The Observer view: It’s time the royal family got on their bikes

Roughly 12 centuries ago the Anglo-Saxons consented to be ruled by kings. Fifty-one years ago, the basis of that supposed consent was comprehensively lampooned by Monty Python as a “farcical aquatic ceremony” involving a sword emerging from a lake. In 2026, at last, life trumps art.

The former Duke of York has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office during his time as a trade envoy. Released “under investigation”, he denies wrongdoing but cannot deny he is disgraced. His day last week in a police cell in Aylsham may have felt like the end of a long humiliation but it may be only the start of a prosecution and it needs to be the start of a process for his family – a process that drastically shrinks “The Firm” of working royals; replaces “never explain” with an expectation of radical transparency; and sweeps away a culture of unearned privilege and deference that regarded a scandal involving abused young women as one to be managed rather than investigated.

Investigations into misconduct in a public office can expand in scope, and police should be asking two main sets of questions. The first covers Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s public and private actions as a UK trade envoy and since. Did he profit personally from his official duties, for example by turning taxpayer-funded trips to Kazakhstan into a seven-figure profit on the sale of his Sunninghill home? Was there a quid pro quo? Why was he asked to step down as trade envoy? Did he have a stake in an offshore investment fund, as his biographer claims? If so, what was it used for? Did he or Jeffrey Epstein profit from market-sensitive information obtained on government business, if not directly, then in kind? Did he use Pitch@Palace to further his own interests? Did he have sex with Virginia Giuffre and was he a party to the trafficking of others through UK airports and to royal palaces, as the former prime minister Gordon Brown has suggested?

The second set of questions is for the senior royals, and the most searching is for the king. What did he know, and when? Why did it take eight years from the end of Mountbatten-Windsor’s stint as trade envoy for him to be stood down as a working royal? Did the family collude in his lies about his relationship with Epstein for another six years? What will the king and the Prince of Wales do now to reform the institution they lead?

The royal family is an institution staffed by hundreds, including many former civil servants co-opted into a culture of undue deference and secrecy. For years, when Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct was the subject of headlines and anxiety in London – not to mention formal requests for cooperation from the FBI – the institution looked the other way.

The king has said he wants to slim it down. So has his older son. It certainly needs to be more like a normal family, or at least like a Scandinavian cycling monarchy. But reform of the monarchy needs to go further. The institution has shown a remarkable lack of curiosity about its own ethics and morality, allowing its principals to operate to their own inadequate standards of accountability and transparency.

This is the office of the head of state. Its citizens deserve to be able to ask questions about its inner workings, priorities and finances, and have them answered. If it’s serious about modernising, it should embrace a modern relationship with the media, including on-the-record briefings by a named press secretary and regular interviews with senior royals that are straightforward conversations rather than awkward dances around subjects deemed off-limits.

The king should seize this moment to slim down the private side of the monarchy and open up the public one so that it is no longer a black box. If this leaves some members of his family without a livelihood, they should get jobs.

Photograph by Marco Bertorello/AFP via Getty Images