Poor Starmer. Finding himself accused of looking the other way during one grooming gang scandal might be attributed to misfortune. But two? That seems, at the very least, like carelessness. As the furore deepens around new revelations on the favours traded between Labour peer Peter Mandelson, and paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, opposition MPs are calling for a Cabinet Office investigation. What did Starmer know, when he picked Mandelson as US Ambassador?
But the Epstein horror show has more in common with Britain’s rape gang scandal than just Starmer’s apparent wish to avoid grasping any awkward nettles. Both involved the grooming and trafficking of vulnerable girls. Both convened a close-knit network of depraved insiders, some bonded by sexual degeneracy and linked through a host of further personal and economic ties. Both have a way of bubbling to the surface at intervals, triggering horror and disgust, then disappearing off the front pages again.
