If fingers were crossed in the White House that a dump of three million new Epstein files might draw public attention away from Melania's dismal documentary, few would have foreseen the world of pain it would mean for Keir Starmer.
After a week of recriminations, resignations and regret all round, the prime minister has conceded that Lord Mandelson had been less than honest about the "depth and darkness" of his links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, notably during the vetting process that saw Mandy briefly installed as our man in Washington.
For John Rentoul, Epstein's "dog muck" – in Mandelson's own remarkable phrase – is now a smell that Labour can't simply wash off: "The scale of the disclosures in the Epstein files is so great that it is hard to predict what the consequences will be. The damage spreads far beyond British politics – in a just world, it ought to bring down Donald Trump, too."
Anne McElvoy noted how what we're not yet calling the Mandelson-Epstein scandal will go down as an even bigger deal than the Profumo affair, with which it shares an uncanny number of parallels – except, that is, the bringing down of an unpopular government. Future historians, you might want to bookmark her piece…
And Mandelson isn't the only dramatis personae further disgraced by association. The latest Epstein files were the spur for a certain Mountbatten-Windsor – the Andrew formerly known as prince – to finally move into exile, under the cover of darkness, to a remote cottage on the Sandringham estate. "He will be housed in the royal equivalent of bed-and-breakfast accommodation, a five-bedroom cottage with outstanding sea views," writes Alexander Larman. "Andrew will only be slumming it by his standards. It is the punishment he deserves."
For Nadene Ghouri, it was high time for Andrew – who was shown in one Epstein picture "crouched on all fours over a female's tensed body, smirking straight into the camera as he paws at her" – to come clean about everything he knows about his late friend's sex trafficking operation. This is his moment "to finally agree to testify, to bring justice to the children that Epstein abused," she wrote.
Joy Lo Dico wondered about Andrew's ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, revealed in new emails to have taken their young daughters ("not long out of school at the time") to meet her friend, the financier and convicted child sex offender, upon his release from a Florida prison. Would Fergie's disgrace now force Beatrice and Eugenie to disown her, too? "What has been tabloid fodder is fast turning Shakespearean for this family," she writes.
If you're struggling to know what to make of it all, or just relish the humiliation of bad people – "Yum yum," as someone once put it – check out the Voices page for the latest columns as they are published.
Until next week.
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