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An urgent development on Keir Starmer’s administration of “national renewal”: following dismissing the deputy PM and housing secretary due to failure to settle required stamp duty, the prime minister has additionally dismissed his US ambassador because of close association with a known child trafficker.

At the same time, an increasing number of individuals think the answer lies with Andy Burnham assuming control, implying he could run in a parliamentary seat which has only notionally opened up because the previous MP from Labour was barred from the party after being found to have written texts hoping constituents might get dead/“mown down”, and is now apparently “off sick”.

Adding to this, US officials are coming. President Donald Trump touches down in the UK this evening just before of what promises to be the most terribly ill-starred formal meal since the vomiting scene in a famous film. It’s hard to believe the nation could feel any more renewed.

Emails Involving Mandelson

It’s been a few days since Lord Mandelson’s messages to the financier were revealed, and as I reflect about them, the more I come back to a particular less noticed comments. Composing with clear distress on the eve of Epstein’s imprisonment in 2008, he opines to him: “This wouldn’t happen in Britain.”

Maybe that was accurate, unwittingly or otherwise. The UK is very, very good at a sort of institutionalised looking away. Perhaps Mandelson was – unwittingly or otherwise – describing a dark trait about this country that moralistic old Keir Starmer would surely be hugely affronted to be caught up in. But, Starmer is involved in it – in fact, he’s at the very centre of it. He is the one who ignored it.

A Government in Crisis

It’s hard not to sense there is something necrotic and defeated about a leadership whose head would select someone he knew had been deeply connected to the criminal, who everyone by then knew was – and forgive me for stating the words – a paedophile sex trafficker. Association with him was already known to be such a horror show that the late Queen Elizabeth II had to sack Prince Andrew for it.

And there is Starmer’s horrifying lack of curiosity as the evidence mounted, right till the bitter end, with the Prime Minister’s office dithering for an incredibly extended period about a set of quite the most career-ending emails, while Starmer prevaricated supporting his ally at the dispatch box.

From Opposition to Embarrassment

This was the other podium to the one at which Starmer plied his self-righteous trade in opposition. There’s an old online rule that declares that if you correct someone for their spelling or grammar, you will always end up committing your own howler while you’re doing it.

The Prime Minister spent his years in opposition telling off the Tories at every turn, rather than – for example – coming up with a innovative and coherent plan for growth. Inevitably, we now seem to be strapped in watching him and his administration warrant a daily rebuke, as offences and ethical lapses mount up. Why does this keep happening to him, people ask?

The Mystery of Epstein

As for the financier, we know that at the time Mandelson was corresponding to him telling him to seek early release, law enforcement in Palm Beach, Florida had found 36 girls who the “businessman” had sexually abused. But for all the many years of dark and grotesque disclosures, it still feels as though we know very limited information about him.

What was his story, this mysterious Gatsby-like figure, and how did all his wealth come from?

Shortly after his death, New York magazine published a fascinating article in which actual investment managers expressed clear confusion over how Epstein made his money, since not one had ever had any dealings with him.

According to a big hedge-fund president, Doug Kass, stated: “I went to my professional traders, to their trading desks and asked if they 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 ever traded with his company.”

As Kass had said to a journalist: “He reminds me who is similar of Madoff that nobody trades with.” Another hedgie remarked: “It’s difficult to make a billion dollars quietly.” And yet Epstein had made little impact at all in the financial world. It was nearly impossible to find one investor. The widespread belief was that the “investment fund” was merely a front for a blackmail scheme.

Unwelcome Presence

Perhaps most amazing, really, is the fact that Epstein will be a presence at the feast tomorrow night for more than one attender, as Trump continues to downplay his long and close association with precisely the type of criminal his supporters are convinced controls the world.

He is a guy who really does fit the very template of their most sinister beliefs – wealthy and influential, involved in the trafficking of young people, linked in a web of some of the wealthiest people in the world. These are all the sort of stuff they’ve been going on about for years – yet who should keep appearing in the story, but their own cherished president.

Isn’t it intriguing how many of them now just can’t bring themselves to believe it? A topic to discuss over the starter tonight at the royal residence, maybe, as long as everyone can keep their food down.