British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer has sacked Peter Mandelson as the country’s ambassador to the United States over his friendship with Jeff Epstein.
UK’s Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty announced his departure to MPs recently as Keir Starmer prepares for a state visit to the US president, Donald Trump, who is also facing his own questions about his friendship with Epstein.
Keir Starmer had stood behind Mandelson after appointing him as US ambassador earlier this year, insisting that he had been fully vetted. It later emerged that Mandelson told Epstein to fight for early release from jail as the disgraced financier faced an 18-month sentence for procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute in 2008.
Mandelson admitted on Tuesday that more “very embarrassing” details of his friendship with Epstein were likely to emerge, but insisted he had never witnessed any “wrongdoing”.
In an email from June 2008, which was not disputed by his spokesperson, Mandelson wrote to Epstein: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.
“I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. You have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can.”
It continued: “Everything can be turned into an opportunity and that you will come through it and be stronger for it.”
The friendship between the two men came under renewed spotlight after Democratic members of the US House oversight committee released Epstein’s 50th “birthday book”, in which Mandelson called him “my best pal” in a handwritten note.
