Mandelson and his friends are the actual political cabal: Elites trading secrets for power as the world burns

~ Tabitha Troughton ~

A surprising few days for the British establishment; who would have thought that a man known to all and sundry for years as “the Prince of Darkness”, with a wiki entry which reads like a charge sheet, could behave so badly? The slow pratfall of the man formerly known as Ambassador Lord Peter Mandelson has finally landed, with brutal scenes of the man himself relaxing at home in a country estate, lamenting his “bad luck”, blaming himself for being too nice, and vowing to keep working for his cause “on the outside”, perhaps as a bat.

If it were not for the most recent dump of the Epstein files – 3 million documents, a mere half of those remaining – the UK’s former ambassador to the US would still be a voting member of the government. The latest Epstein files appeared to show that Mandelson, as well as being the “best pal” of the world’s most famous paedophile and sex trafficker, had been passing him confidential government information – from details of an EU bailout, to how to scupper government attempts to curb bankers’ bonuses. Mandelson has since resigned from the House of Lords, but naturally keeps his title.

“He’s a fucking liar. He fucking lied” Keir Starmer, the UK’s prime minister, was reported to have said of “Sneaky Pete” this week, like a man who’s just discovered why oranges are called that. Having, in the teeth of all the known evidence, appointed Mandelson, after a conversation which presumably went like this:

Starmer: Are you a liar?

Mandelson: No.

Starmer retired to a dark basement to consult what Guardian political editor Pippa Crerar, in the evident absence of a conscience, referred to as his “conscious”. But Starmer was nevertheless, and above all, a “decent man”, the great British press dutifully reported, echoing several MPs, innumerable social media bots, and former PM Gordon Brown. The “decent man” was still enabling an on-going genocide, in full view – but then, the great British press largely were also. As were Starmer’s cabinet, advisers, backers, and most of his MPs.

Since then, Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, the orchestrator of antisemitism smears against the Corbyn movement, has, in his own words, resigned “from the government”. McSweeney is a long-term Mandelson protegee. He facilitated the choice and promotion of Starmer as the Labour right candidate, under a guise of Corbynesque social democracy. Meanwhile Mandelson, in his own words, was working “every single day” to stop a Corbyn government.

McSweeney had supported Mandelson as US ambassador, over the other shortlisted Labour candidate who (nothing is incredible) was George Osborne. Osborne, with whom Mandelson still parties, was the enabler of the Conservatives’ “austerity” programme which managed to kill off an estimated 330,000 of the poorest British people in only eight years. The Ceausescus were executed for less.

McSweeney took “full responsibility” for telling Starmer what to do, but there are still vague promises that Starmer himself might go. This seductive idea has been frequently floated, and every time abandoned. Who, after all, would replace him? Moreover, who would replace the new Labour MPs from 2024, who were personally vetted by Mandelson, or New Labour’s new multiple, secretive donors?

Instead of examining the evidence that the Labour Party has been long captured by a small and ruthless cabal, both ‘sides’ of the UK press swerved back to Epstein, and to assuring the public that Epstein was a Russian spy. Or perhaps an Israeli spy. The focus was on anything but the people who joined their Conservative friends to bring you this corpse machine, Great Britain.

“I have worked every day to elect and support a government that puts the lives of ordinary people first” said McSweeney. This has not been working, by any metric. Teachers, nurses, pensioners and children are going cold and hungry: one in six people die in poverty. The country is increasingly facing the apocalyptic impacts of climate change, with seemingly endless floods and storms, while across the world, wild fires and extreme temperatures are blazing.

The government, apart from plans to place the entire population under permanent surveillance with the help of Mandelson client Palantir, continues to ignore this, just as, under the pretext of pragmatism, it ignores torture, ecocide, and mass slaughter.

The US continues to see its President’s storm troopers terrorise and murder its own inhabitants, while its regime builds more concentration camps? The UK government maintains a dignified silence. The Israeli government continues its devastation of land and people through Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon? The UK government is now considering arming it further.

This is the current situation, and the Mandelson cohort – from Blair to Starmer – have enabled it, benefit from it, and continue to uphold it.

Photo: Number 10 on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0