What do John Edwards, Karim Khan, and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have in common? 2026 has been a year of some considerable upheaval for each of them, related, directly, to the various public offices they have held. The three men have served, respectively, as the Information Commissioner, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Special Representative for International Trade and Investment. None of them hold those posts now, but only one is in with a chance of a life sentence.
Allegations of 'misconduct' swirl around all three, though one has attracted the overwhelming bulk of the public's attention. Trial by media has become an accepted custom in modern Britain, often characterised by brazen collusion between police and press. Not only does this prejudice any sort of due process, it may destroy the lives of those who are, in fact, innocent. Christopher Jefferies, cast as a 'weirdo' who must have killed his tenant, Jo Yeates, is a case in point. The High Court fined the Mirror and the Sun, but nobody stood up for Jefferies, even after it became perfectly clear he had not been involved in any wrongdoing.
John Edwards, a New Zealander who took up the role of Information Commissioner at the start of 2022, resigned from the job in June 2026. An investigation into his behaviour in the workplace had commenced earlier in the year, and he jumped before he was pushed. The important detail is that — at the time of publication — the results of the investigation have not been published. In his own words, there were “occasions where I exercised poor judgement and made attempts at humour that were inappropriate and caused offence”.
Liz Kendall, the then-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, thought nothing of weighing in on the subject, despite the fact she cannot know the outcome of the investigation into Edwards' behaviour. The Guardian reported Kendall as saying she was “appalled” to hear that Edwards had instigated legal proceedings against a woman who is believed to have reported his conduct. Though she had oversight of the Information Commissioner's Office, she did not work there, and she did not know first-hand what went on. Still, she considered it appropriate to make such comments in public. Of course, she may turn out to be 'right', but that is entirely beside the point.
Ironically, the same Guardian article reports that “Kendall also announced an independent review into the culture, accountability and governance of the ICO and said she would soon announce a majority-women board of non-executive directors.” This is ironic, not just because of the blatant 'positive discrimination' adjacent to a case apparently about discrimination, but also because it was Edwards himself who had “insisted from the outset on a gender balance, and a diversity of thought and experience”.
As to the former Prosecutor of the ICC, The President of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) had this to say: “82 States Parties found that Mr. Karim Khan committed serious misconduct and serious breach of duty and removed him from office under article 46 of the Rome Statute”. The President goes on to make the all-important clarification: “these disciplinary proceedings are not related to the conduct of investigations or proceedings before the Court”. In other words, though the disciplinary process itself remains “confidential in nature,” Khan is not considered to have violated the core mission of the ICC.
Karim Khan held his public office for a year longer than John Edwards, and he was ejected on 24 July 2026. The circumstances surrounding his departure are described in terms of some opaqueness. There is greater granularity on other matters; Khan successfully applied for warrants for the arrests of a number of big-hitters. The judges of the ICC would like to see arrested Vladimir Putin, Sergei Shoigu, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Yoav Gallant; on paper, at least. Statistically, this is noteworthy because in the 24 years that the court has been in existence, only 65 warrants for arrest have been granted publicly. The strike rate for conversion to arrest is poor; just 24 to date and, of those, only 11 have concluded in a conviction.
The current Geneva Conventions have been in force since 1950, and the Rome Statute was adopted in 1998. It would be fair to say that a great deal of the worldwide carnage, mayhem, and bloodshed of the past two and a half decades has given no regard to either. The result: all 11 of the men convicted by the ICC are African, and seven of them are from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Considering the 'misconduct' of public officials against such a backdrop seems almost laughable.
On 19 February 2026, Thames Valley Police announced that they had “arrested a man in his sixties from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office”. That man is now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor; formerly, His Royal Highness The Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, Baron Killyleagh. Remarkably — given what Parliament does legislate on — he is still eighth in line to the throne. Apart from the obvious, what sets Mountbatten-Windsor apart from Edwards and Khan is that he could be imprisoned for life. This is because he is being investigated for an indictable common law offence which, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), “concerns serious wilful abuse or neglect of the power or responsibilities of the public office held”.
The timeline alone exposes the complete absence of any sincerity in pursuing Mountbatten-Windsor for what is a very grave offence under the common law. His Trade and Investment role, which began in 2001, did not end until July 2011, which was a full five years after Jeffrey Epstein was first arrested and investigated for unlawful sexual conduct with minors. The connection between the two men was no secret, and yet Mountbatten-Windsor was not removed from the “voluntary and unpaid position”; he 'stood down'. Attention was focussed on the visit made by the former prince to New York in December 2010, when he was ‘seen’ with Epstein, as though there had been no other contact.
What Mountbatten-Windsor may or may not have done in relation to the abuse of the office he held is unlikely to become entirely clear. The very fact that Thames Valley Police has taken 15 years to begin an investigation into the matter demonstrates how seriously any of it has been taken, just like the scoresheet kept by the ICC. It remains the case that you can be arrested and, indeed, imprisoned for a social media post (which, let us remember, only exists if you look at the screen it is displayed upon), but if you commit a war crime or misconduct in public office, you are highly likely to get away with it.
With specific regard to the criminal offence of misconduct in public office, is the problem a lack of appetite by the misdirected criminal justice system, an unwieldiness of the law itself, both, or neither? The Law Commission has been pushing hard to introduce two new statutory offences since 2020. The Government has responded by introducing the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which is due for its second reading in September 2026. This fits with the deliberate erosion of the common law, which has the consequence of handing to Parliament a disproportionate influence in determining what may, or may not, constitute an offence. The entire point of the separation of powers is that this is the preserve of the judiciary, and one enormous benefit of the common law should be the setting of legal precedent. For an increasingly autocratic regime, this simply will not do.
The reason the Law Commission has acted on this issue is because it believes that the offence of misconduct in public office is “widely considered to be ill-defined and has been subject to recent criticism by the Government, the Court of Appeal, the press and legal academics”. This may be the case, but it does not follow that an alternative would be better. The two offences the Law Commission and the Government would like on the statute book are those of 'corruption in public office' and 'breach of duty in public office'. On the face of it, there must exist the possibility that these two categories would result in more investigations and more convictions, but the question presents itself: of whom? The final recommendation of the Law Commission is that “consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) should be required to prosecute the offence, to ensure that the right cases are prosecuted, and to prevent vexatious private prosecutions”.
Though familiar ground, it serves well to walk it again: whilst Sir Keir Starmer was DPP, the CPS decided not to prosecute Jimmy Savile for widespread sexual abuse, nor intelligence officers for torture. It is, therefore, equally significant to consider whom the CPS does decide to go after and the ways in which influence may be exerted between the legislature, judiciary, and executive. Hard as it may be to define exactly what does fall within the scope of the common law offence of misconduct in public office, there is little to suggest that its removal will enrich or fortify the constitution.
