London Calling
On the Andrew Formerly Known as Prince and the Epstein Files
There is a political earthquake, most visible in British broadcast media available on YouTube, but perhaps rapidly headed for larger eruption on this side of the pond, and it is all due to the release of the Epstein files. UK broadcast commentators have uniformly developed a habit, as Britons are wont to do, of patting themselves on the back since it became evident Crown prosecutions of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson are in the pipeline, unlike the case in overseas in Washington.
On February 16, a group of United Nations experts in Geneva issued the following statement about Epstein:
“So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” they said. Under international criminal law, crimes against humanity occur when acts such as sexual slavery, rape, enforced prostitution, trafficking, persecution, torture, or murder are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population with, with knowledge of the attack. The experts warned the components reported patterns may meet this threshold and these crimes must be prosecuted in all competent national and international courts.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has fumbled this one so many times that many electoral commentators now predict high returns, if not a sweeping victory, for Nigel Farage and the latest incarnation of his nativist Brexit movement, the Reform UK Party. The next general election is not until August 2029, over three years away, but the fear is still tangible. By-elections are being scrutinized seriously as barometers for what might come to pass as Starmer’s Labour Party becomes more scandalized as the days go by.
Why so?
There was a legitimate moment this month when it was thought possible Starmer’s Labour government would topple because Lord Peter Mandelson, a decades-long party official and former British Ambassador to the US, had maintained contacts with Epstein long after it was known the late financier was a serial child assailant.
Mandelson was arrested on charges of misconduct in public office on February 23, mere days after the same charges were brought against the former Duke of York Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the second son of the late Queen Elizabeth, younger brother of King Charles, and a devoted friend of Jeffrey Epstein who was publicly accused of malfeasance by the late Virginia Giuffre.
Mandelson was initially responsible for lobbying then-Prime Minister Tony Blair to get the former Prince appointed as a Trade Envoy for the Crown in 2001. This inspired one MP from the Liberal Democrats to recently quip during Question Time that the arrangement was “One friend of Epstein helping another friend of Epstein get a job that would be of direct benefit for Epstein’s business interests.”
This self-dealing is almost certainly a repeat pattern across the board in the Epstein files and might end with serious consequences for all manner of business concerns Stateside.
Which US business concerns would Mandelson have engaged with and what sort of duplicitous behavior did his office’s diplomatic immunity enable others or grant him in terms of personal gain? How should we consider the implications of his diplomatic immunity privileges?
Mandelson is shown in the latest files to have sent potentially market-sensitive material to Epstein while serving in Gordon Brown’s government and, like Andrew and ex-wife the former Duchess of York Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson, to have taken a number of monetary loans from the deceased financier. The Guardian reported:
One email, which had the subject line “Business issues”, was sent by [Gordon] Brown’s special adviser Nick Butler on 13 June 2009 with significant detail about policy measures the government was considering and suggesting the government had £20bn in saleable assets. Mandelson forwarded the email to Epstein and said: “Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.” Epstein responded to Mandelson, asking “what salable (sic) assets?” A reply from a redacted email address said: “Land, property I guess.” Four months later, the government announced the plans for the asset sale, hoping to raise £16bn, including surplus real estate.
Notably, former Prime Minister Brown personally stepped into the mix last week by submitting his own report to the Metropolitan Police containing observations made over the years about Andrew. Did the former Prime Minister also serve Mandelson up?
Almost certainly, Brown published a column in The Guardian written with acidic bile on February 6.
Embedded within an apology for bringing Mandelson into his 2007-2010 government, Brown says “No one could say I promoted him out of favouritism. I did so in spite of him being anything but a friend to me.” [Emphasis added]
That is the former PM’s polite way of saying that he and Mandelson hated each other like poison. There is a long history of enmity and bitterness between Brown and various New Labour ideologues that chose Tony Blair over the Scotsman, almost certainly including Mandelson.
Now Downing Street is preparing to publish their own set of documents about Mandelson, which in turn might reveal all manner of details about his tenure in office as Ambassador to the US. Could we possibly see new personages emerge as patrons in the Epstein network owing to their stateside interactions with then-Ambassador Mandelson, who would have been able to take advantage of diplomatic immunity while engaging with Epstein in the US?
The Starmer government is under a different kind of scrutiny than what the Republicans are confronted with regarding the Epstein files and issues like redacted documents or obscured email addresses. Labour’s main opposition, the Tories, would decry any attempt by Starmer to replicate the Trump administration’s scandalous censorship of the documents.
Understanding Mandelson’s unique diplomatic immunity and privileges and protections here seems vital because they afforded him a high degree of latitude in “service to the Crown.” If you should understand one thing about Mandelson, whose scandal-soaked career has come naturally to him, it is his pivotal role in shifting his old social democratic labor party into its neoliberal New Labour branding, importing Clintonism to Rushworth Street so that Margaret Thatcher described Tony Blair as her greatest accomplishment. Euphemistically known as “the Prince of Darkness” by friend and foe alike, Mandelson’s Zelig-like role in decades of British Labour politics might prove a liability for many owing to Epstein.
Who benefited and how did they gain by way of Jeffrey Epstein’s deep connection to this most conservative leadership element of the British Labour Party? Did Epstein provide this British ambassador with the kind of large social networking that enabled him to pursue certain diplomatic interests? For instance, would Epstein have networked Peter Mandelson with world leaders like former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, or for that matter other Gulf region political figures?
What sort of financial products, services, or facilitation would Mandelson be capable of helping provide to someone within the Epstein network, particularly in terms of British Commonwealth off-shore tax havens or within the City of London’s intricate banking system?
We know that Mountbatten-Windsor’s former position as a Trade Envoy entailed pursuing deals with Gulf monarchs, a cohort that prefer ‘royal-to-royal’ diplomacy as opposed to engaging with trade officials. Since Mandelson helped get Andrew the job, it is not hard to imagine him playing a supporting role when the Trade Envoy would sit down for tea with the various Sultans and Princes in the region, perhaps acting as a background consigliere to help Andrew sweeten a deal for a potential client.
Meanwhile, the ‘Your Party’ project, co-founded by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and MP Zarah Sultana, has regrettably descended into divisive antics that are caused by the hyper-individualist focus on the co-founders as opposed to a wider mass-movement orientation.
Things have gotten so acrimonious that Sultana, alleging that Corbyn allies had been fomenting trouble via leaks to the Murdoch tabloids, staged a full-on walkout from her own political convention! This is a sure-fire sign the Cult of Personality has gone insane and hijacked the party apparatus.
If Corbyn and Sultana cannot get it together, many mention the Greens but with hesitation. (Notably, Bernie Sanders has a brother based in the UK who has been active with the Greens.) In response, Labour is going after the Greens based on their total drug legalization plank, which is not a complete novelty considering Britain’s cross-channel neighbor Portugal led the way with full decriminalization years ago. As a result of complete decriminalization and state regulated supports like safe injection sites, needle exchange, and fully-funded treatment facilities, Lisbon has seen a marked drop in their national drug death rates. The true novelty, however, is that the British Greens have gone from the margins to mainstream this rapidly, something unimaginable only a few years ago. The level of voter disenchantment with Labour has reached this far.
Would this cause a voter demobilization that delivers success to Farage?
Ten years ago, Farage won Brexit. Now, his election to No. 10 Downing Street would be the British political upset on par with Trump’s surprise re-election. Were this to happen, the implications in Washington could be dramatic. Farage and Trump are allies via Steve Bannon and this could redefine the Anglo-American alliance for decades.
What influence would a Farage government try exerting over our favorite tariff target, Canada? Is it possible to consider a migration of people from Britain to Canada so as to avoid the most extreme harms of a Farage government?
Could this stimulate further ruptures or even secessions from within the British Commonwealth, such as in Ireland, a daydream turned tangible political aspiration in the decade since Brexit? Currently the contest between the British pound against the Euro means that the Irish no longer confront an economic parity that seamlessly crosses the North-South border. This was something that had existed when both Northern Ireland and Ireland were integrated Eurozone treaty partners, making the border crossing as informal as crossing from New York to New Jersey after decades of militarized policing. If a Farage government were to dive completely into an abyss of austerity and privatization, would Irish reunification be a matter of preserving public healthcare and similar welfare systems?
Would Farage launch an assault on the British welfare state and its great jewel, the National Health System (NHS) so to deliver it to Wall Street privatizers like McKinsey & Company?
Will the disgust with the British Monarchy stemming from the fate of the Andrew formerly known as Prince contribute to enthusiasm for Commonwealth secessions, if not a boost for complete republicanism in the metropole? As more is revealed about Mountbatten-Windsor, the easier it is to recognize the methods of his late father, Prince Phillip, the arch-racist who served his wife the late Queen Elizabeth as a bag-man and head of the quiet cleanup crew.
But that’s far from the most extraordinary development: Broadcasters on the mainstream networks are openly discussing the unavoidable, undeniable fact that the late Queen had hush money paid to a survivor in preparation for the 2022 Platinum Jubilee, the late Virginia Giuffre. The British monarchy’s level of polling support has dropped to 45%, a record, and the public knows that their tax monies were used to enable, finance, and cover-up Mountbatten-Windsor’s most egregious activities. The Palace itself as a public institution is indicted for publicly gaslighting Virginia Giuffre with all their rancid denials of Andrew’s malfeasances. The discussion orbits constantly around “systemic rot” and “institutional failure.”
The latest emails have shown then-Prince Charles participated in the 2022 settlement payment to the late Virginia Giuffre, who had claimed Andrew and Epstein trafficked and sexually assaulted her. Charles took on this task because it was the late Queen Elizabeth’s final Jubilee Year, Andrew was a public relations liability for the Palace, and the Queen’s usual fixer, her husband Prince Phillip, had died the year before in 2021. Now, four-plus years after the fact, there is wall-to-wall outrage with the idea of the King having been this deeply involved. The extent of pollution is scandalizing all of Buckingham Palace.
King Charles, Andrew’s brother, had hoped to staunch the bleeding by stripping the former Duke of York of his Royal Titles and Ranks while evicting him from palace housing. Instead, following these latest revelations, there’s now discussion of the King using his own cancer diagnosis as an excuse to abdicate!
But the depth of the rot, how shameless Andrew truly was, and how amicable other family members were with Epstein, such as Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson, make clear that this was a relationship that needs to be understood in terms that could include an intersection of international finance, espionage, and the monarchy of a foreign government being compromised in service of other international interests.
We know that Epstein was an asset in some form to Israeli Mossad, now the question is how the kompromat material featuring then-Prince Andrew and the late Virginia Giuffre would have been of utility to Epstein’s handlers. How does the Monarchy fit into the project Epstein clearly participated in? What vulnerability would the misbegotten Andrew present as an asset to whom and why?
Likewise, one potential question is about the need Israel would have for this kind of influence over British politics in general.
And in that regard, one would do well to consider the plight of Palestine Action, a direct action network founded in 2020 that has been persecuted with an Orwelian banning under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000. The existence of Palestine Action predates October 7th by years, it is only because of their mobilizations in response to the genocide that the government has begun prosecuting its activist-members in ways that fundamentally erode speech freedoms in the UK.
How does the pressure created by the Epstein files relate to the prosecution of Palestine Action?
Epstein himself is dead but the system is not. In these terms, it is possible to recognize the utility of censorship and protest demonstration crackdowns, both of which corral the masses with the stick as opposed to carrot. The control of the masses and public opinion in the UK regarding the Middle East is far more complicated than it is in the United States.
In no small part due to their postcolonial Muslim communities blossoming in the metropole after divestment, Islamic and Arab populations throughout the British Isles impact public opinion and are granted Equal Time in terms of publicly-financed broadcasting. Their views on Palestine solidarity and Zionism have presented a formidable challenge for the entire British ruling classes for decades, though they would prefer to say otherwise.
The Israeli government as a garrison in service of Western interests stands as a hub within a network that likewise includes Britain. Their interactions, balancing, and moments of friction, a complex dance that has risen to a new summit of choreographic failure following the October 7 attacks and the resulting Gaza genocide, reflect deeper considerations of the state and its needs for consent of the governed.
It shall prove instructive to see how the United States relates to its elder imperial partner and its tumultuous democratic process.