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Britain fires ambassador to U.S. over Epstein friendship [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-09-11

Peter Mandelson has a long history performing the "gray eminence" gigs of British politics, and his closeness to billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein brings an early end to the latest. After the publication of records detailing Mandelson and Epstein's weird and oleaginous friendship, Mandelson was fired today as Britain's ambassador to the U.S.

Mandelson had been under mounting pressure over his relationship with Epstein after US lawmakers on Monday released a "birthday book," compiled for Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003, in which the veteran Labour party politician had penned a handwritten note describing Epstein as "my best pal." Despite the revelation, Starmer forcefully defended his ambassador on Wednesday, telling parliament that Mandelson had his "full confidence."

The "full confidence" death sentence in action.

If you were to script a neoliberalism cliché for fiction, Mandelson would be almost too trite. He began as a behind-the-scenes architect of the Labour Party's turn to pro-business centrism in the 1990s, acquired the nickname "Prince of Darkness," then became an international consulting finance guy after dabbling in copyright enforcement. He bent the knee to Donald Trump on behalf of his country's political establishment, and finally returns to the murk after being exposed as a creature of the wealthy criminal they both loved.

If this makes him sound like an omnishambles figure of fun, remember what happened here: we learned that the ambassador to the United States sought to console a billionaire sex trafficker after his child prostitution conviction by pointing out that he would never have been troubled in Britain. There are the men who know where the bodies are buried, and then there are the men who know where the live ones are still screaming.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/11/britain-fires-ambassador-to-u-s-over-epstein-friendship.html

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