Prince Andrew’s extraordinary announcement shows the distraction had to stop

It is extraordinary that it has come to this but the distraction had to stop.

The statement comes straight from Prince Andrew, the tone of it very personal as he says he is putting his “duty to my family and country first”.

But this was clearly not entirely his decision.

From the first sentence, where he says “in discussion with the King”, we’re left in no doubt that his brother must have said enough was enough.

Royals latest: Andrew explains decision to give up titles

The fact we’re being guided that the King is glad of this outcome says it all; for the monarch and the wider family, the questions of what they were going to do about Andrew had to stop.

After years of upset caused by his association with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, he has done the family one favour by personally announcing that he will no longer use his titles.

For the King to forcibly remove them would have taken up precious parliamentary time and weeks of column inches.

To be clear his titles aren’t removed, they remain extant but inactive like his HRH title.

But Prince Andrew won’t use them any more and that will be humiliation enough for a man who has already been stripped of his military affiliations, his charity patronages and his ability to have any kind of public profile.

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This ends the questions on what more the monarch could do to show how the family felt about the accusations, the upset and the embarrassment caused.

Will it stop the stories, the allegations and the interest in Prince Andrew? That is far less certain.

But in what is the prince’s first public statement since that ill-fated Newsnight interview in 2019, it is striking that he signs it off by saying: “I vigorously deny the accusations against me.”