The questions about the exact nature of Donald Trump’s relationship with the late financier and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein that have dogged his presidency in both terms were given fresh life last week when the Justice Department released millions of new “Epstein files.”
But for all that Trump, and any number of other powerful men, would prefer that the ongoing Epstein story go away, its actual political impact in the US may end up being limited, relative to the attention the story has gotten. Barring a massive new shoe dropping, Trump will not be forced to resign over Epstein, nor will Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who testified in Congress on Tuesday about having had lunch on Epstein’s island in 2012 after previously indicating he’d broken off ties years earlier.
It’s not clear whether any other high-ranking political figures or business leaders whose names turn up in the files will suffer major consequences either. Other prominent US figures have suffered reputational damage, to be sure, but if the last 30 years of American political life have taught us anything, it’s that Larry Summers will be back.
The same cannot be said of every country, however. The world leader most likely to be brought down by the Epstein files is not Trump, but British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The files contain some extremely damaging information about Peter Mandelson, a longtime power player in Starmer’s Labour Party whom he appointed as ambassador to the United States, despite the fact that Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was already public knowledge.
The revelations have thrown the British government into turmoil. Two senior Starmer aides — his chief of staff and his communications director — have already resigned over their roles in Mandelson’s appointment, and a third is likely on his way out. On Monday, the leader of Scotland’s Labour Party, Anas Sarwar, became the most senior figure to call on Starmer to resign. So far, Starmer is defiantly rejecting calls to step down and other Cabinet ministers are rallying around the prime minister, but some highly placed sources reportedly believe it’s a coin toss whether he remains in power.
Ironically, it appears that by pushing for the release of the files, over Trump’s objection, congressional Democrats in the US may inadvertently bring down the center-left leader of another country entirely.
But why exactly is this happening?
Who is Mandelson and what did he do wrong?
Mandelson, 72, has been an active and extremely public figure in Labour Party politics since the 1980s. He’s had a number of Cabinet positions and along with former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — he served in both their governments — he was considered one of the main architects of “New Labour,” the centrist, neoliberal turn the party took in the 1990s.
His nickname in the days when he was Blair’s spin doctor was the “Prince of Darkness,” and he’s never exactly had a squeaky clean reputation: This is actually the third time he’s had to resign in scandal, the first two over financial improprieties, and he previously faced media scrutiny over his relationship with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. “He’s always been associated with slightly dodgy links with people with loads of money,” said Anand Menon, a political commentator and professor at King’s College London.
Thanks to these scandals and his centrist politics, he’s never been particularly popular with the Labour Party’s rank-and-file. Nonetheless, when Starmer appointed him as ambassador to the US in 2024, the thinking was that he was the kind of tough, seasoned, political heavyweight who could command respect in Donald Trump’s Washington.
Starmer says he had been aware that Mandelson had a relationship with Epstein — the Financial Times had reported on it extensively in 2023, so it would be strange if he hadn’t — but that Mandelson had misled him about the extent of it and that “None of us knew the depths and the darkness of that relationship.”
After the release of the Epstein files, both those published last fall and the most recent batch, we all know a lot more about Mandelson’s relationship with the man he described as his “best pal” in Epstein’s 2003 “birthday book.”
The files include lewd jokes exchanged between the two men referencing sex and strippers just after Epstein’s initial prison sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008. Mandelson expressed support for Epstein after that conviction and offered to speak to his political contacts about the case. (Mandelson, who is gay, is not accused of taking part in the abuse of underage girls, unlike other men in Epstein’s orbit, though the emails do contain some references to what Epstein calls Mandelson’s “romantic complexities.”)
Mandelson also appears to have sent Epstein internal government emails and sensitive insider financial information at the time he was Gordon Brown’s business secretary, an allegation for which he is currently under police investigation. Epstein also sent Mandelson $75,000 in several payments dating back to 2003.
Mandelson was fired as ambassador last September over his Epstein ties. Last week he resigned from the Labour Party and from his seat in the House of Lords. He has expressed regret for his relationship with Epstein but denied the financial payments.
Why is this so bad for Starmer?
It’s worth noting that Starmer was already one of the least popular leaders in the Western world, months before the latest Epstein revelations, with a net approval rating more than 40 points underwater.
Labour won the 2024 British election in a relative landslide in terms of Parliament seats, though it won only 33 percent of the popular vote. The victory was seen less as a reflection of Starmer’s personal appeal, and more as the result of exhaustion with 14 years of Conservative rule, a period that included Brexit and its tumultuous aftermath as well as the scandal-plagued Boris Johnson government.
Starmer’s government so far has been characterized by several embarrassing policy u-turns, questionable appointments even before Mandelson, and a hard shift to the right on issues like immigration that have angered his base without doing much to stem the rise of the far-right Reform Party, which now leads national polls.
Menon says the Mandelson affair cuts to the core of the Starmer government’s identity in ways that compound its existing problems with voters.
“The selling point of Labour when it was in opposition wasn’t that it was going to fix everything,” he said. “It was, ‘We’re going to bring some honesty and stability that was so palpably lacking under the Conservatives.’”
It’s harder to make that case when you kept around a guy who was forwarding government emails to an alleged sex trafficker.
Starmer’s best hope for survival right now might be the arcane procedure by which the Labour Party conducts leadership challenges. Prospective challenges are required to get support from 80 members of Parliament, preferably before the news leaks and public backlash and backstabbing from rivals begins. In practice, the politicians who launch leadership challenges rarely actually get the job, so the best tactic is to find a “stalking horse” willing to take the fall.
If it all did shake out, who might replace Starmer? Right now Labour’s bench is seen as a little thin. The names most often mentioned include Angela Rayner, who is associated with the party’s left and resigned as deputy prime minister last year after underpaying taxes, and Wes Streeting, the telegenic current health secretary who has faced scrutiny over his own links to Mandelson.
In all likelihood, the current Labour government, with Starmer or someone else at the top, will continue until 2029 when elections have to be called. Given the state of the polls, no Labour prime minister would call an early election right now.
The party’s next challenge will come on February 26 in a special election (“by-election” in British politics) for a seat in Northern England that has been held by Labour for 90 years, but where the far-right Reform Party and left-wing Greens are putting up strong challenges. A loss there would only compound the panic and calls for new leadership.
Menon notes that the scandal comes at a time when both of Britain’s long-dominant political parties are historically weak. As such, the most likely political beneficiary, at least in the short term, is likely to be Reform and its leader, the populist Trump-allied Nigel Farage.
“The Epstein crisis is a bit like a right-wing conspiracy theory made flesh,” Menon said. “If you were Nigel Farage and you wanted to write the script for the best scandal to underline the point you’re making about the corrupt elite, this would be it.”
Of course, it’s a long time until 2029 and Reform could also implode, though Farage has often shown a Trumpian ability to withstand scandal. The best hope for Labour, says Menon, is a “long period of calm without scandal, a period where growth seems to be picking up.”
Why isn’t this happening in the US?
Considering both Labour’s travails and the final downfall of Prince Andrew, the Epstein affair almost seems like a US political scandal with primarily British consequences.
As a frustrated tweet from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) put it last week, “Britain has dethroned a prince, forced Mandelson to resign, & lost confidence in Starmer because Rep. Thomas Massie & I forced the release of the Epstein files. What is America doing to hold the Epstein class accountable?”
After all, unlike Starmer, Trump himself is in the files, contributing sexual innuendos of his own. Lutnick turns out to have been in contact with Epstein years after he had previously claimed. Navy Secretary John Phelan apparently flew on his private jet in 2006.
So what’s the difference? The substance does matter: For all the embarrassing material on the US side, Mandelson’s communications are more direct than most, take place after Epstein’s prostitution charges (unlike Trump’s birthday note, and Phelan’s jet ride), and tie into a potential legal investigation. Another factor is that Britain’s political system makes it easier for a ruling political party to sack its own leader. There are also differences in narrative: Starmer was elected to clean up the government, but found to show poor judgement. Trump was elected despite what the public already knew about his checkered personal, legal, and business history, including previous allegations of sexual assault.
Or it may be that Britain’s political and media culture is just different. I asked Sir Anthony Seldon, a prominent political historian known for his biographies of every prime minister since John Major, about the difference between the two cases.
“Matters of financial and sexual impropriety loom very large in the public mind in the UK, as does passing on information to foreign powers, and these factors lie behind all British scandals,” he replied. “Whether that makes Britain a better country than the US or not is for others to charge.”