Because the Telegraph stories this morning:

Jeffrey Epstein brokered a cope with Lord Mandelson over the sale of a UK taxpayer-owned banking enterprise after he had been convicted of kid intercourse offences, emails have revealed.

The £1bn deal was negotiated whereas Lord Mandelson was Enterprise Secretary and solely months after Epstein had been launched from jail.

Sempra Commodities, a three way partnership between the taxpayer-owned Royal Financial institution of Scotland (RBS) and Sempra Vitality, was offered to JP Morgan in a deal on which Epstein gave recommendation to each Lord Mandelson and to Jes Staley, a senior govt with JP Morgan who has since been banned from the Metropolis over his relationship with the disgraced financier.

Three issues come to thoughts.

Firstly, the Telegraph could possibly be fallacious. It has, in fact, occurred earlier than, and there could possibly be one other interpretation to put on all this.

Secondly, if they’re proper, then the moral implications of this do, politely, stink to excessive heaven. Anybody with the slightest sense ought to have been steering nicely away from Jeffrey Epstein at the moment, as Andrew York (or Windsor, or no matter he calls himself within the foolish video games that royals play) has found to his price.

Third, Mandelson had already proved over plenty of years, because the Telegraph paperwork, that he had no sense when it got here to Epstein. They clearly have been shut and over an prolonged interval.

So, what are the implications?

Epstein’s victims clearly need Mandelson out of the British Embassy within the USA, and I’ve to say, rightly so. A person who has such poor judgment has no proper to carry the workplace that he has, even when there isn’t a proof that he, personally, did something fallacious.

Maybe as considerably, in political somewhat than moral phrases, are the apparent questions that this poses about Keir Starmer’s judgement. Presumably, the safety briefing ready earlier than Mandelson’s appointment would have highlighted all these points, as a result of if it didn’t, British safety could be somewhat pointless. Let’s presume for a second that MI5 has not reached that time, and that Starmer was conscious of all of the dangers of appointing somebody as ambassador in Washington regardless of his previous historical past with Epstein. What, then, does that say about Starmer?

There isn’t a good spin that anybody in Labour can create out of this example, and the Telegraph could be proper to go for its second Labour scalp in a really quick time frame by pursuing this concern. Mandelson shouldn’t be the place he’s. However then, nor ought to Starmer be so both.