limited edition Ferrari worth £3.7MILLION after it was seized in London