Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. When the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was breaking once again,
Speaker 1: all the way back in July of last year, I
Speaker 1: told you that things were going to get hectic over
Speaker 1: in the UK, and boy have they become hectic. The
Speaker 1: situation over in the UK is not only growing by
Speaker 1: the day, but it's putting a lot of people in
Speaker 1: serious jeopardy. There's a lot of questions now about why
Speaker 1: people look the other way and why the Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: didn't step in to stop what was going on sooner.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but according to polling, the Royal
Speaker 1: family's approval ratings are the worse they've been in decades.
Speaker 1: Then you add to the mix that Starmer has a
Speaker 1: lot going on as far as people trying to get
Speaker 1: rid of him, and you got the perfect environment for
Speaker 1: some shit to pop off. So today we have an
Speaker 1: article from the Eastern Herald dot com and the headline
Speaker 1: Epstein files are tearing Britain's institutions apart and the polling
Speaker 1: proves it. This article was authored by the europe Desk.
Speaker 1: The first question is not about Jeffrey Epstein, It's about
Speaker 1: what kind of country allows this much to happen and
Speaker 1: still can't name who bears responsibility. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a pretty fair question. Somebody made the choice to look
Speaker 1: the other way, somebody made the choice to protect them.
Speaker 1: Who's at somebody? And it's the same question we ask
Speaker 1: here in the United States. There's all these people involved
Speaker 1: in protecting this dude. How come we don't know who
Speaker 1: they are? And don't give me that, Oh, it's a
Speaker 1: nameless bureaucrat BS. That's nonsense. I think we've already disproved
Speaker 1: that time and time again. That's the question now hanging
Speaker 1: over Britain, and it has no clean answer. The Epstein files,
Speaker 1: roughly three million documents released by the US Department of
Speaker 1: Justice since January of twenty twenty six, have not merely
Speaker 1: damaged reputations. They've done something more durable. They have quantified
Speaker 1: in polling data, in parliamentary votes and resignation letters, the
Speaker 1: degree to which the British public no longer trusts the
Speaker 1: state that governs it. And it's the same shit we're
Speaker 1: dealing with here in America. All of these institutions nobody
Speaker 1: trusts them, and that's the big problem. If you can't
Speaker 1: trust the Department of Justice to go after people like Epstein,
Speaker 1: then what are we even doing here? No single institution
Speaker 1: has been spared. The monarchy, Parliament and Metro Police have
Speaker 1: each absorbed body blows from the same scandal in the
Speaker 1: same months, with consequences that are compounding rather than settling. Look,
Speaker 1: I know it's rough, I know it sucks, and I
Speaker 1: know it's painful, but now's the time to pull the
Speaker 1: band aid off and I would love to see the
Speaker 1: UK do that. I'd love to see them lead the way,
Speaker 1: But I feel like it's more of a cover up
Speaker 1: and it sucks. It really sucks that we can't trust
Speaker 1: anybody that's in a position to go after the people
Speaker 1: that should be hemmed up. But they have no one
Speaker 1: to blame but themselves, right, They're the ones that made
Speaker 1: the choices. They're the ones that look the other way,
Speaker 1: They're the ones that shirk their responsibility, and they're the
Speaker 1: ones now that have to answer for it. The data
Speaker 1: at this point is not subtle. According to ipso's polling
Speaker 1: conducted between February thirteenth and sixteenth, every senior member of
Speaker 1: the royal family saw personal approval ratings declined compared to
Speaker 1: November of twenty twenty five, support for King Charles fell
Speaker 1: nine percentage points to forty six percent. Prince William dropped eight,
Speaker 1: Princess Ann nine. Most strikingly, backing for the monarchy as
Speaker 1: an institution slipped to forty seven percent, the first time
Speaker 1: in modern polling it has fallen below a majority. Yo,
Speaker 1: I've said this for how long. The monarchy is something
Speaker 1: of the past, and the Queen did a lot of
Speaker 1: damage by protecting Andrew. I know people don't want to
Speaker 1: hear that. I get a lot of love for the Queen.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying she was a bad person, but she
Speaker 1: made a lot of bad decisions when it comes to Andrew.
Speaker 1: And now that bill is come and do and do
Speaker 1: you really think that Charles is the guy to handle it,
Speaker 1: He's the guy that's going to fix everything, that's going
Speaker 1: to usher the monarchy into a new century. Well, if
Speaker 1: you think that, you're now in the minority in the UK.
Speaker 1: A separate Savanta survey for the anti monarchy group Republic
Speaker 1: put institutional support for the crown at forty five percent,
Speaker 1: down three points in four months. Not exactly the trajectory
Speaker 1: you're looking for, And those numbers arrived before Andrew mount
Speaker 1: Batten Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles, was arrested
Speaker 1: on February nineteenth a suspicion of misconduct in public office,
Speaker 1: the first senior British royal to be taken into police
Speaker 1: custody in nearly four centuries. What an absolute embarrassment, all
Speaker 1: of you out there that never lived up to your
Speaker 1: parents' expectations. Have no fear you pell in comparison to
Speaker 1: Prince Andrew. Imagine being given all that privilege, all that money, wealth,
Speaker 1: access and doing this with it. Absolute scumbag. Thames Valley
Speaker 1: Police were examining whether Mount Baton Windsor, during his time
Speaker 1: as UK Special Envoy for International Trade, forwarded classified government
Speaker 1: reports to Epstein. King Charles responded with a statement signed
Speaker 1: Charles R. Rather than routed through Buckingham Palace. The deliberate
Speaker 1: informality was its own signal the Palace was distancing itself
Speaker 1: by name from the King's own brother. Mount Baton Windsor
Speaker 1: was released under investigation after approximately eleven hours. No charges
Speaker 1: have been brought. The investigation remains open and I have
Speaker 1: my doubts, I really have my doubts just how far
Speaker 1: it's gonna go. It should go real far right, should
Speaker 1: be real expansive, a full on league colonoscopy. But remember
Speaker 1: we're talking about power, and power protects power. So I
Speaker 1: have serious reservations if that's about to change. As Eastern
Speaker 1: Herald reported in April, the arrest triggered a global reaction
Speaker 1: precisely because it demonstrated that formal legal accountability was, at
Speaker 1: a minimum possible, even for figures who had previously seemed
Speaker 1: insulated by proximity to the throne. Whether the investigation ends
Speaker 1: in charges is a question that as of June twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, no one inside or outside the Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: has been willing to predict. Look again, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would hope that it would, and I would hope
Speaker 1: they have the evidence to go after whoever they need to.
Speaker 1: But I have my doubts. The crisis that the Palace
Speaker 1: would be serious enough on its own, But the Epstein
Speaker 1: files arrived in a country whose political class was already
Speaker 1: struggling to justify itself. Kiros Starmer won the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four general election with a majority of one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy two seats. Within eighteen months, IPSOS recorded his net
Speaker 1: favorability rating at minus sixty six, the lowest for any
Speaker 1: sitting prime minister since the polling firm began tracking the
Speaker 1: figure in nineteen seventy seven. The mechanism of that collapse
Speaker 1: runs directly through the Epstein files. In December of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, Starmer appointed Peter Mandelsson as the UK's ambassador
Speaker 1: to DC. Mandelssohn's social connection to Epstein was publicly known
Speaker 1: before the posting was announced big time, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: just like a rumor. Everybody knew that Mandelsson and Epstein
Speaker 1: were very close. Starmer appointed him anyway. Starmer later told
Speaker 1: Parliament that he knew of Mandelsson's friendship with Epstein, but
Speaker 1: that Mandelssohn had died repeatedly to my team when asked
Speaker 1: about his relationship with Epstein before and during his tenure.
Speaker 1: He fired Mandelssohn in September twenty twenty five after emails
Speaker 1: emerge showing Mandelsshn had made contact with Epstein following Epstein's
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight conviction. So did everybody else. Let's
Speaker 1: not make pretend here that you know, mister mister Mandelssohn
Speaker 1: was the only one all these scumbags did. Further document
Speaker 1: releases in January and June twenty twenty six deep in
Speaker 1: the damage. According to the Washington Post, documents released on
Speaker 1: June first showed mandelssh had assured Starmer the Washington appointment
Speaker 1: was won, the government would never regret bank statements in
Speaker 1: the files. As Time reported suggested, Epstein had made payments
Speaker 1: totaling seventy five thousand two accounts connected to Mandelssohn between
Speaker 1: two thousand and three and two thousand and four. Mandelsh
Speaker 1: resigned from the Labor Party in February twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: and subsequently from the House of Awards. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: forced to. If he had his own way, he would
Speaker 1: have stayed there forever getting rich on the public dime,
Speaker 1: stealing from the people of the UK. The parliamentary fallout
Speaker 1: was severe and rapid. By May, over ninety five Labor
Speaker 1: MPs had called on Starmer to resign or set out
Speaker 1: a departure timetable held Secretary west Reading resign from cabinet
Speaker 1: on May fourteenth, telling colleagues that Starmer will not leave
Speaker 1: the Labor Party into the next general election. He stops
Speaker 1: short of formally triggering a leadership contest, which requires signatures
Speaker 1: from one fifth of the Parliamentary Party. As of June eighth,
Speaker 1: Starmer remains in office, insisting he will stay. What comes
Speaker 1: next is genuinely unclear. The Labor Party's internal arithmetic and
Speaker 1: the ninety five plus pms on record suggests a resolution
Speaker 1: will not be tidy. And look, when it comes to politics,
Speaker 1: especially in places like the UK, when is it these
Speaker 1: guys are going to be looking to, you know, go
Speaker 1: after their opponents, just like here in America, same kind
Speaker 1: of shit, and they're going to look to try and
Speaker 1: capitalize on these missteps. The Metro Police faces a different
Speaker 1: kind of accounting. Trust in the force had already been
Speaker 1: corrooting for years through scandals including the murder of Sarah
Speaker 1: Evrard by a serving officer and the Spy Cops inquiry findings.
Speaker 1: A Guardian poll in twenty twenty four placed trust in
Speaker 1: the Metro Police at just thirty four percent. The Epstein
Speaker 1: files have added specific documented allegations to that general mistrust.
Speaker 1: That met officers were present at dinner parties hosted by
Speaker 1: mountbat and Windsor and attended by Epstein, that eighty seven
Speaker 1: Epstein linked private flights entered and departed UK airports carrying
Speaker 1: unidentified female passengers without meaningful scrutiny, and that the met
Speaker 1: had identified a London property rented by Epstein in which
Speaker 1: young women were reportedly housed under conditions of financial coercion,
Speaker 1: trafficked and declined to investigate further on the grounds that
Speaker 1: no formal criminal allegation had been made against the UK
Speaker 1: based individual. That last decision, now public and document, has
Speaker 1: been widely characterized as a failure of institutional responsibility. The
Speaker 1: question leaves it open whether it reflected operational caution, inadequate procedure,
Speaker 1: or something worse is one The Metro Police has not answered.
Speaker 1: The force's statement that officers had followed all reasonable lines
Speaker 1: of inquiry was made in a context that those lines
Speaker 1: of inquiry are now subject to parliamentary and judicial scrutiny.
Speaker 1: A UK prosecutor, as Eastern Herald reported last week, warned
Speaker 1: in early June that a full inquiry could take over
Speaker 1: a year. Survivors have characterized that timeline as a continued injustice. Look,
Speaker 1: I get it, they want this shit to get growing,
Speaker 1: get cracking, as it should, but it's going to take time.
Speaker 1: Taken separately, any one of these threads, the monarchy's polland collapse,
Speaker 1: the Labor government's parliamentary crisis, the police unanswered questions would
Speaker 1: be manageable. Britain's political culture is experienced at absorbing individual scandal.
Speaker 1: What makes the present moment structurally distinct is the convergence
Speaker 1: all three institutions are damaged by the same source in
Speaker 1: the same news cycle. If those data from April twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six found that two thirds of British adults do
Speaker 1: not have confidence the government is running the country with integrity,
Speaker 1: that figure is not the product of one scandal. It
Speaker 1: reflects the effect of watching the institutions designed to prevent
Speaker 1: this kind of thing fail simultaneously to prevent it, and
Speaker 1: not only that, but clean it up. It's one thing
Speaker 1: to fail and admit, look, we fucked up. We got
Speaker 1: to get our act together. That's not what happened here.
Speaker 1: They just keep doubling down on the bullshit, over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. None of this has a clear
Speaker 1: resolution in sight. The investigation into Mountbatten Windsor remains open.
Speaker 1: Starmer as of Monday, continues to insist he will lead
Speaker 1: Labor into the next general election. Whether that turns out
Speaker 1: to be true is one of several things in this
Speaker 1: story that no one has been able to promise with
Speaker 1: a straight face. And I'm certainly no expert in UK politics,
Speaker 1: but I think that eventually Starmer has to go, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that it's a question of if. I
Speaker 1: think it's a question of when. So like usual, we'll
Speaker 1: keep an eye on things, and when we have some
Speaker 1: more information one way or the other, we'll get it
Speaker 1: added to the catalog. All the information that goes with
Speaker 1: this episode can be found in the description box.