Andrew and Angela Rayner have one key thing in common

There’s an old saying about political scandal: “With the Tories it’s sex – with Labour it’s money.”

Though Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor isn’t a Tory MP, we can easily see him as a Tory type — and it was sex that brought him down this year.

Angela Rayner, on the other hand, is as red as they come — and she was brought down by money.

On the surface, this pair have little in common — except their belief that because of the station they were either born into or achieved, the rules that apply to the Little People (and I don’t mean leprechauns) don’t apply to them.

And this, as it turned out, was to be a crucial camaraderie.

There’s a funny thing that happens to people when they’re famous, whether through accident or design.

Though they must know logically that they are on the radar of paparazzi and journalists, and though seen in public far more than regular people, they seem to believe that with their fame comes the fabled Cloak of Invisibility, as featured in fictions from The Lord Of The Rings to Harry Potter.

Ange ’n’ Andy (sounds like a soap opera couple) both appeared to believe that they each owned a ­luxury version of this garment as they went about making the fiscal and physical blunders which finally saw them both ruined.

What did Andrew think he was doing when he went walking in public with a convicted sex criminal, the pair of them strolling with all the insouciance of a young courting couple in Central Park?

“The child is father to the man” goes the saying, and the fact that Andrew was the favourite son of the late Queen — the one “real boy” stuck between the differing ­sopp- inesses of his older and younger brothers — probably influenced his adult arrogance.

Snout in the trough

Handsome in a family which didn’t tend to produce lookers (surprising, considering the attractiveness of both the Queen and Prince Philip when young), he didn’t appear to suffer from Spare-itis in his early life

(“I bet Prince Charles wishes he could have borrowed Prince Andrew’s head to get married in”, wrote the teenage Adrian Mole.)

On the contrary, the second son appeared to glory in his lack of responsibility, putting himself about until he earned the nickname Randy Andy — and then adding a level of heroism to his swashbuckling ­persona by joining the Royal Navy in 1979 and fighting in the Falklands War of 1982, flying multiple missions including the scary sounding “Exocet missile decoy”.

Understandably, in a family where all the males wear a chestful of medals with no apparent active ­service to show, he became one of the most popular members of The Firm.

But next came the saddest turn of events to befall this over-privileged playboy prince — the Sliding Doors years, when a different decision might have changed his life for the better.

He met Koo Stark, an American actress, in 1981, shortly before he went to the Falklands.

They seemed extremely happy, but in 1983 they separated after pressure from the Palace, as Stark’s worldliness (which included getting her kit off in a B-film) made her an unsuitable bride for a prince.

The Firm may be good at many things — clinging on to power when other monarchies have gone to the guillotine and being used to butter up visiting heads of state with their “soft power” — but as matchmakers, they suck.

It’s hard to feel sorry for this hollow man whose desire for a life of pleasure has led him to such a bleak one

The courtiers who advised Charles to choose Diana over the love of his life — leading irretrievably to fiasco and tragedy — behaved in the same way as those who thought that a Sloane Ranger like Sarah Ferguson would be more publicly acceptable than a discreetly disrobing actress.

Ironically, the “suitable” Fergie had been around as much — probably more — as Stark, but as she was plain whereas Stark was beautiful, she was easier to pass off as the girl next door.

Andrew’s goose was cooked when he married Ferguson in 1986. They divorced ten years later, largely due to his wife’s moaning about being lonely.

He finally quit his life at sea in 2001 and was now one of the idle rich, the kind whose hands the Devil notoriously makes work for, and with his other half he proceeded to get his snout in the trough like Babe surveying an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Without duties he began wandering the world’s fleshpots aimlessly — and soon going down the long and winding road to the island of Jeffrey Epstein, where goings-on that would have appalled Dr Moreau took place, as strange beasts were given free rein to live out their darkest fantasies.

The position of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is an unfathomable one. Is there a chance that he may go rogue and write a book, as that other famous second son of a ­monarch has done, or does he have a sliver of the idea of service and discretion that was bred into him left?

It’s difficult to fathom what goes on in that apparently empty head as he lives out the last of his days at the Royal Lodge, watching war films and playing Call Of Duty, occasionally taking solitary rides on one of the late Queen’s horses.

But whatever it is, it’s hard to feel sorry for this hollow man whose desire for a life of pleasure has led him to such a bleak one.

Though she too was brought down by her grasping nature, Angela Rayner’s case is more ­genuinely sad — simply because she could have been a contender for the top spot, whereas it’s hard to imagine AMW becoming king.

Complaining bitterly

(It’s ironic that the ex-Prince’s initials are the same as the old acronym for decorative “party girls” the world over — Actress, Model, Whatever — as he must have met so many of them.)

And whereas Andrew was mired in privilege from the start, Angela started miles behind her well-bred, well-fed Labour colleagues.

One of the few comrades of working-class origin, she was a carer for her sick mother at the age of ten, a mother herself at 16, a social care worker, an MP at 35, a grandmother at 36.

And whereas Andrew was mired in privilege from the start, Angela started miles behind her well-bred, well-fed Labour colleagues

She has a lot to be proud of.

How foolish, then, for a woman considered to be a sharp operator, to come to grief over shaving off a few thousand quid in Stamp Duty on an admittedly nice flat just two streets from me.

As I X’d her at the time: “I genuinely pity you — greed undid you.”

But she has form on being made to look foolish by being grasping.

Back in 2015, she wrote an angry letter to a Brighton shoe shop on parliamentary notepaper, complaining bitterly about them selling out of R2-D2 high heels after they failed to reserve a pair for her.

That’s not the behaviour of a stateswoman.

But the current ­Labour government is such a dead duck that it’s not inconceivable the flame-haired flame-thrower will yet return triumphant — and ghastly though she is, a part of me would be pleased.

Because what’s saddest about those who fall into disgrace is when they’re not complete wastes of space, but have done things that anyone would be proud of: Andrew’s war against the Argentinian fascist junta, Angela’s war against the savage British class system.

What united them in their downfalls this year was that, in their very different ways, they believed they deserved it — to play by ­different rules to the ones other people do, and to get away with it, Rayner because of her hardship and Windsor because of his ­privilege.

How strange to think that they are now both “little people” — this odd couple, but so similar — as the rest of us look down on them.

Because truly, they got what they deserved.