The abusers

Not just vile but also seriously cheap

Peter Mandelson with his bestie Jeffrey Epstein

A great many things can be said about the snake pit of scandals surrounding the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his ghastly entourage but not enough has been said about their cheapness.

There is no question but that the horrendous business of trafficking of children and women for sex should be the focus of attention and at least we now know more about this than before, even though in coverage of the Epstein scandal the victims are constantly placed second in line behind their abusers.

But what we have also learned from the Epstein Files is the how far his motely associates were prepared to go for little more than droppings from the paedophile’s table.

The former Duchess of York is recorded as trying to scrounge a meal from him when visiting New York. The Prince of Darkness, AKA Peter Mandelson, was, apparently prepared to prostitute himself for $75,000, quite a lot of money for the average Joe but practically small change in the circles he was busy cultivating. The formidable Marxist thinker Noam Chomsky, was enticed by a free ride on the paedophile’s private plane and the needy Elon Musk was looking for a really ‘cool’ party invite, the list goes on.

Part of the motivation for joining the entourage is explained by what the Financial Times imaginatively described as ‘Epstein’s social Ponzi scheme’, where the likes of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Mandelson sought connections with other people of their ilk because, on the one hand, the Epstein circle seemed to be the place to be, and on the other, because this circle of power and influence provided a platform for trading favours and cultivating connections.

Others, notably the newly minted Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, appear to have been far more interested in the sex. But not all of them were involved in the really atrocious sexual exploitation that went on here.

This was not a circle of equals, there were supplicants and enablers who were hardly poor but still tempted by the free meals, the free holidays and the other handouts.

In the company of billionaires, the likes of Peter Mandleson and Steve Bannon, were no more than grifters at the rich man’s table. They believed he was in a position to get them jobs, well paid gigs and the occasional outright bung. By most standards this second tier of Epstein club members had enough money to buy their own lunches, stay in hotels and pay for their own transportation but in the company of the seriously rich they felt rather poor.

Billionaires like Elon Musk, Mohammed bin Salman and Bill Gates were probably not looking for Epstein’s largess but were not immune to receiving gifts as there is something about rich people for whom being rich is never enough. Their sense of entitlement convinces them that they are entitled to that much more.

Cynics may say there is nothing surprising here. The wealthy and influential have always behaved as if they are above the law and entitled not to be bothered by the many constraints which limit the world of the little people. What is different about the Epstein world is that documentary evidence exists to prove how it operates. Actually the evidence is partial because only the most generous and the most naïve seriously believe that the US Department of Justice has not been as avid in withholding information as it has been in supplying it.

What is also different about the Epstein operation is its industrial scale. Other rich and powerful abusers have also spread their net this wide but, as yet, they have got away with it.

I have observed getting away with it at firsthand after a lifetime in the grubby business of journalism. Reporting on business and politics brought me into contact with the scum of the earth sitting behind large desks, surrounded by a bevy of flunkies and giving off that putrid aroma of too much money and too little taste (but that’s another story). No genius was required to spot these people.

Yet some of them were actually quite charming, many of them far from stupid but all of them wore dodginess on their sleeves. If anyone seriously suggests that it was hard to spot Epstein’s dodginess, they must have a special form of myopia which is only relieved by rose-tinted glasses.

Even if they could not see it, how was it possible not to have noticed the stench emanating from Epstein, a convicted felon with a penchant for women, as President Trump described it, ‘on the young side’.

In Britain the Prime Minister has openly admitted that Mandelson maintained contact with Epstein even after he was convicted. And what was it he didn’t understand about the fact that he had twice been fired from public office for financial misconduct. And yet he still went ahead and appointed him to the UK’s top ambassadorial post. If Attila the Hun were still alive no doubt Sir Keir would have thought him a good fit for the post of global peace envoy.

Unlike the Prime Minister, I was part of a group who spotted Mandelson’s dodginess when he was very much younger. As a member of the Labour Party’s International Department staff back in the 1970s (yes, a very long time ago) when he applied to join the department, and almost did so were it not for the threat by all of us to walk out if he was given the job. We perhaps imagined that was the last we would hear of him.

And yet it has taken rather longer than I imagined for us to be vindicated. Fine folk on much higher pay grades appear not to have seen what was evident to us while we were still wet behind the ears.