Peter Mandelson’s resignation from the House of Lords – and the Labour party – is all rather undignified. The Epstein emails reveal that Mandelson’s relationship with the disgraced paedophile amounted to far more than just casual chitchat. Still, there is something ironic and typically British about the current spectacle.
Mandelson’s departure from the Lords was announced by the Lord Speaker on Tuesday with the air of someone who regrets something rather minor, like a faux pas at high tea rather than a resignation from such a senior position. No midnight raids, no congressional hearings, just a police investigation and a few pointed questions in parliament. This is a combination of spectacle and decorum that enchanted me about Britain long before I had any reason to be involved with it or America or to become ambassador to either country.
Even amid a scandal, Britain retains something of the civility I first encountered in my earliest visits to this country. My introduction to Britain came during the Michaelmas Term of 1988, when Poland was still a communist country, and my research visit to St Anne’s College, Oxford, felt like entering a parallel universe. No secret police to worry about, just tutorials where arguments were dissected with surgical wit, followed by apologies for the incessant rain as if it were a personal affront.
There’s a rather quintessentially British quality to the demands for accountability – without the pitchforks
Subsequent trips only served to reinforce this attraction. Literature seminars at the University of East Anglia in Norwich took place against the backdrop of flat fenlands, a peaceful respite from the upheaval of a newly post-communist world at home. The Warburg Institute in London also became a favourite of mine: academics poring over Renaissance literature like a group of detectives working a particularly puzzling case, all without the need for fanfare. Britain, it seems, likes its ideas – and its scandals – to take their time, a raised eyebrow rather than a roar of indignation accompanying events as they unfold.
My stint as ambassador in London from early 2022 until my departure last autumn only served to reinforce this impression. Britain, it seems, is a country of subtle diplomacy: garden parties interrupted only by a rather nice drizzle, conversation so adeptly sidestepping pitfalls as to be effortless. America was a bullring; Britain a drawing room. And yet, as Mandelson’s Epstein affair dominates the headlines, there’s a rather quintessentially British quality to the demands for accountability – without the pitchforks.
The attraction of Britain, it seems, lies in its ability to host a scandal this noisy, yet shrug it off with a wink. America may provide the pyrotechnics; Britain the rather bemused look of pleasure at the mayhem. In a world of fireworks, give me the drizzle any day.
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