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A quick development on the Prime Minister’s government of “national renewal”: after dismissing his deputy and housing minister due to negligence to pay required property tax, Starmer has also dismissed his US ambassador over strong ties with an identified paedophile sex trafficker.

Meanwhile, an increasing group of people think the answer lies with Andy Burnham assuming control, implying he could stand in a constituency that has only notionally become free because the former Labour MP was barred from the party after being found to have written texts hoping constituents might get killed/“run over”, and is now reportedly “off sick”.

Adding to this, the Americans are arriving. President Donald Trump touches down in the UK this evening on the eve of what may become the most hideously ill-starred dinner party since the days of the vomiting scene in Triangle of Sadness. It’s hard to imagine the nation could possibly feel any more renewed.

The Mandelson Emails

Several days after Lord Mandelson’s messages to Jeffrey Epstein were made public, and the more I reflect about them, the stronger my mind returns to a particular the more obscure comments. Writing in apparent anguish on the eve of Epstein’s imprisonment in 2008, he opines to him: “This wouldn’t happen in Britain.”

Maybe he was right, intentionally or not. Britain is very, very good at a kind of systemic avoiding scrutiny. Perhaps Mandelson was – unwittingly or otherwise – characterising something grim about the nation that moralistic old Keir Starmer would no doubt be deeply offended to be caught up in. But, the prime minister is involved in it – in fact, he is the heart of it. He is the one who ignored it.

An Administration Under Fire

It’s difficult not to feel there is a decaying quality and defeated about a government whose leader would appoint someone he knew had been very close to the criminal, who everyone by that point knew was – apologies for stating the words – a child exploitation ringleader. Ties to him was by then known to be so damaging that the Queen Elizabeth had to remove her own son for it.

What’s worse is Starmer’s shocking disinterest as the facts closed in, up until the bitter end, with No 10 hesitating for a staggeringly long period about a set of quite the most career-ending communications, while Starmer fannied about defending Mandelson in Parliament.

A Fall from Grace

That happened to be the other podium to the one at which Starmer plied his self-righteous reputation in the opposition. An established internet saying that states that if you tell someone off for their writing errors, you will always end up making your own howler while you’re doing it.

Starmer spent his years in the opposition telling off the Tories at every turn, instead of – for example – developing a innovative and coherent plan for growth. As expected, we now seem to be locked into observing him and his government deserve a regular telling-off, as offences and ethical lapses mount up. Why does this keep happening to him, people ask?

Unanswered Questions

As for Epstein, we know that at the time Mandelson was corresponding to him urging him to fight for early release, police in the US had found dozens of young women who the “financier” had exploited. But for all the many years of grim and shocking revelations, it still seems as though we know very limited information about him.

What was his story, this mysterious paedo Gatsby, and where did all his money originate?

Soon after his death, a publication published a fascinating story in which real investment managers expressed clear confusion over how Epstein made his money, since none of them had ever had any transactions with him.

According to a big fund manager, an expert, stated: “I went to my professional traders, to their trading desks and asked if they had ever traded with him. I did it a few times until the date when he was arrested. None institutional trading desk, major or minor, had once traded with his company.”

As Kass had said to a reporter: “He reminds me who is similar of Madoff that no one trades with.” Or as hedgie remarked: “It’s hard to make a billion dollars quietly.” But Epstein had made no noise at all in the investment community. It was nearly impossible to find a single client. The widespread belief was that the “investment fund” was simply a front for a extortion operation.

Ghost at the Feast

Maybe most astonishing, truly, is the fact that Epstein will be a presence at the feast tomorrow night for more than one attender, as the US President continues to butch out his long and close association with exactly the kind of evildoer his Maga followers are certain controls the world.

Epstein is a guy who truly fit the very template of their darkest conspiracy theories – rich and powerful, involved in the exploitation of minors, connected in a web of some of the most powerful people in the world. This is all the sort of stuff they’ve been discussing for years – yet who should keep appearing in the story, but their own beloved president.

Is it not intriguing how many of them currently just refuse to believe it? A topic to discuss over the first course tonight at the royal residence, perhaps, as long as everyone can keep their food down.