Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gulnaz Anjum, Assistant Professor of Climate Psychology, Centre for Social Issues Research, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick

When a hurricane strikes, the first images we see are of roofs ripped off, trees uprooted and streets turned into rivers. But the psychological toll is just as real, and it often lasts far longer than the physical damage. In countries such as Jamaica, each storm hits communities that are already vulnerable, disrupting sleep, hope and mental health in ways that rarely make the headlines.

Once the winds fall silent, anxiety and grief settle in. In Jamaica, where Hurricane Melissa made landfall as a category 5 storm, these emotional effects are already visible. The fear, disconnection and exhaustion that follow a disaster of this scale are not fleeting. They can shape lives for years.

The damage is not only about what is lost, but about what is transformed. Familiar spaces become wreckage. This disorientation tears at a person’s sense of safety and belonging, creating what psychologists call “environmental grief”: the distress that comes from seeing a cherished environment damaged beyond recognition. Rebuilding is essential, but it rarely restores that sense of home.

Hurricanes create deep anticipatory anxiety, along with fear of recurrence. Being unable to reach loved ones in the aftermath can be one of the most distressing experiences. When power lines collapse, mobile phone towers fail and the internet disappears, silence itself becomes terrifying. Not knowing whether a loved one is safe brings panic and helplessness.

Studies show that when communication systems collapse, anxiety levels rise sharply and sleep problems become common. Nightmares and flashbacks can continue long after electricity is restored. For many survivors, this psychological isolation is worse than physical displacement.

Repeated exposure to hurricanes – through direct loss, evacuation or even media coverage – can heighten psychological sensitivity over time. Research shows that each subsequent storm compounds mental strain, leaving people more vulnerable to lasting emotional distress.

Long-term studies after Hurricane Katrina found that symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can persist for more than a decade. One in six low-income mothers were still experiencing symptoms consistent with PTSD 12 years later. Those who already had mental health challenges before the hurricane were even more likely to suffer long-term effects.

Life in limbo

Research on displacement and trauma describes recovery as “life in limbo” – a period when survivors are neither in crisis nor in full recovery, suspended between exhaustion and obligation. This state is increasingly common in communities recovering from climate-related disasters as they try to rebuild their homes, social networks and sense of stability.

As people pick up the pieces, the emotional cost grows. Many spend weeks clearing mud, repairing homes and navigating bureaucracy to access aid, often while caring for children or elderly relatives. These overlapping burdens deepen fatigue and despair.

Even the sounds of recovery – chainsaws, water pumps, cranes and bulldozers – can keep people on edge. Such noises may trigger fear or panic long after the winds have passed. Chronic uncertainty about jobs, shelter and safety drains both body and mind. A 2023 study found that people in hurricane-affected regions reported up to 14.5% more “poor mental health days” each month for years after the event.

For women, the psychological weight of climate disasters is often heavier. Research shows that women in climate-affected communities, particularly in the developing world, shoulder much of the emotional labour. They calm children, care for elders, manage scarce resources and suppress their own fear to hold families together. In low and middle-income settings, this invisible care work sustains households but takes a lasting toll on women’s mental health.

Beyond resilience

Hurricanes are not simply sources of “stress.” They are collective traumas. Across the Caribbean, emotional wreckage remains long after debris is cleared.

This is why the idea of resilience deserves scrutiny. Headlines that celebrate the “resilience” of island communities risk masking deeper psychological impacts. Endurance is not empowerment. It often reflects the necessity to survive amid weak infrastructure, limited aid and fragile mental health systems.

Calling people resilient can sound like praise, but it can also hide the reality that many are forced to endure impossible conditions. Survival is not proof of strength – it is often a response to inequality, neglect and the absence of real support.

The idea of resilience sounds positive, but it can be misleading. When communities are praised for being resilient, it implies they can cope without help. This framing risks excusing the inequality and neglect that make recovery so hard. People are surviving because they must, not because the conditions are acceptable.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that warmer oceans are already making tropical cyclones stronger and rainfall heavier. As climate change drives more frequent and intense storms, adaptation must go beyond rebuilding homes and roads. It must also include psychological preparedness for recurring trauma and uncertainty.

True recovery is collective, not individual. Communities need trust, shared care and systems that protect mental health as much as physical safety.

For Jamaica, recovery will mean more than clearing mud or rebuilding homes. Fear and anxiety will linger long after the infrastructure is repaired. Markets, churches and neighbourhoods that once anchored communities may be gone. Families relocated inland may feel disconnected from the coasts that shaped their lives.

Images of people “picking up the pieces” may look like resilience, yet beneath them lies deep exhaustion. Survival should never be mistaken for wellbeing. The winds of Hurricane Melissa have passed, but their echo will live on in the minds of those who endured them. These communities – and their mental health – must not be forgotten.

Dr Gulnaz Anjum is a climate and community psychologist. She works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Limerick, Ireland. Dr Anjum also leads Global North–South research and educational collaborations at the Solidarity Hub, University of Oslo (Norway), and the Karachi Urban Lab (Pakistan).

Dr Mudassar Aziz is a climate psychologist and a researcher at University of Oslo.

– ref. The psychological toll of hurricanes – major storms leave more than wreckage behind – https://theconversation.com/the-psychological-toll-of-hurricanes-major-storms-leave-more-than-wreckage-behind-268617

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jane Lavery, Associate Professor in Latin American Studies, University of Southampton

Known in Spanish as Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead is celebrated every year on November 1 and 2. Blending Mesoamerican, Roman Catholic and pagan roots, this celebration sees families gather in many parts of Mexico and around the world to honour and commemorate their departed loved ones.

Enjoying a festive atmosphere, people build altars or visit cemeteries where they bring flowers and picnics, light candles and celebrate cherished relatives with storytelling and song.

The ritual is celebrated globally by many migrant Mexican and non-Mexican communities, and is in a process of continual reinvention responding to different social and cultural needs.

For example, during the COVID pandemic, women leaders from Mexican migrant communities in the UK and Ireland organised Day of the Dead events to celebrate their heritage and remember those who had succumbed to the virus. Elsewhere, a youth group in the US reimagined Día de Muertos as an expression for healing in their community following the killing of George Floyd.

The celebration has also been co-opted by Mexican grassroots feminist organisations protesting against gender-based violence, as our new book, Changing Configurations of Día de Muertos During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Mexico and Beyond, explores.

With a focus on the tumultuous pandemic years of 2020-21, the book charts how the Day of the Dead evolved and changed in that period. These adaptations were also shaped by global anxieties surrounding the so-called “shadow pandemic” – a term used to describe the surge in gender violence over the same period.

La Catrina

The Day of the Dead is associated with the iconic image of the Catrina, depicted in the world-famous illustration La Calavera Garbancera (1910) by artist José Guadalupe Posada. Inspired by Mictēcacihuātl, the Aztec goddess of death, today the Catrina is probably Mexico’s most commodified visual emblem.

Since 2016, Mexico City’s spectacular Mega Desfiles de Catrinas y Catrines parade has also drawn millions of people, with women dressed in traditional Catrina costumes and men wearing skeleton-themed formal attire.

The Catrina has proved an appealing inspiration for women seeking to protest against the unacceptably high levels of gender-based violence in Mexico. The country has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world – a term used to denote deadly violence against women because of their gender.

Alongside the glitzy parade is an alternative event called the Marcha de las Catrinas. In Mexico City, this march follows a route between two monuments dedicated to female victims of violence, starting at the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan on Avenida Reforma and ending at the Anti-monumenta on Avenida Juárez.

There, protesters erect marigold-adorned altars and crosses bearing victims’ names, and post messages of solidarity. But unlike the traditional marigold and monarch butterfly-decorated Catrina costumes, many marchers wear dresses covered in photographs of murdered or missing women and girls.

Día de Muertos and the missing voices

Such was the momentum to channel the Day of the Dead to protest against gender-based violence in Mexico that a specific Día de Muertas (day of the dead women) was proposed by the NGO Voces de la Ausencia (the missing voices), led by journalist Frida Guerrera and held since 2018.

During the COVID pandemic, social distancing measures intended to protect public health inadvertently created conditions that increased the vulnerability of women and girls by sometimes isolating them with abusers and limiting access to support services.

Feminist protests held during these years were both national and international in scope, signalling global anger at the explosion in violence triggered by lockdown policies and social isolation. A strong intergenerational dimension characterises the collective resistance, as was attested by activist Norma García Andrade during the Marcha de las Catrinas in 2020:

I rejoice in the fact that young people have joined our struggle because before, the majority was just us mothers shouting. Now we are accompanied by all these young women who help us to scream for justice.

The practice of taking up public space with one’s own body to protest gender-based violence – known as acuerpamiento – has increased in intensity in Mexico, and is best showcased during International Women’s Day marches every March. Channelling an intergenerational rage, in 2020 and 2021 women dressed as Catrinas adorned themselves with feminist fist symbols and slogans such as #TruthAndJustice, #Niunamás (not one more) and #Nuncamas (never again).

Some wore green scarves around their necks, advocating for the decriminalisation of abortion – an increasingly prominent symbol of international feminist activism across Latin America. Many Catrinas lay on the ground emulating dead corpses, surrounded by marigolds and with photos of the victims placed on altars.

These interventions use what Hispanic studies scholar Francesca Dennstedt calls tactics of feminist disappropriation, and resonate with feminist anthropologist Rita Segato’s ideas around performative disobedience.

With this takeover of public space by protesting Catrinas, these feminist groups re-imagine Mexico’s most visually alluring representation of death for a 21st-century global audience.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How the Day of the Dead is being used to protest violence against women – https://theconversation.com/how-the-day-of-the-dead-is-being-used-to-protest-violence-against-women-267559

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jess Davies, Chair Professor in Sustainability, Lancaster University

UK government proposals to increase the cost of sending soil to landfill have received strong pushback from the construction industry. But there is a strong environmental case for protecting healthy soils in this way.

The Treasury plans to up the cost of sending rock, soil and other “inert” materials to landfill. Charges could rise from £4.05 to up to £125 per tonne of soil landfilled by 2030. Concerns have been raised that this tax increase will be damaging for the construction industry and a major hindrance to meeting the UK government’s targets on new homes.

But as soil scientists working with practitioners across the planning and construction industry in England, we see many benefits to increasing the cost of sending soil to landfill.

The amount of soil going to landfill in the UK is staggering. Soil is one of the largest components of our waste streams: in 2020, it made up almost 60% of the material received by UK landfills.

In England alone in 2021, around 25 million tonnes of soil went to landfill. That’s about eight times more than the total amount of soil thought to be eroded across all farmland in England and Wales annually.

Since most of this soil comes from construction sites, it’s easy to assume this is contaminated. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. Only 1.5% of soils arriving at waste facilities in England in 2021 were classed as hazardous, suggesting we are throwing away mostly healthy, usable soil.

This is a massive loss of a vital natural resource. Soil isn’t easily replaced. It can take hundreds to thousands of years to form a single centimetre.

And soil is not just inert dirt: it is thought to be the biggest biodiversity reservoir on Earth, hosting more than half of the world’s species. Every truckload sent to landfill is an ecosystem destroyed – a piece of our natural heritage more or less gone for good.

While some degree of soil removal during building is inevitable, a lot more is being removed than is necessary, according to our research, to “get the muck away” and make sites easier to work on. When soils are excavated, damaged or removed from construction sites, the vital functions they provide are also being stripped away.

Different types of soil help regulate the flow and storage of water in the landscape, for example. A metre of healthy soil can hold up to 60cm of rainfall. Maintaining healthy soils in the built environment can help reduce flood risk, making our towns and cities better able to cope with extreme weather.

Removing soils during development can also make it harder and more expensive to establish and maintain gardens, trees and shared greenspaces that play an important role in our wellbeing and urban cooling.

Soil-smart building

In our experience, many people in the construction industry recognise there’s a huge opportunity to manage soils better through the planning and construction process, producing benefits for both industry and communities.

By reducing the amount of soil that’s unnecessarily excavated or sent offsite, projects can cut both the financial and carbon costs associated with moving and disposing of this material. Better soil management could also save money later on, reducing the need to buy new topsoil for landscaping or costly remediation work to fix drainage and plant establishment problems.

Read more:
How healthy soils make for a healthy life

Increasing the cost of sending soil to landfill could act as a powerful incentive for developers to think more carefully about how soil is managed during construction.

At present, the price of disposal in the UK is up to ten times cheaper than in much of Europe and the US. This low cost makes it far too easy to simply dump soil, discouraging industry innovation and good practice.

However, increasing landfill costs need to go hand-in-hand with better support for soil reuse. Encouragingly, the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has committed to piloting a new soil reuse scheme across England, aimed at reducing the amount of soil that ends up being classed as waste – with a planned start date in 2026.

Ideally, this scheme would be rolled out alongside the landfill reforms. This could help the construction sector make better use of valuable soil resources, while preventing potential unintended consequences such as illegal dumping as landfill prices rise.

This is about establishing strong climate-resilient foundations for healthy green spaces which enhance our wellbeing and community connections. Sending soils to landfill is damaging to society and it should not be cheap and easy to do. It’s time we stop treating these amazing ecosystems like inert dirt.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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Jess Davies receives funding from UKRI research councils. She is affiliated with the Soils in Planning and Construction Task Force.

John Quinton receives funding from UKRI research council, the EU and Defra. He is affiliated with the Soils in Planning and Construction Task Force (soilstaskforce.com).

– ref. A landfill tax could halt the vast amounts of healthy soil that are needlessly thrown away – https://theconversation.com/a-landfill-tax-could-halt-the-vast-amounts-of-healthy-soil-that-are-needlessly-thrown-away-268687

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt Jacobsen, Senior Lecturer in Film History in the School of Society and Environment, Queen Mary University of London

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s fourth film with actress Emma Stone finds the pair once again galvanising one another to extraordinary work. The partnership has produced two of the finest films of the last decade – The Favourite (2018) and Poor Things (2023) – as well as the less successful but still fascinating Kinds of Kindness (2024).

Like Alfred Hitchcock with Ingrid Bergman, or Ingmar Bergman with Liv Ullmann, this has emerged into a true creative partnership where director and actress are equals in the artistic process. This latest collaboration is a hugely funny, horrifying and intense experience that defies expectations even for audiences who are prepared for the unique absurdism, visionary style and flouting of narrative logic that marks Lanthimos’s film.

Read more:
Bugonia: why some people’s brains cling to the idea that aliens are real

Teddy (Jesse Plemons) is a paranoid, suggestible conspiracy nut who, fuelled by internet diatribes, abducts corporate CEO Michelle (Emma Stone). He is convinced Michelle belongs to an alien race planning to enslave and oppress humanity. What ensues in the confines of a grim suburban basement is a tense, close quarters negotiation between slickly posed, disingenuous corporate figurehead Michelle and delusional warped fantasist Teddy.

The core of the film and its greatest asset is Stone’s nimble, pivoting performance as her character tries any number of strategies to break Teddy’s resolve and make him reflect on the folly of his actions. “I think you’re in an echo chamber,” she says becoming increasingly desperate. She is driven to rationalising with a man clearly in no mental state to accept the accusation.

Plemons returns brilliantly to the toxic narcissism that he played so well in his standout Black Mirror episode “USS Callister” and its sequel. As in those superb pieces of satirical TV, he may be tragic and ridiculous, a man who feels the world has failed him utterly. But he is still frightening and dangerous, despite a surface of goofy comic ineptitude.

While Bugonia pointedly evokes contemporary ideological conflict, neither character espouses either left- or right-wing political leanings. It’s neither a satire of the woke debate or the culture wars. Nor does it jab at Trump and his voters.

Teddy’s feelings of abuse by the “system” (whatever that might comprise in the mind of this tragically paranoid and traumatised man) are scattershot and unfocused. His only recourse in the overwhelming noise of internet chatter is to assume that the situation is so dire it simply has to be aliens manipulating events to their own obscure purpose.

This deeply uncanny film keeps itself strange through tonal shifts between the silly and the shocking. The offbeat editing, full of sudden jarring cuts scored with orchestral stabs, keeps the audience in an uncomfortably uncertain position. Surely we should recognise Teddy as a deluded lunatic. But might he actually be right about Michelle’s origins? Her cool, collected corporate ease certainly seems so fluid and precise as to be jarringly alien.

Despite Lanthimos’s visionary style and absurdist tone, the film still sits firmly within the conventions of the subgenre of abduction horror films. These are sometimes called “bottle thrillers” for their confined locations (The Black Phone, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Green Room all mine effective scares from this setup). It is absurd and comic, but it still works well as a gripping if offbeat thriller.

Bugonia is a remake, fairly closely following the broader plot of South Korean film Save the Green Planet! (Jigureul Jikyeora!, 2003). Director Jang Joon-hwan was inspired by the film of Stephen King’s Misery, one of the most celebrated bottle thrillers, whose antagonist Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) he felt lacked complexity. To counter this, in Save the Green Planet! it turns out that the kidnapped CEO runs a pharmaceutical company that the kidnapper blames for personal tragedy – a narrative turn Bugonia preserves.

The often profoundly uncomfortable intensity of Bugonia ratchets up as the film progresses, pivoting the audience wildly between brash comedy and abject horror. This remake plays differently to the original in its casting of a woman as the CEO. From the moment when Teddy instructs cousin Don, his gullible and impressionable accomplice, to shave off Michelle’s hair – “to prevent her contacting her alien mothership” – the audience is clear on the possibility of shocking violence.

What the film’s title means is not really elucidated during its two-hour run. But knowing that bugonia is a ritual based on the ancient Mediterranean myth that bees spontaneously generate from the carcasses of cattle helps a little when it comes to the film’s central message.

Teddy keeps bees, a mindful activity that appears to offer some comfort to an otherwise cluttered mind, oversaturated and baffled by the cacophony of internet polemics. Falling somewhere between cynical nihilism and reflective mourning, Bugonia is clearly telling us that the world might be better off if we left it to the bees.

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Matt Jacobsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Bugonia: a brilliant abduction thriller with Yorgos Lanthimos’s distinct absurdist stamp – https://theconversation.com/bugonia-a-brilliant-abduction-thriller-with-yorgos-lanthimoss-distinct-absurdist-stamp-268819

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Heffron, PhD Candidate in Geography, Lancaster University

Sean Matthews, the Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council, has said he’ll “lie down in front of bulldozers” to stop Britain’s largest solar farm being built in the county. He’s taking sides in a new rural culture war that pits green energy against the countryside’s traditional image of food and farming.

Reform’s opposition to renewables isn’t surprising. Fossil fuel interests have provided around 92% of the party’s funding according to research by DeSmog (when contacted by DeSmog, Reform did not comment on that finding). But solar farms have become a way for the party to mask these interests by presenting itself as a defender of farms, fields and “common sense” against what Matthews called the “nonsense” of net zero.

Meanwhile, the protest group Farmers to Action has urged supporters to “keep the land growing, not glowing”. Its leader, Justin Rogers, has called climate change “one of the biggest scams that has ever been told”, and the group now operates in lockstep with the Together Declaration, a rightwing campaign group with an explicit anti-net zero agenda.

Yet a recent protest organised by these groups in Liverpool, at the Labour party conference, suggests there is limited enthusiasm in the farming community for these culture wars. While most of the speakers were farmers, very few working farmers showed up. (One of us, Tom, who has been to around 15 of these protests, was there in person and estimates about 50 out of around 300 people present were farmers.)

Those mobilising the culture wars are trying to turn localised rural resentments against solar panels into a wedge issue, and in the process win over rural voters to Reform as the party of anti-net zero. If Reform wins the election, it will seek to impede necessary renewable energy projects.

However, this conflicts with the majority of farmer sentiment, which shows they are concerned by climate change. So, while Reform UK is positioning itself as anti-climate, is the party, despite the rhetoric, actually anti-farmer?

‘You can’t eat electricity’

Research by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) found 80% of UK farmers are “concerned about the impact of climate change on their ability to make a living”, while 87% have experienced reduced productivity due to heatwaves, floods or other climate change-induced extreme weather.

For farmers, productivity isn’t just about profit – it’s a central pillar of what sociologists have called the “good farmer” identity. This is the idea that being a successful food producer is central to how many farmers see themselves and their role.

Since the second world war, agricultural innovations have largely been aimed at producing more food, as a way to improve domestic food security.

Now, in essence, they are being asked to shift their identity to embrace energy production along with food production. But planting fields with solar panels clashes with the productivity aspect of what it means to be a good farmer. The truism that “you can’t eat electricity”, as Farmers to Action put it, is trying to speak to this sentiment.

The accusation is that taking land out of production threatens food security. In fact, only around 0.5% of UK farmland needs to be converted to solar to achieve the government’s target figure.

At the same time, as the research by ECIU has found, the very productivity of farming is being threatened by climate change. This presents an apparent tension.

Without urgent climate action, British farms will continue to bear the costs and consequences. Environmentalists and climate activists might wish to take advantage of this tension between what farmers need and what Reform is offering. While Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and co shake their fists at the sun, farmers suffer in the heat.

Corporate profits or community interest?

Many objections to large solar farms are driven by a sense of fairness. For example, a tenant farming family in Yorkshire is about to lose 110 acres of their best arable land – half their farm – to solar panels, without any compensation. This will have a devastating impact on their business – where they have lived and farmed for many decades.

For the landowner, the switch will probably be very lucrative, with energy companies reportedly offering rents as high as £1,000 per acre per year, on long-term contracts.

In this scenario, the landowner wins and the tenant loses, which goes against the principle of a just transition, the idea that those affected by the shift to net zero should not lose out. This is despite the prime minister, Keir Starmer, making a pre-election pledge that tenant farmers would be protected.

Effective green policy must ensure that green transitions benefit those doing the work or opposition will grow. Perhaps if the profits were recouped by local communities, not far-off corporations and large absentee landowners, nimbyism wouldn’t fester so easily.

There are fairer ways to deploy renewables, via initiatives which involve and benefit local communities. An example of this is Cwm Arian Renewable Energy, near to where one of us, Alex, lives. It has used the income from wind energy to support the local community in various ways, such as offering good employment, putting on community events and teaching land skills.

Read more:
Family farmers say their way of life is an impossible dream when ‘the bread of life is worth less than rusty metal’

Farmers, like the rest of society, are paying the price of high energy costs. Recent research has shown that wind energy alone has reduced British energy costs by at least £104 billion. Making clear that renewable energy developments can help with lowering energy bills could go some way to overcoming opposition.

Ultimately, farmers still want to farm and produce food. At the same time, agriculture must fit into broader green transitions. The challenge is to take on board the voices and concerns of farmers and see them as part of the transition – not treat them as obstacles to it. If not, there are plentiful voices on the right who are eager to offer them an alternative.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Tom Carter-Brookes receives funding from Leverhulme Trust.

Tom Carter-Brookes is a member of the Green Party.

Alex Heffron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘You can’t eat electricity’: how rural solar farms became the latest battlefront in Britain’s culture war – https://theconversation.com/you-cant-eat-electricity-how-rural-solar-farms-became-the-latest-battlefront-in-britains-culture-war-268128

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesca Jackson, PhD candidate, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University

The man formerly known as Prince Andrew will now simply be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor after he was stripped of all his official titles. In a statement, Buckingham Palace said the king has “initiated a formal process” to remove his brother’s titles. This refers to letters patent – the mechanism by which the monarch can remove titles like “prince”.

At the heart of the matter is Mountbatten Windsor’s relationship with convicted paedophile sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the allegations by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre that she was forced to have sex with the then prince as a teenager. Mountbatten Windsor denies the accusations. The palace said:

Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.

Mountbatten Windsor will also be evicted from his Windsor residence, Royal Lodge, and will reportedly move to a property at Sandringham, the royal residence privately owned by the king.

But why was it, in the words of Buckingham Palace, “necessary” for King Charles to “censure” his brother in this way – and why now?

Ever since Mountbatten Windsor announced that he would no longer use his official titles, including Duke of York, public and political pressure had been mounting on the King to go further. There was a sense that the promise not to use the titles didn’t go far enough – and that they should be formally removed.

His titles were technically only in abeyance. They still existed, even if he was not going to use them. He was also still a prince and lived as such in his 30-bedroom Royal Lodge mansion.

Royal image tainted

The last royal to have his “prince” title removed was the Duke of Cumberland in 1917. But he was a traitor who fought for the Germans during the first world war. “De-princing” Mountbatten Windsor in this way conveys the sense that he has betrayed the confidence of his family and country.

Image is vitally important for the royal family, so the public perception that Mountbatten Windsor was tainting the brand will have added to the pressure on the king.

According to the 19th-century writer Walter Bagehot, known for his work on constitutional matters, the monarchy is the “dignified” part of the constitution which provides a “moral example” for people to follow by displaying “virtues”. King Charles is part of a long line of monarchs who have strained to project (and protect) this image.

Clearly it is unrealistic for royals to, in Bagehot’s words, “do no wrong” all the time. But historically where an individual member has been engulfed in scandal, the palace has been quick to take action to protect the rest of the institution. For example, in 1937 when Edward VIII wanted to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, he was forced to abdicate the throne and effectively exiled to the Bahamas as its governor (before later moving to Paris).

But the late queen allowed Mountbatten Windsor to try to control the narrative around his friendship with Epstein – and, in trying to continue to present a dignified account of himself, he failed spectacularly.

First came his infamous 2019 Newsnight interview in which he claimed that he “did not regret” his friendship with Epstein and did not end their friendship sooner because he was “too honourable”. The disastrous appearance forced him to step down as a working member of the royal family.

But he was allowed to continue to take what he saw as his rightful place, among the most senior royals at the grandest state occasions, including the queen’s funeral and the king’s coronation. He also continued to live a life of entitled luxury at the palatial Royal Lodge.

What seems to have made it necessary for the king to intervene now is the revelation that his brother remained in contact with Epstein for longer than he had previously claimed. In an email, Mountbatten Windsor also told Epstein – who by that point had been to prison for procuring a minor for prostitution – “Let’s play some more soon!”

This, coupled with the publication of his accuser Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous autobiography, which included damning new claims about their relationship, led to Mountbatten Windsor’s announcement that he would no longer use the title Duke of York. However, his statement on the matter lacked contrition and represented yet another missed opportunity for him to show sympathy towards Epstein’s victims. Instead, he said that, in deciding not to use his titles, he was “putting my duty to my family and country first”.

It all meant that he had become deeply unpopular with the public: 80% wanted him to be formally stripped of his dukedom. However, the formal removal of titles could only be done by either parliament or, as the public preferred, the king himself.

In failing to take this action against his brother, Charles risked being viewed as complicit in the scandal, as illustrated when he was heckled by a member of the public asking how long he had known about Mountbatten Windsor and Epstein.

Political pressure

Political pressure was also mounting on the monarch to act. Ministers initially said it was a matter for the royal family, but as public clamour grew the tone started to change. Rachael Maskell, MP for York Central, tabled a bill to strip Mountbatten Windsor of his title.

Unusually for a high-profile government minister, the chancellor Rachel Reeves also publicly criticised him, stating that he “shouldn’t have been associated with a convicted paedophile”. And the push by MPs to launch an inquiry questioning him about Royal Lodge – where he has effectively paid no rent for more than 20 years – was publicly backed by Keir Starmer.

The threat by Liberal Democrat MPs to “humiliate” Mountbatten Windsor by using their opposition day debate to discuss him in Parliament and bring him before a parliamentary select committee appears to have been the final straw.

Mountbatten Windsor was sparking wider scrutiny of the monarchy’s constitutional affairs more generally, from its secretive funding to outdated rules preventing MPs from criticising the royals in parliament.

That’s why Charles had to act now. Bagehot wrote that the monarchy needs to maintain an air of “mystery” in order to survive: “When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone.” The king appears to have shared Bagehot’s view that the “poking around” of politicians would be too damaging to the monarchy’s dignified façade.

Francesca Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why was it ‘necessary’ for King Charles to take action on Andrew – and why now? – https://theconversation.com/why-was-it-necessary-for-king-charles-to-take-action-on-andrew-and-why-now-268797