At the root of the scandal

In commenting on the Epstein scandal, we shouldn’t focus exclusively on the political fallout and the consequences for particular men (such as Peter Mandelson, Prince Andrew, and possibly Keir Starmer) while losing sight of the female victims at the heart of it all.

Nor should we focus only on the sexual abuse scandal while failing to see it as a neoliberal scandal. Epstein himself, and the nature of his network, is not the underlying disease, but just a symptom of the neoliberal system. People who are that rich, behave differently and lack empathy (this is measurable in the field of psychology). Their general impunity from the rules which apply to everyone else, warps their perception of right and wrong. The enormously unequal neoliberal system functions in a way which generates and empowers abusive men, shaping their pathology, just as it generates many people who are vulnerable and form a pool of potential victims.

What’s also interesting is the way in which so many people were easily seduced into Epstein’s circle, initially attracted not by sex but by the mutual favours, the flattery, the money, and the company of powerful and famous men. Clearly, Epstein himself was charismatic, and knew very well how to play these people. The gushing nature of the contributions to his birthday book is extraordinary; many seemingly hard-nosed people were begging like children to “be your best friend”. Joining his network must have looked, to those outside, pressing their noses to the window, like a ladder to climb, a door into the golden circle of the money and power elite; a rich source of influence, opportunities and status. The invitations to his private island and the availability of young girls would not have been the first step down this path, but would have seemed like part of the rewards for saying “yes, I’m in” and becoming one of those many “best friends”. The sex was a privilege for those who climbed that ladder and entered the circle, having left their moral compass behind. Possibly, also, a shared guilty secret which kept people bound to him. However, offers of young girls didn’t work for everyone; a few of Epstein’s circle were women, who managed to suppress their (presumed) instinctive disgust for his on-the-record sexual exploitation of minors, and call him “Uncle Jeffrey” (as in the case of Kathryn Ruemmler, top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, who was tempted into Epstein’s world with expensive handbags and a fur coat).

At each stage, these people will have told themselves a story which made them feel OK about what they were doing. When Prince Andrew was interviewed by Emily Maitlis, he said “..my judgement was coloured by my tendency to be too honourable…”. Although he clearly lied in order to play down the depth and duration of his connection with Epstein, the mention of his honour is a self-deception – in his own mind, he really was an honourable man. Believing since birth that a Prince was honourable by definition, he could redefine “honour” until the concept included shagging vulnerable girls with no thought for the consequences. He could then talk about being “too honourable” and actually expect to be taken seriously, and then be surprised to find, when the interview was shown, that he had revealed only the total loss of his integrity.

That was, most likely, the smell-the-coffee moment for Andrew Windsor. All his life, he’d known that the rules didn’t apply to him; and that his mother could provide protection from any blowback. Money, power, status and sex are among the most common human desires, but for most people, there is a level at which they are satisfied. As Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “I have $50m, but I was just as happy when I only had $48m”. This known as the law of declining marginal utility; the more you have of something, the less value you attach to gaining a little more of it. It is pathological to go on pursuing these things to extreme levels, but this is exactly how billionaires become billionaires.

Despite all his privilege, Andrew was needy for these things, but he was also unrestrained in his pursuit of them by empathy and conscience, being both indulged and shielded all his life and isolated from the kind of moral and legal restraints which bind the rest of us. He just didn’t feel the law of karma and the social taboos which restrain the majority. He has literally had police bodyguards surrounding him at every turn; of course he came to believe that the law was there for his benefit and protection, not as a restraint on his behaviour. It must have been a shock for such a man to find himself judged and disbelieved by the great crowd of common people who previously he had only seen and waved to from a palace balcony.

Epstein did not recruit little people into his circle; you had to have some status already, to have something to offer, like fame, connections and wealth. Clearly, even billionaires are still needy for something, as they were as easily drawn in as those who hadn’t already amassed such a fortune. The sheer banality and transactional nature of the conversations revealed last week is surprising; these people had everything, but were offering tawdry titbits of inside-track information, more to impress than to enable others to exploit it. When Mandelson revealed a planned €500m bank bailout, it was only hours before the news was made public anyway. The scandal is not that Epstein made money by trading on the inside information, but simply that Mandelson couldn’t keep confidential information quiet. It comes across only as a kind of pathetic bragging, a “look at me, I’m in the loop over stuff like this”. In between trading impressive titbits of information, they were objectifying women (referred to constantly as “pussy”) and begging favours. It’s unedifying reading.

Even people as rich as Bill Gates and Richard Branson felt drawn into Epstein’s circle; obviously not for money, but perhaps for validation and approval. Poor sycophants are two a penny; but to be fawned over by others in the elite must be a special ego trip.

Many rich, powerful, well-connected people are now shitting bricks at having their connections to Epstein exposed. In Britain, clearly Andrew is being thrown under the bus; sacrificed like a lightning rod to protect the monarchy, and Peter Mandelson is also being cut loose in a similar way by the government. The press, after decades of royal deference, are turning on Andrew with gleeful vengeance; you very seldom see a photo on the front pages three days in a row, like the one of him in a police car. It’s almost as if the press weren’t among the enablers of all this, having looked away for decades and never asked impertinent questions.

As yet, we don’t see much of this going on in the US, but we can hear the grinding of gears as an army of spin doctors do all they can to limit the damage. So far, the public outrage has been kept focused on sex. Child sex abuse, and the abuse of vulnerable young adults, is certainly criminal and scandalous, but so far we know little about just how far it went – for example, exactly how young the girls were on Epstein’s island; whether any died as a result; nor, of course, has any definitive list emerged of the names of Epstein’s contacts who took an active part in such criminality, or who attended the parties/orgies passively and failed to act. But, the implications of the whole business go a lot further, in directions which, so far, the newspapers have not been obsessing over – almost as if they are still covering up for the billionaire class (who, er, own most of the newspapers). There’s a sensation of being drip-fed a good, juicy sex story – we all understand sex – to distract us from other questions: why is the Trump administration going to such lengths to avoid publishing all the evidence (as required by law)? Why did Trump swivel from campaigning for all the files to be released, to holding them back and calling it a Democrat hoax? Did Epstein gather kompromat on his guests, and how did he use it? Who was blackmailed, and for what? Where is it all now? Is it still being used? Where did his huge fortune come from? Was he connected to any foreign intelligence organisation, and did they exploit his circle, either for sources of information or agents of influence? In short, just how far does the rot go?

It would be just as interesting to know about those who turned down the invitations, who saw (or asked) what was going on in Epstein’s world and on his island, and then said no to it. People, in short, who still had some integrity; for whom self-enrichment, aggrandisement, ego tripping and ambition were less important than listening to the little voice telling them “this stinks”. Of all those Epstein reached out to, offering the goodies and the temptations, how many refused? That would be truly interesting.

Psychologists tell us that sociopathic people lie, manipulate others, and tend to have a grandiose sense of their own worth and abilities. They may be successful in finding partners for sex, for example, but it’s the hookup variety, not based on lasting intimacy or respect. The sex in the “money, power, status and sex” reward system is the kind you do to someone for gratification, not the kind that makes you a good long-term romantic partner. The girls on the island were there to enable only the exploitative, selfish form of sex. The same applies to the greed for money, power and status.

Epstein was not a one-off, the single rotten apple who corrupted others. He was a product of the neoliberal system which creates an elite of this kind, which creates the phenomenon of billionaires, and makes them monstrous. He was a product of the “greed is good” philosophy which says that appetites should not be restrained by anything. To be a billionaire, you have to make yourself comfortable with the fact that others can’t make ends meet, because you are eating their lunch. You do this by telling yourself comforting stories; that you are a wealth creator, an employer, an innovator, an entrepreneur, a hero enjoying your deserved rewards. Never that you are a parasitical oligarch, reaping and concentrating into your own hands, the value created by others; that you and your ilk dominate the things which we should all share much more equally; that your private jets and boats pollute the commons; that your kind have ruined the public services and made housing unaffordable. Never that you are rich because others are poor. And once you have mastered these mental contortions, you can find it easy to define “honour” in a way that covers abusing vulnerable girls, hanging out with other men who abuse vulnerable girls, and joking about it.

For me, the conclusion is: there are certainly other Epsteins out there and other networks of pathological wealthy people. How do we know this? Firstly, there’s never just one cockroach in the kitchen. But secondly, because their existence is a choice we’ve made, in setting up the world to work the way it does. Even the relatively childish antics of the Bullingdon club (and its American equivalents) were intended to celebrate the impunity of the rich from the consequences of their misbehaviour. Not every exclusive group of rich people is based on child sexual exploitation, of course; and not every billionaire is a paedophile. But, they all know that, whatever their debased desires are, they can indulge them without consequences, and this is a systematic weakness in our current social organisation. We don’t know to what extent that weakness may have been exploited by those who are potentially hostile to our country, because much of the system is dedicated to suppressing such knowledge. Far greater transparency is certainly required in many areas, particularly in the monarchy – who knew what, and when? Where did Andrew’s money come from? Who paid for the settlement with Virginia Guiffre? Similar questions should be asked of the politicians (Mandelson etc), lawyers, academics and captains of industry who moved in these circles. Those who arranged and covered up for the wrongdoing should also be accountable; all the administrators, PAs, gofers, enablers and doorkeepers. They aren’t the big wheels, but this sort of thing can’t happen without them. But this only goes so far. Epstein’s crimes are over, but to prevent the same thing happening again, needs root-and-branch change. It all comes down to Wilhoit’s principle which I’ve mentioned before, on which right-wing politics is entirely based: the principle that there are insiders who the law protects, but does not bind; and outsiders, who the law binds, but does not protect. Until we tear down all the structures based on this principle (and Epstein’s circle was only one small example), it will go on happening.

A war we never asked for

The calls are becoming ever louder and more repetitive from warlike neoconservatives, for us to spend vast sums we don’t have on “defence” and to set up new military alliances and organisations, maybe based on the so-called “coalition of the willing”, although somehow we never actually get asked whether we are willing. Uniformly, they rely either on vague “it’s a dangerous world” statements, or absurdities like one this weekend by the UK Chief of Defence Staff and his German equivalent: “… we see every day from intelligence and open sources how Russia’s military posture has shifted decisively westward. Its forces are rearming and learning from the war in Ukraine, reorganising in ways that could heighten the risk of conflict with Nato countries. …. Moscow’s military buildup, combined with its willingness to wage war on our continent, as painfully evidenced in Ukraine, represents an increased risk …. deterrence fails when adversaries sense disunity and weakness. If Russia perceives Europe in this way, it may be emboldened to extend its aggression beyond Ukraine. Indeed, we know that Moscow’s intentions range wider than the current conflict.” Wow, they are building a lot on a foundation of “could” and “may”!

What do they mean, exactly, by Russia’s military posture shifting westward? From what other direction than westward is Russia under threat? They’ve been attacked from the West many times. In 1610 (Sweden), 1708 (Sweden again), 1812 (France), 1853 (British, French and Ottoman empires), 1914 (WW1 central powers), 1918 (WW1 western Allies), and the big one, 1941 (Germany), to name but seven. It would be surprising indeed if their military posture wasn’t decisively westward-looking. Despite the pearl-clutching, Moscow’s “willingness to wage war on our continent” is hardly a shock; where else do we expect them to wage it? You fight where the war is. It is also a very loaded phrase which appears to lay claim, on behalf of the West, to the whole of Europe, which includes the most populated parts of Russia itself; these are stupid and provocative words from a Briton, and extremely tactless, offensive and provocative coming from a German. But then, the whole Nato posture is based on denial that it’s their continent too.

And, of course, it takes two to tango. Western Europeans and Americans spent the first half of the last century waging war all over “our” continent, including the Russian parts. The whole thrust of the article is to exhort European countries to build up their ability and willingness to wage war yet again on Russia, expanding on the war already being waged by proxy in Ukraine. The malevolent and poorly thought out CIA-backed colour revolution in Ukraine in 2014, and all the western meddling in Ukraine since then which encouraged Kyiv to wage its war on the Donbass, is part and parcel of the project of Nato’s eastward expansion which was inherently aggressive, provocative, and threatening toward Russia, as well as being totally unnecessary. The rational approach for us to take would be to stop this stupid behaviour and accommodate Russia’s perfectly normal and legitimate security concerns; to de-escalate and demilitarise in eastern Europe; to build healthy and honest commercial relations which provide both sides with common interests; and to recognise that we have no territorial claim over eastern Europe, and need have no territorial or ideological conflict with a non-communist Russia if we choose not to. It would be perfectly possible for us all to play nicely together.

But, no, our leaders claim to “know that Moscow’s intentions range wider…”. We might wonder what mind-reading powers they have, to be so certain about this evidence-free claim. They are determined to paint a picture of a hungry, empire-building horde, eager to invade and occupy western Europe. It is a picture entirely at odds with both history (as outlined above) and the behaviour of modern Russia and its leadership. Putin’s Russia is a corrupt, authoritarian oligarchy with an oversized nuclear arsenal (like the USA), but an economy smaller than Italy’s, being ninth by both GDP and population. Putin’s wars have generally been internal (as in Chechnya) or pushing back against anti-Russian encroachment (as in Georgia and Donbass). His backing for Assad’s Syria was about maintaining influence in the region via a client regime, something we have also been known to do. He has not fought any wars of expansion, nor acted as the self-appointed world policeman; he’s done nothing like America’s Venezuelan adventure, nor made threats like America’s against Canada, Greenland, Iran and Panama. Unlike the US, Russia appears to have learned from its failure in Afghanistan. Besides, if, after 25 years in power, Putin intends to start any wars of expansion, he’s clearly not in any hurry.

The advocates for European militarism never give us a clear scenario for the sort of war they imagine a newly expanded European force could expect to fight, let alone how they could win, and what winning would look like (much of Europe reduced to rubble?). The basic rationale is defence against a threat which they cannot define clearly, since it isn’t there. Unable to define it, they cannot make the connection to the kind of forces needed to fight it. Well, they may be hard of thinking, but that shouldn’t stop us thinking for ourselves.

The underlying assumption appears to be that a Nato vs Russia conventional war in Europe could be fought and won, without either side going nuclear. Unlikely though that is, let’s run with that for now. It would look something like the ongoing conventional war in Ukraine, and so would require huge numbers of men, plenty of weapons – tanks, planes, artillery, ammunition etc – clear organisation, and lots of money. How does the West stack up in those areas?

Given that Britain’s forces are configured for PR, with the big show-off items (nukes, planes, aircraft carriers) but rather less of the boring stuff like people, logistics, and the industrial capacity to replace used and destroyed material, it is assumed by our government that we will always fight alongside the Americans. This fantasy is now cruelly exposed, as America walks back its commitment to Europe and emerges as more of a threat than an ally. All the same, let’s assume that America is still willing to take part in the proposed war against Russia in Europe.

The Nato allies would be unable to fight a major conventional war of this kind, with an all-volunteer army. You just can’t get enough men to volunteer to go and be killed. Conscription is necessary to fight a war of attrition, and young people today are less willing to submit to it than they were in WW1 or WW2. Ukraine has been reduced to snatching men off the streets, like our Napoleonic war press gang. One reason the US lost in Vietnam was the low morale of a conscript army, up against a more highly motivated Vietnamese adversary. Britain’s forces in southern Iraq and in Helmand were so undermanned that they ended up doing no more than building a fortified base and defending it, in both cases. The US had more men, but still a long way from enough, resulting in soldiers spending repeated tours of duty in theatre, and suffering high levels of stress, PTSD, burnout and suicide, on top of combat deaths and injuries. Western demographics also make the job harder; our birth rate is low, so the pool is smaller. Fewer civilian men in the target age range are fit, due to high levels of obesity and other issues. I also think there’s been a cultural shift since WW2; fewer young men seek glory in war, and they have a slightly better idea of what it’s actually like. How many people, having seen the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan, want to go and invade somewhere? Some do, of course, but not nearly as many as in the past. WW2 had general popular support, while our modern wars are opposed by a significant proportion. America’s problem in Vietnam was partly the belief held by many that their cause was wrong. That was a rot which set in with the Korean war; who wanted to die for a hill in a country hardly anyone could point to on the map? A war against modern Russia wouldn’t even be able to draw on widespread anti-communist fervour. Hence the US Army struggles to recruit, so does their Navy (despite the Top Gun glamour image), and the US Air Force is short of 2,000 pilots.

My conclusion is that, to even contemplate provoking and fighting a general war against Russia, the western powers would need to have already brought in conscription, and built up a reserve of several years worth of trained young soldiers. There’s no evidence that this will be possible, or that today’s youth would comply if they did. Many of America’s recent leaders dodged the Vietnam draft; Trump had “bone spurs”, Clinton got student deferments, W joined the National Guard. For what’s left of that generation to then demand today’s youth go to war would be like the current generation of British leaders, who had free university, loading up today’s kids with debt. For all that it’s a favourite topic in neocon circles, I don’t think bringing back conscription would produce forces adequate for a major war against Russia. So, there’s a manpower problem.

Secondly, there’s material. Russia, after 4 years in Ukraine, is out-producing all of Nato (US included) in things like tanks and shells, despite a far smaller budget. Partly, this is because of the bloated cost structure of the western military-industrial-complex (MIC). For the big US defense firms, it’s business as usual, with profit being the main driver. What they like are giant programmes such as the F-35, producing a sub-standard product which does not perform to its specification and has major serviceability problems, very late and hugely over budget. There’s far less money to be made in the low tech business of churning out the basics like bullets and shells. Indeed, the US didn’t really believe that shells were all that important, having reduced their annual procurement of 155mm rounds in 2021 (before the Ukraine escalation) to just 75,000 per year – roughly the training requirement, and nowhere near enough in wartime. While there are plans to scale this up, that takes time – factories and supply chains can’t be switched on like a light. Meanwhile, Russian industry is already delivering three million rounds per year, along with the guns to fire them. Similarly, the US Navy can’t manage to build combat ships; it just cancelled the Constellation class frigate program after billions of dollars and years of shipyard time were wasted. The US MIC makes profits, not effective weapons, and changing that would require the US to change its entire philosophy and priorities – this is what’s meant by putting an economy on a war footing. The US isn’t ready to do this, and Europe wouldn’t know how.

Then, there’s organisation. None of those calling for a new European military alliance (without the US) can explain who would be in charge, and who would make the kind of decisions, often necessary in war, to sacrifice one place for another, or to make concessions to end the conflict. What would be the strategy to meet the postulated Russian invasion? To fight them to a standstill in Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, so as to keep them out of Germany, Switzerland and Italy? How will the Poles like that, given what became of them in 1945? Which German general would be authorised to order a British division to go and die in Poland to keep the Russians out of Germany? You only have to ask the question to realise that there is no politically acceptable answer.

Finally, there’s money. Wars are ruinously expensive. The US is $38tn in debt, paying $1tn interest annually, and the European powers similarly weak financially. The ringing declarations of intent to spend 5% of GDP on the military are fantasies; promises to spend money we don’t have and couldn’t afford to borrow. Even if the Europeans manage to borrow enough to spend 5% on all this, they face similar problems to the Americans. In peacetime, each country contributing to, for example, the development of a new combat aircraft, wants, as a higher priority than creating a truly effective weapon, their domestic companies to get a lucrative share of the work. Hence Airbus and Dassault cannot agree who is in the lead on the project called FCAS. The French want a nuclear-capable plane which could make carrier landings; the Germans have neither nukes nor carriers. Billions will be wasted, and if a usable plane ever does emerge from it, it will not be until 2040.

For all these reasons, the US and its European vassals all face the problem that they lack the men, the kit, and the popular will to get ready for a major conventional war; and they cannot afford to do so anyway. They are accustomed to buying hardware, however extravagantly and wastefully, but can’t recruit the people to take it into battle.  Hence, a security strategy based on an ever more expensive military buildup will simply not work. Worse, it will soak up all the resources which might have gone into building peaceful relations, preventing conflict, and addressing the real threats like climate breakdown. Indeed, the war-scare will inevitably serve as an excuse not to do anything serious about threats like climate breakdown.

They tell us that we couldn’t fight a near-peer adversary unless we spend a lot more money. I say, we don’t need to; we can’t afford to; and those saying this are being dishonest. The people never asked for this war, don’t want it, and remain locked out of the real debate and decisions about national security. The history of austerity, corruption and wasteful spending on avoidable wars should lead us all to be much more sceptical when the neocons beat the war drums.

Our elites are so cheap

If, as many suggested, the US attack on Venezuela was intended as a distraction from the Epstein files, it didn’t work for long.

Last week’s release of a large volume of Epstein data included a revolting photo of Prince Andrew kneeling with an unidentified girl/young woman on the floor beneath him. While he continues to “firmly deny any wrongdoing” (how I wish I’d known that phrase when accused, aged four, of stealing biscuits or failing to brush my teeth) nobody is listening. A century or more ago, he might have been shown into an easily-cleaned room with a bottle of whisky and a revolver, and allowed to relieve his family of the embarrassment of his further existence. Such an action would have been seen as the honourable thing to do, rather than the coward’s way out of facing the music. Today, he is banished to Sandringham and stripped of all titles, curiously including the word Prince, which is not so much a title as a statement of the fact that he is a monarch’s son. Still, though, he is refusing to face the music by answering the many questions people want to ask him, instead “firmly denying…” etc. Reducing him to a commoner is less of a punishment for him (although I imagine it must have hurt) than a way of playing down the connection between the royal family and Epstein, which is not something they should be enabled to brush under the carpet on a “bad apple” basis. The neediness which Andrew has shown, both for sex and for titles and status, is a product of his background and upbringing, for which the Queen should not get completely off the hook. He was, by all accounts, her favourite son, and although his relationship with Epstein and his other misbehaviour have been widely known for 20 years or more, she always chose to indulge him. The empty life of a royal younger son is also having its corrosive effect on Harry; again, in the past, such men could be packed off to be governor of somewhere or other, but today, there is little to give them meaning and purpose. Andrew’s occasional work as a roving trade emissary appears to have had little effect on trade, and only gave him further opportunities to misbehave.

His on-off partner Sarah Ferguson also had a relationship with Epstein, and she too is further embarrassed by the publication of correspondence in which she variously called him the brother she had always wanted, and in another, said “Just marry me”. She also begged him, on another occasion, for £20,000 to pay her rent. But the saddest is perhaps the later one in which she said, “It was sooo clear to me that you were only friends with me to get to Andrew.” No shit, Sherlock! How many years did it take her to work that out?

But the real earthquake is the Mandelson scandal which may bring down the Starmer government. Although he’s a veteran of several scandals, Peter Mandelson will not survive this one. Like so many, he was apparently dazzled by Epstein’s money and by gaining access to his huge network of the rich and powerful, and so he sought to ingratiate himself. Although, being gay, he was presumably not tempted by the girls provided to others (although his 2010 email to Epstein in which he said “We are praying for a hung parliament. Alternatively, a well hung young man” makes us wonder whether his sexual desires played any part in the relationship beyond crude jokes), he does appear to have been greedy for money. In one message he said “I don’t want to live by salary alone”, displaying the sense of entitlement so common among those who move in powerful circles. Documents suggest that Epstein sent payments adding up to $75,000 to Mandelson, and paid £10,000 to Mandelson’s partner for an osteopathy course. The amazing thing about that is, how cheap it is to buy a Cabinet minister. I’ll take three…

The fact that Mandelson was appointed as ambassador to the US by Starmer and McSweeney, despite his connection to Epstein being raised in the vetting process, indicates how centrally involved Mandelson was with the Starmer/McSweeney project to take control of the Labour party and steer it to the right (repeating what he’d done with Blair as front man in the 90s). Using all the tactics for which Mandelson was tagged “Prince of darkness”, they controlled candidate selection and ministerial appointments, and only a week ago prevented Andy Burnham from standing for a parliamentary seat. As it is now inevitable that Starmer will have to go, it’s even more regrettable that the party will not have Burnham on the menu when choosing its next leader. The shallowness of the current government is clear when you see how few credible candidates there are; the absence of any big beasts with different views is a symptom of the complete exclusion of the left. Only a weak leader suppresses all potential successors; strong leaders want strong followers. Starmer and McSweeney would rather destroy Labour than lose control of it; Labour’s curse has always been such intense factionalism.

And so the direction of our nation turns on such little things as the slow, drip-drip revelation of sordid details about the life and influence of an American power broker and paedophile. This is, in part, because we have an electoral system and power structure which keeps real power out of the hands of voters. Power has to lie somewhere; if not with you and me, it’s with the likes of off-the-ballot politicians like Mandelson and McSweeney, and their elected front men like Starmer, who gained the leadership by pretending to advocate leftist policies which he promptly betrayed. Every now and then, we get a look behind the curtain and see who really pulls the levers; the rich, the well-connected, and the corrupt, with all their pathetic hangers-on and gofers. And, in Britain’s case, someone like McSweeney, who most voters would not recognise, but who appears to be calling the shots as if he were the PM.

Sadly, none of this is truly surprising. Andrew was a creep, rather like Jimmy Savile; while it’s no great boast, I credit myself with having never liked either of them, although I had no idea of the depths of their corruption. Both hid in plain sight; Andrew was long known as “randy Andy”. Both were fawned over by a press which seems to have given up the scepticism embodied in the saying, “why is this lying bastard lying to me?”. And still, the mainstream press shows little interest in the far bigger question of what Epstein did with all the information he gleaned from the network in which he invested so much of his questionably-sourced money. Most of the vast cache of kompromat he must have accumulated is still hidden. Each data dump from the US Dept of Justice is put forward as full and final disclosure; everyone knows perfectly well that many of Epstein’s network are still being shielded from exposure. The American public have long demanded the full disclosure of everything; I have to say, I doubt they will ever get it.

Starmer’s pathetic excuse for appointing Mandelson is that Mandelson lied to him; most politicians would sell their grandmother not to have to admit to such naïve credulity. Starmer came to office promising competent, honest government and economic growth. Yet, what we have is ongoing drama, corruption, lies, and a flatlining economy which is still governed by the extractive neoliberal economic model which has done so much harm over the last forty years. Starmer must go, probably after the May elections (so his successor doesn’t take the blame for what seems likely to be an electoral humiliation). But, replacing him with a lookalike such as Wes Streeting will be pointless. In 2024 we voted for change, and we need a PM who will provide it. Sadly, it seems likely that Starmer and McSweeney will spend their last weeks in power doing all they can to prevent that.

Of course, what should have brought down Starmer is that he’s a genocide enabler with blood on his hands, who is using the law as a blunt instrument to suppress dissent. Buried under the Epstein news was the verdict in the Filton trial of six Palestine Action members, all acquitted of aggravated burglary, in a trial that was fundamental to the argument that PA is a terrorist organisation. Thank God for juries, and may this be the end of the suggestion to get rid of them. After much of the defence case was withheld from the jury, and the judge practically ordered the jury to find the defendants guilty of criminal damage, the verdict is a sensational rebuff to the political and judicial elite which has been so corrupted by its collaboration with the genocide and ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories. Also under-reported is the news that there will be a judicial review of the PA proscription in Scotland (after the government appealed to stop it happening and failed) which will now take place after the evidence of the Filton trial is finally in the public domain, along with the fact that the government’s case could not convince a jury.

The Filton trial was set up to be unfair to the defendants, in particular because the judge repeatedly prevented the defence from saying anything about why PA took direct action against the Elbit factory. For example (as reported by the brilliant commentator Craig Murray), among the evidence was a notebook kept by one of the defendants, describing PA’s preparation for the action. The first few pages detailed why they believed Elbit were supplying weapons used in the Gaza genocide. The jury were shown this notebook, but not allowed to see those first few pages. In this way, the defence were not allowed to argue that PA had a lawful reason for damaging Elbit’s property (which would be a full defence against the charge). Hobbling the defence like this amounts to rigging the trial, and is a tactic all too frequently used against direct action protestors.

The Filton verdict is a huge (although predictable) setback for the proscription of PA. It may be that an Epstein-related change of government will provide the chance for an incoming PM to change tack, lift the ban, and stop using the law to suppress dissent; just as it’s conceivable that a new PM may not actually support the genocide at all. We may wish for such a silver lining outcome, although experience suggest that any change will be a case of, same shit, different flies.