British Politicians Still Have Shame

There is an irony to the undying Jeffrey Epstein scandal: It may never be more than an annoyance for President Trump, who knew Epstein well, but it could topple British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who never met the sex-offender financier. Starmer has a 71 percent disapproval rating and leads the least popular British government since World War II. The reasons for the Labour Party leader’s deepening plight are moral, because decency and shame still matter in British politics. But they are also institutional. An American president is less democratically accountable than the British prime minister, because partisanship has disabled the checks that the Founders placed on the chief executive.

Starmer’s troubles stem from appointing Peter Mandelson, a Labour politician known as the “Prince of Darkness,” to be his ambassador to the United States. Mandelson was long known to have been friendly to Epstein but got the job anyway, replacing Karen Pierce, an effective career diplomat with warm ties to MAGA-land who did not particularly want to leave. Mandelson’s term lasted only eight months, ending in September when it was revealed that he was even closer to Epstein than previously realized. He had expressed fury at Epstein’s prosecution for sex crimes in a Florida court in 2008, writing to Epstein, “I think the world of you.” In addition, he’d signed an infamous “birthday book” for Epstein’s 50th birthday that also featured a lewd entry allegedly signed by Trump (who denies its authenticity). This was bad enough for Starmer, coming after numerous reversals—on matters such as welfare policy and inheritance taxes for farmers—and the resignation of 11 cabinet ministers. Like most of the fiascos of Starmer’s premiership, the Mandelson error was unforced.

But the revelations contained in the tranche of 3.5 million files released late last month by the Justice Department worsened the crisis. The records seem to show Mandelson giving Epstein confidential information about the European Union’s bailout. They show direct payments for unspecified purposes from Epstein to Mandelson and his now-husband (Mandelson has said he has no recollection of receiving the money). There is even a photo of Mandelson in his underwear. This is Mandelson’s third disgraceful exit from public life over his long political career, but it appears to be his final one. He is no longer a member of the privy council (which advises the king), the House of Lords, or the Labour Party. But even such a thorough torching of Mandelson’s political career might not be enough to save Starmer’s.

[Idrees Kahloon: Political parties have disconnected from the public]

Though voters gave Labour a large parliamentary majority in 2024, Starmer has seemed befuddled about how to wield it. Little has been accomplished, and Labour’s woes seem likely to benefit the Reform Party, a new nationalist, populist outfit led by the Brexit instigator Nigel Farage. A crisis over Labour Party leadership is now expected. The turmoil appears to be driving down the value of the British pound, and bettors think there is only a 33 percent chance that Starmer’s rule lasts the year.

The contrast with America is striking. For many American political figures, having palled around with Epstein is barely grounds for embarrassment. “It’s really time for the country to maybe get onto something else, now that nothing came out about me,” Trump said in the Oval Office on February 3 (he is mentioned thousands of times in the latest documents released, but there is no damning evidence of misconduct). Two billionaires in Trump’s orbit—Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and Elon Musk, the Republican super-donor and onetime special government employee—both shrugged off correspondence showing plans to visit Epstein on his island years after his conviction.

The United States is supposed to be a puritanical country in comparison with godless Europe, but in reality it is so saturated in scandal that new ones elicit little outrage. A single dodgy ambassador—Trump has appointed many, almost all unnoticed by the public—could hardly bring down a presidency.

The controversies that have embroiled recent British prime ministers look quaint by recent American standards. During the pandemic, Boris Johnson’s leadership was hobbled by “Partygate”—boozy gatherings of government officials while the country was on lockdown, whereas parties at the White House during the social-distancing days may not rank among even the hundred worst Trump scandals. Gavin Newsom, who attended a dinner at the three-Michelin-star French Laundry during the shutdown, is probably the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. One defining scandal of the short-lived Liz Truss premiership was that she proposed a tax-cut package without receiving a proper scoring from the Office for Budget Responsibility. (If only the Congressional Budget Office had such power in the United States, a country that ran a $2.2 trillion deficit last year.)

[Helen Lewis: Britain should have read the tweets first]

You would think that the British prime minister—who definitionally has a parliamentary majority behind him in a country in which Parliament is supreme—would be able to behave more like an elected monarch than the American president, who is supposed to be constrained by checks and balances. In the modern day, the opposite looks to be true. Parliamentary systems encourage palace coups because if you remove your party’s leader, you might be able to claim the job. If you successfully impeach and remove the American president, though, you don’t get to succeed him. The ever-present possibility of a no-confidence motion is supposed to keep a prime minister democratically accountable; impeachment is designed to be used in extreme cases. But its repeated use in recent decades—once against Bill Clinton, and twice against Trump—has proved its futility as a meaningful check on the president. In a time of closely divided and extremely partisan Congresses, the chance of a successful conviction in the Senate is close to zero—even if the president does something like try to stay in office after losing an election.

Congress has, over the past half century, also turned over more and more of its authority to the personal discretion of the president and the executive branch. When Thomas Jefferson was writing on the demerits of parliamentary government, he observed that “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits.” When there is no separation of powers, but merely a separation of parties, this intricate system breaks down, leaving an imperial presidency with exactly the concentrated power that the Founders feared.

They might also be saddened that 250 years after declaring independence from a tyrannical British king, the American system of government has arguably less democratic accountability for its leaders than the British one. But perhaps they would not be entirely shocked: The idea that there was something intrinsic to America that immunized it from autocracy was anticipated and deemed not credible. “Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic,” Jefferson wrote, adding, “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us.”

*Illustration Sources: Samuel Corum / Getty; John W. Keith / Archive Photos / Getty; Carl Court / POOL / AFP via Getty; Bettmann / Getty.