Top brass fears over Andrew

MILITARY officials have expressed their frustration that the Duke of York remains in post as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards despite facing sex claims in a New York court.

It emerged last night that military insiders felt that retaining the title was ‘unsatisfactory’ as Prince Andrew was unable to carry out the required duties the role demands. Andrew, 61, who spent last week at Balmoral with the Queen, said in 2019 he was stepping back from public life ‘for the foreseeable future’ due to his friendship with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

With the pressure mounting from a civil case brought by Virginia Giuffre, 38, Palace sources confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that his legal case would not be fought with public money. And one claimed his lawyers’s silence was ‘dragging the rest of the family into a private legal matter for the Duke’.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence declined to comment.