Ex-Prince Andrew 'Still Thinks He Deserves' Millions In Taxpayer Cash, Royal Commentator Claims

Ex-Prince Andrew is said to still believe he should receive millions of pounds' worth of taxpayer-funded police protection, despite stepping down from royal duties in the UK in 2019, a royal commentator has claimed in a new interview.

For context, the security row around the Duke of York has been simmering ever since he was forced to retreat from public life over his association with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, but the fallout from the scandal cost him his frontline role and, crucially, the publicly funded protection that comes with being an active working royal.

The latest claims about ex-prince Andrew's mindset come from royal commentator Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, speaking to GB News about Andrew's current security arrangements following what was described as a recent security threat. Details of that alleged incident were not set out, and nothing has been independently confirmed, so any assessment of that threat should be treated with caution.

Heydel-Mankoo argued that the stand-off over protection has left the Royal Family in what he called 'an extremely uncomfortable position.' In his view, the problem is not just about one man's personal safety, but about competing pressures bearing down on the monarchy from all sides.

'This situation is that it intersects family loyalty, public outrage, and then you've got the survival of the monarchy, so you have three competing elements there,' he told the channel.

Ex-Prince Andrew And The Question Of Security

According to Heydel-Mankoo, ex-prince Andrew has struggled to accept the consequences of his retreat from public life, particularly when it comes to security and status.

He told GB News that Andrew 'has always believed that he's entitled to taxpayer-funded security and his titles and everything else,' adding that the duke appears still to be baffled by the scale of what he has lost. 'It doesn't appear that he still understands quite why he's in the position he is in,' Heydel-Mankoo said.

The commentator was clear about how the Palace now sees the equation. 'It's quite clear that from the perspective of the Royal Family and for the monarchy, the privileges of protection are inseparable from public service and public legitimacy – and he's lost both of those.'

That framing is blunt, but it tracks with the broader direction of travel at the Palace since 2019. Once Andrew stepped back following his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview about Epstein, he effectively severed the link between his title and any formal public role. In the eyes of officials, that appears to have meant the end of automatic police protection at public expense.

The Home Office and Metropolitan Police typically decline to discuss the security arrangements of individual royals on safety grounds, and there is no official breakdown of the current settlement for Andrew. Without that transparency, much of the debate plays out through commentators and biographers rather than formal statements.

Cost To Taxpayers Still Haunts Ex-Prince Andrew

The dispute over whether ex-prince Andrew 'deserves' taxpayer-funded security lands in a wider, uncomfortable conversation about how much he has already cost the public purse.

A forthcoming paperback by royal author Andrew Lownie, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, revisits Andrew's decade as the UK's Special Representative for International Trade and Investment. Citing estimates, Lownie writes that 'as trade envoy Andrew cost the British taxpayer almost £15 million in travel expenses and police protection' during those ten years.

The figure, presented as an estimate rather than an audited total, has not been publicly challenged by the Palace or the Government, but nor has it been independently verified line by line. It does, however, underline why any suggestion of reviving taxpayer-funded privileges for Andrew is politically toxic.

Against that backdrop, Heydel-Mankoo's claim that Andrew still believes himself entitled to publicly funded protection feels less like a mere character sketch and more like a warning about how badly misaligned the duke now is with public sentiment. For a man who once cut a confident figure as a globe-trotting trade envoy, the gap between self-perception and reality has rarely looked wider.

None of this, it should be said, means that Andrew is currently mounting a formal push to have his police protection restored. There is no evidence of an active legal challenge or official request.

That distinction matters. If Andrew were to seek a change in his security status, it would drag the Home Office, Scotland Yard, and Buckingham Palace back into a bruising argument about who qualifies for publicly funded protection and why. For now, the row lives mainly in the realm of books, TV studios, and public opinion, where the tally of his past costs and the shadow of Epstein continue to frame almost every mention of his name.