It is not just in Washington that the Epstein files continue to dominate. In Westminster, the political reverberations of the Department of Justice’s investigation are threatening to bring down the British government. At the center of the drama is Peter Mandelson: a former Tony Blair aide who served, until recently, as Our Man in DC. Keir Starmer, the Labour Prime Minister, named him British ambassador to America last year, reasoning that the oleaginous uber-networker could be the nation’s “Trump-whisperer.”
But the DoJ’s initial email dump in September exposed the closeness of his relationship with Epstein, with whom he shared a love of power and money. It was revealed that Mandelson had suggested Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a child for prostitution was wrongful and should be challenged. Sacked in disgrace, his humiliation was complete last week when further emails suggested that he was leaking state secrets to the pedophile financier. Now questions around the circumstances of Mandelson’s appointment threaten to consume the Starmer government and the British Labour party he leads. As one minister puts it: “No one knows quite exactly where this is going to end.”
On Sunday, the embattled Prime Minister suffered the loss of his most senior aide, Morgan McSweeney. For six years, the pair have fought their battles side by side. McSweeney, a longtime political street fighter in the mould of an Irish James Carville, was closely involved in the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), whose avowed mission to “kill Musk’s Twitter” prompted a furious White House backlash. With Mandelson, McSweeney plotted to move the Labour Party to the center from 2020 onwards, to make it electable once again. His resignation statement makes clear that he is attempting to save Starmer, amid fury from his MPs as to why Mandelson was ever appointed. “When asked,” said McSweeney, “I advised the Prime Minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice.”
McSweeney is credited by much of Westminster for Labour’s landslide victory in the July 2024 elections. Yet 18 months on, amid questions around sleaze and economic mismanagement, Starmer already looks like he is finished politically. “He’s a dead man walking,” says one rival MP. “The only question is how much walking is left.” McSweeney’s exit is intended to buy the Prime Minister some breathing space. But with Nigel Farage’s Reform party set to crush Labour in the upcoming May elections, Starmer is thought to only have months, rather than years, in Downing Street. McSweeney’s exit could “actually hasten, rather than delay Keir going,” says a Labour MP.
Jeffrey Epstein was a fabulously well-connected global financier, whose infamous black book contained numbers of political players across the world. Here in Britain, the two names most connected to him were Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson. The former has been banished from the Royal Family and stripped of all titles; the latter has triggered one of the most serious political crises in Britain since World War Two. If the Epstein scandal has half the impact on Washington that it has had in Westminster, Capitol Hill ought to be terrified.
