Archive of paywalled Atlantic article
Peter Mandelson, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Washington, was recalled Thursday after the extent of his friendship with the disgraced financier became impossible to deny. In a 10-page message in the now-infamous 2003 scrapbook, he called Epstein his “best pal” and included several photos of himself. Describing the financier as “mysterious,” Mandelson said that he would often be left alone with Epstein’s “interesting” friends—an assertion that appeared over a picture of an unknown young woman in her underwear.
[…]
Americans might be tempted to look at the situation in Britain and think: Consequences for misguided actions—remember them? That’s the right impulse. In the United States, the Epstein scandal has devolved into a mere political soap opera, in which the victims are largely forgotten and Trump is so far unscathed. British voters who are angry with their government might find some small consolation in the fact that on their side of the Atlantic Ocean, ethical lapses can still carry a serious political price.
Dude losing a job us hardly a consequence…
Last I checked raping a child is a felony which is a criminal matter.
Until these pests start getting the rope, society wont heal.
No argument here:(
Release the Trump/Epstein files
Of course there was always something sinister about Mandelson with his Rasputin-like hold on Tony Blair and ability to resurrect from apparent political death. One of the best moments in the 2001 book “Them: Adventures With Extremists” is when Jon Ronson is trying to infiltrate a Bilderberg Group meeting with a pre-infamy Alex Jones and sees Peter Mandelson on a coach going on.
rubs palms let’s get cracking with the next one!
the whole thing is a bit weird though - his assosciation was known since last year, and he was transparently visiting Epstein in prison. Why now?
Journalists uncovered that he had misrepresented the facts when the Prime Minister chose to ask him specific details before appointing him.
so this is just the PM effectively distancing himself from his previous decision of appointing him
Pretty much.
forced to confront it because of the bday book I suppose. which is pitiful but our media… goddamn we need a return to old school journalism, I just can’t see how it happens without newspapers.
I just can’t see how it happens without newspapers.
Sucks that billionaires own the privately owned media, and what they don’t own they can just buy. That’s where national news services should step in.
defend the beeb at all costs. it’s imperfect but better than dang near anything we have.
That’s… Out of date at best.
The minutes from the BBC’s March (April? Around then) 2025 meeting specifically include the progress made on their overarching aim to ‘win the trust’ of Reform voters, using programming, editing choices, etc. As in, explicitly.
The BBC have never recorded, or evidenced, am intention to appeal to a specific section of voters before. No other political party has ever been singled out as the BBC’s ideological goalposts, not even when a party had been in power for over a decade, or when a party wins a massive majority of votes.
Reform UK are the first, and only party that is officially courted by the BBC. And no, there has been no mention before or after of any effort to balance viewpoint or maintain the trust of any other voters or (hilariously, I know) maybe go for some sort of neutrality.
I’m not linking to the minutes, because it’s only available as a pdf, because nobody should change their minds on the basis of a random link on social media, and because plenty of people have made a concerted effort to ‘spread the word’ apparently believing that if people actually see in black and white ‘we the BBC are aligned with Reform UK and have been for a while now’, posted by the BBC on a BBC platform, maybe they’d stop saying ‘the BBC is the truth incarnate and anybody who criticises it is a troll, foreign, or a leftist’.
I won’t post the link, because I don’t think people do that. I haven’t seen any evidence of it. Either most British ppl on social media support Reform and think BBC fealty is perfectly natural, or most are pathological liars, trolls, bad actors, or just don’t really care about much of anything.
I console myself with the assumption that most normal Brits are not on social media, that the right wing tend to be over represented online, and that I don’t spend much time in the left wing arena because, well, it’s not a fun place to be.
Anybody else? Google the minutes. It’s 3 pages long, you can read the whole thing in a minute or so. Then you can Google historical precendent, I suppose, or some sort of keyword search for previous equivalents, but you won’t find any.
And then, or if you can’t quite be bothered to do that: doing tell people that the BBC is fantastic and you’ll ‘protect it at all costs’ until you have done that minimal amount of research and agree with the policies. You can probably extrapolate that to any company, really.
Otherwise, people can only assume that you’re one of those voters.
a week later you reply with this screed and expect what?
what’s out of date?
pfft, god forbid you allow your mind to be swayed by factual reporting gha the nerve
you won’t post a link because you’re lazy and it probably doesn’t actually endorse your premise.
and I won’t read it, because I’m already done with this convo. shows up 7 days later and expects people to give a shit? did you read this 7 days ago and spend all that time working out a reply?
Or just really slow?
Otherwise, I can only assume you’re one of those numpties.
I dread to think about your moral compass if you think the beeb is still worth defending. I gave up on the bbc in 2016, and it’s gotten so much worse since then.
I dread to think about your moral compass
I don’t think about you. at all.
Yeah, that’s the kind of mindset that leads folk like you to believe the BBC is still a reputable institution.
The beeb is already captured. Their reporting on Gaza is amongst the worst, and the chairman is Tory who uses “impartiality” as an excuse to suppress common sense and compassion
the beeb has had good times and bad. the trick is to rescue the institution and it’s legacy while purging the fuckwits.
it’s worth it to try.
I fail to see how the good stacks up evenly against the bad, when the bad includes the promotion of the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.
He was going to face questions from us media that would embarrass and intensify the scandal for the us administration.
They knew, guy was unrepentant and still gushing over epstein and referred to his residences with a yum yum comment. Guy fucked kids and was Israel’s bitch as a result, but liked it.
I swear every Labour scandal he is involved somehow. Yet he still keeps coming back, like a political boomerang.
Learn from our example here in the States: don’t stop at recalling a politician for such heinous behavior. Make sure their victims see justice and are made as whole as a legal, capitalistic system can afford.
If not, they’ll be more powerful the next time you see them.
British voters who are angry with their government might find some small consolation in the fact that on their side of the Atlantic Ocean, ethical lapses can still carry a serious political price.
We’re far too concerned with a few brown people to bother with something important like this.
Starmer knew and Mandelson until a few months back was aggressively unrepentant, casting himself as the true victim.
Starmer is a pos and labour needs to sweep this aristocracy out of there, they are neck deep in israel’s blackmail and complicit in that and ending the right to protest and locking down the internet and putting every site everyone visits within the grasp of their political leadership, local cops, hackers, foreign intelligence, criminal groups etc.
A Corbyn type with an aggressive countenance needs take the party and purge everyone in leadership, everyone.
Best I can do is internet censorship and arresting people in t-shirts.
Well we are also are going to need a masturbatorbase, for national security purposes we need to know every web page you have considered whacking off to, you know, for the kids.
The Brits are very good at hanging fringe elements out to dry. Show me when they held someone to account who had real power and not an over-the-hill/failed politico.
The deputy prime minister was forced to resign just last week. The only higher position than that is PM.
Losing your job is unfortunate but a mild response for what many of these people did. Show me when they put one of these cretins in prison.
The deputy PM only avoided paying tax IIRC
People go to prison for tax evasion, at least in civilized countries they do.
Even calling it tax evasion is a stretch, she had a complicated situation involving a trust set up for the house she had with her ex to insure her severely disabled son would be taken care of, then she claimed her new flat was her primary residence leading to a lower rate of stamp duty. She got some advice that said it was ok but was then told she should seek specialist legal advice to check that which she didnt and now has to pay back 40k.
Its not good, and she was right to step down, especially as housing minister, but its hardly a grievous sin.
Try to under pay your taxes by 40k and report back yourself lol
Let’s not down play felonies.
Are you talking about anyone in particular?
