CITIZEN Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is undergoing an almost unprecedented interrogation over his relationship with the notorious paedophile and political influencer Jeffrey Epstein.

When the present occupant of the throne told his new bride that he was not going to be the first Prince of Wales in generations to do without a mistress, he possibly thought he was upholding a tradition, but in fact he was setting train a process in which a normally tolerant British public took the side of his wronged wife and fatally undermined the carefully constructed mystique upon which monarchical power is embedded in the British system of class rule.

Similarly, the attempt to rebrand Citizen Mountbatten-Windsor — a process started earlier than his birth when the family name of Saxe-Coburg was changed to Windsor and the the equally Germanic Battenberg was changed to Mountbatten — is proving to be an absolute failure.

“Our” royal family is a gift from Queen Victoria who spoke a native German to her German husband at a period when British imperial power was beginning to be challenged by a rising and newly unified Germany but when both economies were joined in — for capitalism — a quite fruitful if sometimes tense relationship.

The 1930s saw the family of our recently deceased consort to Queen Elizabeth II take out a sophisticated insurance policy in the immediately anticipated conflict between British and German imperialism.

Prince Philip — the later implausibly designated Duke of Edinburgh — enlisted in the Royal Navy and engineered a proximity thus to our ruling elite. His sisters took Nazi military and security officials as husbands thus ensuring that whoever won or lost the second world war some form of familial security would be established.

In polite company we don’t speak of the unfortunate absence of the future royal escort’s sisters from the couple’s nuptials. It was deemed impolitic for them to attend while their husbands were in detention facing war crime charges.

The attempt by the royal family and the Establishment to place a prophylactic over the the personage of the chancer formerly known as Prince Andrew is now largely abandoned and as every revelation about the affairs of Epstein produces further evidence that the privileges accorded these parasites engenders a rotten morality his chances of rehabilitation diminish.

Enough.

The campaign group Republic make the compelling point that if corruption is the abuse of public office for personal gain, then the monarchy is corrupt.

Because we can’t hold the King and his family to account at the ballot box, there’s nothing to stop them abusing their privilege, misusing their influence or simply wasting our money.

Republic goes on to argue: “And that’s exactly what they do. The royals demand secrecy surrounds everything they do, they lobby the government in secret to secure exemptions from lots of laws, including environmental protection and race discrimination law. And they keep spending public money like it was their own.”

This is unarguable.

But what attitude should the working-class movement take towards the monarchy as a whole?

Only if we understand that the monarchy is an important part of the system of mystification in which the realities of class rule are veiled can we develop a policy for government that makes sense.

We could follow British tradition and chop off heads but this would not change the nature of the system which allows for our exploitation and oppression.

We could take the property off the royal family and the system of capitalist property relations.

But why should we discriminate against royalty? Let us end capitalist property relations as a whole.