KING CHARLES says he is “appalled and angered” to learn that Donald Trump has enjoyed such a long and intimate relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
“If I had known then what I know now, I certainly wouldn’t have hosted a banquet for the US president at Windsor castle,” said the King.
“I deeply regret going to all the trouble of serving organic chicken as the main course, followed by vanilla ice cream bombe with Kentish raspberry sorbet interior with lightly poached Victoria plums. Had I known Trump was lying to me, I would have kept it at best to a takeaway from Pizza Express in Woking that Andrew knows well. And I wouldn’t have wasted the Domaine Bonneau de Martray, Corton-Charlemagne, Grand Cru, 2018. I am furious that Trump has betrayed our special relationship.”
Peter Mandelson with Sir Keir StarmerCarl Court/Getty Images
To be fair to Trump, he has said he broke off his relationship with Epstein when he discovered the man was stealing his girls from Mar-a-Lago. And the world knows Trump always tells the truth. For example, he speaks the truth when he claims “Sleepy Joe” stole the 2020 presidential election when it was won by Trump with a landslide.
To be serious, there has been plenty of hysteria over prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to send Lord Peter Mandelson to Washington as British ambassador.
Maybe the full details of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein were not known, but he was appointed ambassador because it was thought he could connect with Trump and his inner circle. That’s just realpolitik.
We can only feel sorry for the King. Now, his son, Prince William, is being sent to Saudi Arabia to further British interests. The Prince of Wales will have to cosy up to Mohammed bin Salman, even though US intelligence has said the Saudi Crown Prince authorised the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That, too, is realpolitik.
It is realpolitik that has forced Trump to sign an interim trade deal with India. He had little choice after the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi went to China, and then signed “the mother of all trade agreements with the EU”.
India, too, has had to be pragmatic. Trump has reduced the 50 per cent tariffs, which were harming India, to 18 per cent. With five million Indians in the US, twice the number in the UK, India does need to revert to a friendly relationship with the US. It will probably cut back on its import of Russian oil. But whether the US can be fully trusted is a different question. In the same way, it is not Britain that is broken, but the UK–US special relationship.
The Mandelson-Epstein relationship is a mainly British affair. But the one between Trump and Epstein has global consequences. In Britain, Mandelson is being used as ammunition against Starmer. Some Labour MPs want him gone because they question Starmer’s judgement. Angela Rayner wants to be back in government. A number of newspapers want to destabilise Starmer as a way of easing Nigel Farage’s path to power. For British Asians, it is better for Starmer to stay. At least, he won’t have the equivalent of Trump’s paramilitary ICE roaming the streets of Wembley. This is probably fanciful, though some analysts have detected echoes of the 1930s in far-right announcements.
