Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor are coming under renewed pressure to testify before US Congress over their links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Mandelson resigned his membership of the Labour party last night to avoid causing any “further embarrassment”. On Friday, newly released documents revealed a picture of the Labour grandee in his underwear, payments from Epstein to Mandelson, and email exchanges between the pair that appear to show Mandelson leaking confidential Downing Street documents to Epstein. The new batch of Epstein files also implicated Andrew, including a series of photos of the former prince kneeling on all fours over an unidentified woman lying on the floor.
Both men’s association with Epstein has wrecked their public reputation but, as the furore over the last few days has shown, they will find it hard to remain out of the spotlight.
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Keir Starmer has called on Andrew to cooperate with US authorities who are investigating Epstein. It is “rare for a prime minister to intervene on matters relating to the royal family”, said The Times’ editorial board, but “such is the anger and outcry” that – in an unusually “deft reading of the public mood” – Starmer hopes to pressure Andrew “into finally doing what he should have done" a long time ago. Unless he “fully explains his past actions and what he knew about Epstein’s lifestyle”, this will remain “a running sore for the royal family”.
A lawyer representing some of Epstein’s victims told ITV News that Andrew should be extradited and forced to testify. But US investigators “face a succession of legal obstacles which make” that “unlikely”, said Cahal Milmo in The i Paper.
US investigators may not have more luck with Mandelson. Congress is “poised to issue the peer with a demand to testify in Washington”, said Connor Stringer in The Telegraph, but it “cannot compel testimony from foreigners”, so “he is under no legal obligation to respond”. Of course, “he could be subpoenaed if he sets foot on US soil” and “if he were to ignore that request, he would be liable to arrest”.
What next?
“There will be a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill who want to exert as much pressure on this as possible,” The Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale told Sky News. Some would like the US to invoke the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Britain, under which each country can request cooperation to secure testimony, via court order if necessary, from witnesses abroad. But, given the Trump administration’s proximity to the scandal, few expect this to happen.
In Andrew’s case, what might eventually force his hand is not threats of legal action but rather “internal pressure from within the royal household”, royal historian and constitutional expert Ed Owens told The i Paper. “Prime ministers do not generally speak on these sorts of things without checking with the Palace first” so “I’m wondering whether, behind the scenes, there has been a changing of the wind”.
