IT’S summer, which means Scotland gets to play host to visitors, both wanted and unwanted. As most lockdown restrictions have been lifted but foreign holidays remain a bit too uncertain, for some of us that means we get to see friends and family from south of the Border perhaps for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Those visits are welcome and much anticipated, but Scotland has also been the destination for some far less welcome visitors.

We had the recent debacle of Boris Johnson’s trip to Scotland to save the Union, a visit which couldn’t have gone worse for any hopes of building affection for the British state among the Scottish populace if it had been planned by the editorial staff of The National newspaper.

The Prime Minister lurched around the country, carefully avoiding any actual Scottish people and finding things to put his foot into – from a refusal to meet the First Minister, to making jokes in poor taste about Thatcher’s destruction of Scottish heavy industry, to refusing to self-isolate or suspend his photo op-seeking tour even though a member of his entourage, who had been in close contact with Johnson, tested positive for Covid.

Far from being the advertisement for British values that Johnson had in mind, the visit instead became an advertisement for another prominent and far less attractive British value, the entitlement and privilege of the British ruling classes.

That was on full and revolting display in the other recent unwelcome visit to Scotland of a member of the British ruling classes, who was also keen to avoid any contact with actual Scottish people, although this was a visitor who was determined to use Scotland as a place from which to escape the cameras rather than pose in front of them in a series of carefully choreographed photo ops.

READ MORE: Royal aides voice ‘credibility’ fears amid Prince Andrew’s US lawsuit

This was, of course, the Queen’s favourite son and man most likely to proclaim “Do you know who I am?” when facing any difficulty, Prince Andrew. Following the news that he is to be sued in a New York court by Virginia Giuffre, who has accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a 17-year-old victim of sex trafficking, the prince fled to the privacy of the royal family’s Balmoral estate.

This trafficking, she alleges, was organised by the prince’s friends, the now deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his friend and associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently facing trial in New York on charges including the alleged sexual trafficking of a minor – charges which she denies.

The Queen’s indulged son continues to deny any wrongdoing and maintains he has no recollection of ever meeting Virginia Giuffre. The prince had previously attempted to clear his name in a horrifically toe-curling interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis during which he not only failed dismally to achieve that but also confirmed the worst suspicions of him as a terminally vain, stupid, arrogant, and self-serving individual who has lived his entire life without having to face up to the consequences of his actions and who has no intentions of doing so now.

Among other risible gems, we learned that he couldn’t have met with the 17-year-old Giuffre on one particular occasion because he was in a Pizza Express in Woking at the time; that her description of him as sweating couldn’t be true because he’d lost the ability to do so while he was being a hero in the Falklands campaign, a medical condition unknown in any medical journal; and that the infamous photo showing him with his arm around Giuffre’s waist could actually have depicted some other person’s hand. So presumably the prince consorts with contortionists as well as billionaire sexual predators and their teenage victims.

However, possibly the most nauseating of Andrew’s excuses was that he’d only continued to visit Epstein and stay in his luxury Manhattan mansion after the latter’s conviction and prison sentence was because the prince’s sole fault was the possession of a surfeit of honour which meant he had to keep visiting Epstein in order to tell him face to face why he couldn’t keep visiting him.

This surfeit of honour has however never led the prince to acknowledge the emotional, mental and physical trauma suffered by Epstein’s victims. His self-proclaimed sense of honour never led him to question why his friend, Epstein, a man in his 50s, should be spending so much time hanging out with girls young enough to be his granddaughters. The only trauma this spoiled scion of the Windsors is willing to acknowledge is his own.

READ MORE: Royals retreat to Balmoral estate amid Prince Andrew lawsuit

Despite the best efforts of the royal household and a sycophantic BBC and British establishment, this is a story which isn’t going to go away any time soon. When the scandal broke, Andrew stepped down from royal duties, which in his case mainly consisted of getting the public purse to pay for the charter of private jets so he could go off on a golfing trip.

He was clearly hoping that if he kept out of the public eye for a couple of months the story would die down and he could get back to golfing and wearing fancy uniforms and not being laughed at when he claimed not to sweat.

That’s not going to happen, but unfortunately for anyone who would like to see this little man with his planetary sized sense of entitlement face up to the legal consequences of his actions, neither is the prince going to appear in court.

He will be protected by that same British establishment which has spent his lifetime nourishing and fostering his privilege.