IN 2022, Prince Andrew, the late Queen Elizabeth’s second son, paid a reported £12 million to avoid going to court over allegations he sexually assaulted a minor.
Amid the row around the royal’s links to billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew was stripped of titles and positions including being called “His Royal Highness” and an air commodore of RAF Lossiemouth. He has already lost his role as a patron of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Yet, he remains the Earl of Inverness.
The National is launching a petition, to coincide with the run-up to King Charles’s coronation, calling on the monarch to finally act and remove the title which locals say has brought their hometown into "disrepute".
To get the ball rolling, we went to Inverness to ask people there what they thought of the disgraced royal holding a title over them – and the responses were pretty uniform.
Unionists and independentistas alike were keen to add their name to the petition.
One memorable moment came after a lady passing on the street heard The National was looking to gather names.
“I’m a Unionist and I’ll happily sign that,” she said. It turned out the other person signing at the same moment was an Alba supporter – but the two found common ground.
We even spoke to one serviceman, based at RAF Lossiemouth, who said he would like to see Andrew be stripped of the title over his city like he had lost the title over his base.
The staff at Lossiemouth were more than happy to see the “Earl of Inverness” stripped of his air commodore title, he told us.
Andrew has maintained that he is innocent of any wrongdoing.
