In America, important men don’t seem to suffer too much over their links to the late Jeffrey Epstein.
Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Donald J. Trump, Howard Lutnick and Paolo Zampolli, among others, might regret their past friendships with the world’s most famous sex criminal. Certainly, they resent having to face pesky questions about it.
But the story just rumbles on, darkly, a source of endless intrigue and gossip and conspiracy theories – sustained as it is by the occasional publicity jolt, such as last week when First Lady Melania Trump, apparently without the knowledge of her husband, decided to give a big public statement denying that she, er, something something Jeffrey Epstein.
This is yet another example of the curious warping effect that Trump has on politics all over the world
Rich and powerful Britons, however, keep losing their jobs and reputations thanks to the Epstein monster. Ghislaine Maxwell is still in prison in America. Andrew, the former prince, lost his titles and is now pretty much in hiding. And Peter Mandelson was removed as Britain’s ambassador to Washington and resigned from the House of Lords.
Last night, Keir Starmer sacked Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office’s Permanent Secretary, after the Guardian revealed that Mandelson had failed his security vetting – but the Foreign Office sent him to Washington anyway. Robbins is another fall guy in a story that, similar to Boris Johnson’s “partygate” scandal, refuses to fade until it ends up collapsing a government.
The Westminster machine can smell blood. The Prime Minister is now being accused of lying to parliament and the public over the decision to appoint Mandelson, whom everybody knew to have been a close pal of Epstein’s. “All roads lead to a resignation,” says Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. “I fail to see how Starmer survives this,” says a Labour MP.
“They are all over the place on this,” says Nigel Farage. “It is totally unbelievable – and Robbins? He’s the sacrificial lamb in an attempt to try and save the Prime Minister, and it just isn’t good enough.”
Robbins isn’t the only lamb to have been slaughtered. In February, the Mandelson fallout also cost Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, his job. McSweeney took “full responsibility” for Mandelson’s appointment. Then last month, he claimed his mobile phone had been stolen, which meant his messages with Mandelson could not be recovered and used as evidence in the ongoing criminal and parliamentary investigations into what happened.
What’s increasingly clear is that Starmer, a former barrister who prides himself on his strict adherence to international law, played fast and very loose with the system in order to send Mandelson, a veteran of the Tony Blair years, to Washington. The government is frantically trying to cover up the story, which is only feeding the scandal.
Despite various “resets,” Starmer’s government appears wrecked. The Labour party is increasingly scorned and mocked for its incompetence on almost everything from the economy, to immigration, to foreign policy. In normal times, Mandygate might have been a minor scandal which Starmer could have shrugged off. But British politics has been almost uniquely dysfunctional in recent years, and Westminster has a tendency to melt down in the summer months. Labour is starting to eat itself alive, just like the Tories did after Covid.
Last night, Emily Thornberry, a senior Labour MP and chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee, demanded that Robbins reveal whether ignoring the security vetting was “his own idea, or was he being leant on elsewhere?” “Or,” she added, “was he getting direction from elsewhere, and if so, by whom?”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Labour’s meltdown, however, is that it is yet another example of the curious warping effect that Trump has on politics all over the world. Britain had, in Karen Pierce, a very good and competent ambassador in Washington, DC. Pierce had, despite her typically Foreign Office misgivings about Trumpworld, managed by late 2024 to build good relations with the incoming President’s team. But, to deal with Trump, the Labour party felt it had to call on “Mandy,” the so-called “prince of darkness” – because it was thought the only way to deal with Trump was to have a master flatterer who understood the sordid rich-guy world the President comes from. Starmer, McSweeney, and others all managed to convince themselves that Mandelson – and only Mandelson – could give the British embassy an edge in Trump’s Washington. So they backed his appointment despite the enormous risks. That decision has backfired spectacularly.
The logic for ambassador Mandelson was not entirely wrong. Britain did appear to get the first major post-Liberation Day free trade deal (now scuppered, of course), thanks in part to Mandelson’s artful operating. But the Epstein story was always going to blow up again – because that’s what it does – and now it could end up bringing down the Prime Minister.
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