UK force leaders want Prince Andrew stripped of military titles

Prince Andrew attends a service at Westminster Abbey to mark the centenary of the Royal Air Force (RAF) on July 10, 2018 in London, England.

Senior UK military leaders want Prince Andrew to be stripped of his honorary positions in the Royal Army and Navy because he has become such an embarrassment over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, a report said.

Andrew is a former naval helicopter pilot who flew in the Falklands War and holds several senior honorary military positions.

But his disastrous recent BBC interview in which he tried to defend his friendship with the late pedophile has made him a source of derision among the ranks, leading current and former navy and army members to call for him to be “quietly faded out,” the Times of London reported Thursday.

“It’s just not viable. It’s embarrassing to be represented by someone like that,” a source told the UK paper.

Others suggested Andrew’s apparent reluctance to cooperate with US authorities probing Epstein was against military values.

“A soldier would be expected to stand up for what he’s done,” one source reportedly said.

They said Andrew, 59, who has stepped back from royal duties amid the scandal, should also give up his military appointments, just as Prince Philip, 98, did when he withdrew from public life in 2017.

The Duke of York is commodore in chief of the Fleet Air Arm and admiral of the Sea Cadet Corps in the Navy. He also holds honorary positions in the Army, including colonel of the Grenadier Guards and four other colonel-in-chief titles.

Yet because the armed forces are bound by their allegiance to the queen, officials are unable to remove Andrew without the approval of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

A royal source insisted to the Times that Andrew was “keeping his military commands.”

Meanwhile, London police on Thursday defended their decision to drop an investigation into allegations by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has claimed that Epstein trafficked her to London as a teen to have sex with Andrew.

Giuffre, now 35, claimed this week that the Metropolitan Police had told her that they would “forensically examine” the London house of accused Epstein madam Ghislaine Maxwell, where Giuffre claims she had sex with Andrew.

“Next thing I hear, just like the FBI, they were not allowed to pursue the investigation,” she wrote on Twitter on Monday.

Scotland Yard confirmed on Thursday that in July 2015 it “received an allegation of nonrecent trafficking for sexual exploitation” involving Epstein, who died in a federal Manhattan jail in August.

It said in a statement that because it “was clear” any investigation would be focused outside the UK, the police service concluded it was “not the appropriate authority” for a criminal investigation.

“In August 2019, following the death of Jeffrey Epstein, the MPS reviewed the decision-making and our position remains unchanged,” Scotland Yard said.

Andrew has denied the accusations and says he has no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre.

In the interview with the BBC’s “Newsnight” this month, he offered bizarre alibis, including claiming that his service in the Falklands War had left him temporarily unable to sweat.