How the Epstein scandal has shaken the British government to its core
It was the one scandal that Donald Trump seemed unable to shake. No matter his best efforts to convince his supporter base that there was nothing to see here, the demands for the administration to release every document it had on the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein only grew.
Yet even after the most shocking revelations in the latest drop about Trump’s inner circle – involving everyone from Elon Musk to the Maga honcho Steve Bannon to the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, not to mention Trump himself – so far, it seems, the administration has escaped largely unscathed. Nobody has resigned, nobody has been fired, and certainly there is no sign that the US president is going anywhere.
There is, however, one political establishment that the Epstein scandal has shaken to its core – in the UK, where revelations in the files have sent a shock wave through the governing party that threatens to topple it entirely.
Although the former Prince Andrew, the brother of King Charles, is the best known Briton to entangle himself in Epstein’s web, there is another figure who has brought the scandal back home with him.
Peter Mandelson is another man with “prince” in his title, though his “Prince of Darkness” nickname was coined to reflect his reputation for being a master of the political dark arts. Few people in British politics have had careers as colourful and turbulent as his. Few people have managed to return from the political wilderness in the way he has.
There may be no coming back from this latest scandal.
Police in London launched a criminal investigation this week into allegations that Mandelson – who most recently was the British ambassador to the US, but whose history at the heart of British politics is long and laden with scandal – shared sensitive information with Epstein while serving as the government minister for business in 2009.
Mandelson, 72, is accused of leaking government emails and market-sensitive information in the aftermath of the financial crash – including alerting Epstein that the British government would soon act to prop up the flagging euro. Separately, Mandelson and his now-husband apparently received several payments totalling at least $75,000. The whiff of selling government secrets is acrid.
He has now quit the ruling Labour party, but the bleeding may not stop there: Keir Starmer, the prime minister, faces serious questions about why someone as clearly risky as Mandelson was ever allowed back into the fold.
To many in the UK, Mandelson is the long-running embodiment of the New Labour movement, having held high-profile roles in the Labour party over four decades, from strategist to government minister. Perhaps most crucially, he is perceived as a key figure during the remarkable run of electoral success under Tony Blair’s centrist turn in the 1990s that helped bring Labour back in from the cold of the Conservative party’s 18-year grip on power. [Continue reading…]