The former Prince Andrew doesn’t have much to his name any more, but the one thing he does have is a great big shovel. And he’s using it to dig an even bigger hole than the one he’s in already. By taking the Thames Valley constabulary to court this week, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is contravening rule one of crisis management, which, in his case, might be best expressed as: quit while you’re behind.

Oh, Andrew. Have you not learned anything? From the same well of hubris that propelled him to sit down with Emily Maitlis back in 2019 comes the decision to challenge the legal basis on which the rozzers searched his Royal residences last February. The raid came when he was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over his links to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The warrants to search both Royal Lodge – his former family home – and his cottage in Sandringham were obtained by Thames Valley Police on application to the Central Criminal Court.

Of course, Mountbatten-Windsor should have the same protections as any other citizen, and if he believes that the legal basis on which the search warrants were issued was suspect, he has every right to contest that in court. A judge may well decide that he has been done an injustice. But where – in the world of – does that get him?

A victory on what might prove to be a legal technicality does not do him any good in a much more significant, and less forgiving, arena: the court of public opinion. It would be like him presenting us with medical evidence that he couldn’t, indeed, sweat. It wouldn’t really move the dial for him in terms of his reputation. And the hearing on Thursday, which will be held in private, acts merely as a reminder that Mountbatten-Windsor is still a public figure, using some of the oxygen from the national discourse.

Even if a judge finds in Mountbatten-Windsor’s favour, how does that vindicate him? It doesn’t. It would just show that some of the paperwork relating to his arrest was wonky. Meanwhile, he’s back in the headlines again, when, if he truly believes in his innocence, his legal team should be working in the background to move the case on as quickly as possible.

Then, there is the question of King Charles. Buckingham Palace has reportedly made it clear that Mountbatten-Windsor’s legal action will not be paid for out of the King’s private funds. This is a sensible move from the King to separate himself from his brother’s machinations. Unfortunately, however, it may have another, less satisfactory, result. In saying he’s not going personally to provide financial support to Mountbatten Windsor in this legal contest, the King re-establishes in the public mind that he does, in fact, use his own private money to keep his brother afloat, and to accommodate him on his estate in Sandringham.

No one knows how much the King gives to Mountbatten-Windsor to keep him in video games and teddy bears, but the funding was part of the arrangement made when the former Prince was defenestrated and booted out of Royal Lodge in Windsor. This allowance does not come from the Sovereign Grant – the £138m of taxpayers’ money that goes towards funding the monarchy – but is drawn from the King’s private money, which includes his income from the Duchy of Lancaster, his investments, his private estates and money he has inherited.

But the fact that the King is obliged to make that distinction undeniably puts him in an uncomfortable position, opening up the question of the degree to which he is bankrolling a disgraced member of his family, while drawing attention to the wider matter of public funding for the Royals, and the details of his own rather sizeable stipend. Also, the more basic point: if Andrew himself is paying lawyers to prepare this case, where does that money actually come from?

It is, in fact, a lose-lose situation for all involved. If Andrew loses, it looks terrible – a complete waste of money in an attempt to make a procedural point. If he wins on a technicality, it doesn’t really change anything in the bigger picture.

Either way, it leaves Charles with a problem in terms of public attention and scrutiny. The best thing he can do now is urgently to confiscate Andrew’s shovel.