Posted by: John Phoenix
Peter Mandelson’s career is an object lesson in how the ruling class controls all bourgeois political parties, Labour included.
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The 30 January release of more than 3m pages of documents by the US Department of Justice has not only brought into even sharper focus the breadth and depth of agent and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s associations with the world’s most powerful people, but it has also fatally weakened the already foundering Labour government in Britain – in particular, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Lord Mandelson and Keir Starmer’s Labour government
In December 2024, just five months after Labour’s election to office, Keir Starmer promoted Labour grandee and Blairite Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States of America – despite Mandelson having had to resign in disgrace on two separate occasions, leaving high-profile government posts amid accusations of corruption.
The first time was in 1998 after he had accepted, but not declared, an interest-free loan from cabinet colleague Geoffrey Robinson, whose business dealings were at the time under investigation by Mandelson’s own department (he was minister of the rather pompously titled Business, Innovation and Skills department).
The second time that Mandelson was forced to resign was in 2001, after he was found to have used his position (minister for northern Ireland) to expedite the British passport application of SP Hinduja, an Indian-born billionaire who had donated money towards the construction of the Millennium Dome whilst applying for British citizenship. This episode became known as the ‘cash for passports’ scandal.
But the scandal that forced Mandelson to resign in disgrace both as US ambassador and as a member of the Labour party, was the exposure of his deep and long-held personal and business dealings with child sex offender (and CIA/Mossad agent) Jeffrey Epstein – a association that endured during and after the period when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences in 2008.
The Epstein files also revealed that Epstein had made payments into bank accounts connected with Mandelson totalling $75,000 (£55,000) while he was MP for Hartlepool in 2003 and 2004. Perhaps most embarrassingly for Mr Mandelson, a redacted photograph of Mr Mandelson holding an iPad whilst wearing no trousers standing next to an unidentified female was also released on 30 January and was arguably the fatal blow to Mandelson’s brief career as a US ambassador.
The Epstein files also suggest that Mandelson gave Jeffrey Epstein advance notice of the €500m European Union bailout for Greece in 2020, fed Epstein information on British government proposals to sell its assets in 2009, and in the same year advised him that then-JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dixon should “mildly threaten” then-chancellor Alistair Darling over a proposed bankers’ bonus tax. In all cases, the information passed was not yet in the public domain, enabling Epstein to make money and influence outcomes following Mandelson’s promptings.
The released files also show Mandelson addressing Epstein as his “best pal” and advising him to “fight for early release” in relation to his imprisonment for sex offences.
The scandal that broke out in the wake of Mandelson’s resignation also took the scalp of Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, a Mandelson acolyte who was heavily involved in the process of appointing his mentor as US ambassador.
One of the questions that has inevitably been asked is: Why would Sir Keir Starmer, who was no doubt aware of Mandelson’s long list of transgressions, choose to employ such a man to such an important post, and apparently against the advice of many in his inner team?
The answer lies in Mandelson’s deep connections with the Labour party, which began in the mid-1980s, and the part that Mandelson played in the creation of the project known as ‘New Labour’, as well as in the ascension of figures including Tony Blair and Keir Starmer to the highest levels of the party and the state.
Mandelson was a key and influential figure in the Labour party bureaucracy’s machinations to destroy the Jeremy Corbyn project, and he helped lay the foundations for Starmer’s rise as Labour leader following the party’s electoral disaster in the 2019 general election.
In the period leading up to Labour’s victory in the 2024 general election, Mandelson was one of Starmer’s chief advisors, and his appointment as US ambassador was clearly a quid pro quo for the efforts that he had put in, both to help bring about the collapse of Corbyn’s leadership (notwithstanding the efforts of Corbyn himself to collapse the project) and to smooth the path for Starmer’s rise.
However, Starmer’s popularity has never extended beyond the limits of a section of his own party. Even when he was being puffed off as a great statesman by much of the corporate media, he remained widely unpopular with the electorate after becoming party leader. Labour’s victory in the July 2024 election was built in the main on the almost complete collapse of the Conservative vote, as millions of voters switched from the Tories to Reform, handing Labour a clear runs in dozens of seats across the country.
One seat where Labour held a vice-like grip was in the constituency of Gorton and Denton, which Labour has held with sizeable majorities in its various incarnations (including as the Denton and Reddish constituency) for decades. That run of electoral success was brought to a juddering halt on 26 February, when a by-election, which was run after the then incumbent MP Andrew Gwynne resigned on the excuse of ‘ill-health’, having been dismissed from his post as under-secretary of state for public health and prevention after sending offensive messages via WhatsApp.
The election of the Green party’s Hannah Spencer, with Reform’s vote having doubled and Labour’s halved since 2024, was another hammer blow to Sir Keir and his ailing administration, whose popularity (12 percent as at 23 February) has already plunged record-breaking depths, assisted by Starmer’s history with the disgraced Mandelson and the whole of what has become known in the popular mind as the ‘Epstein class’.
At the time of writing, Starmer appears to have survived the worst of the Mandelson/Epstein scandal and remains in post, but it is clear that he stands on extremely shaky ground, and the newspapers openly and regularly discuss who ought to replace him when he is finally forced to quit the scene.
Noam Chomsky
Another prominent figure who found himself embroiled in scandal following the release of the Epstein files was Noam Chomsky, once the most heavily-promoted voice of the compatible left.
Professor Chomsky’s associations with Jeffrey Epstein, which date back to 2015, were revealed in the January release of 30,000 files, and showed that contact continued between the two men in 2019, while Epstein was under intense media scrutiny over fresh sex-trafficking allegations.
Epstein described the allegations as “putrid” and asked Chomsky whether he should defend himself or ignore them. Chomsky responded that those who had been attacking Epstein were “vultures”. He added that, in his view, there was an “hysteria that has developed about the abuse of women”, telling Epstein that he had been treated in a “horrible way” by the media, whose coverage of the allegations against him included the Netflix documentary series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.
The programme featured interviews with a number of young women who had been either coerced or trafficked to Epstein’s notorious island hideaway in the American Virgin Islands (Little Saint James, to be forever known in the public imagination as ‘Epstein island’). The women detailed their treatment at the hands of Epstein and his then partner Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell.
Chomsky gave it as his opinion that Epstein’s best course of action would be to ignore all the allegations being made against him.
Noam’s second wife, Valéria Wasserman Chomsky, a Brazilian translator 35 years his junior, has claimed that Epstein sought to “take advantage” of her husband, but the evidence shows that both Valéria and Chomsky were intimate and gushingly fond of the man they now seek to disavow.
No evidence has yet been presented that Chomsky took part in the crimes there, but he certainly visited the notorious island multiple times. Moreover, Epstein assisted in facilitating a transfer of $270,000 that he was paying to settle a dispute between himself and Valéria on one side and the children of his first marriage on the other regarding trusts that had been set up for his children and grandchildren.
Epstein is also alleged to have helped Chomsky ‘restructure’ his finances, and it seems that he encouraged Noam to disinherit his children and leave all his money to Valéria.
A charlatan in academia as well as in politics, Professor Noam Chomsky has always been a key pillar in the ruling class’s infrastructure of fake-left ‘anti-establishment’ politics (aka the ‘compatible left’). A consistent and vociferous anticommunist and critic of Marxist-Leninist science, he routinely describes workers’ states like the Soviet Union as “state capitalist” and “bureaucratic”.
Meanwhile, he has been permitted by the US ruling class to express open criticism of his government’s foreign policy and wars, as well as of the policies of the USA’s imperialist allies – providing the antiwar and rebellious masses with a safe critique that consistently framed its analysis within an anticommunist paradigm.
While there is no proof that Chomsky was complicit in the crimes of Epstein, his close association not only with him also with the likes of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Bill Gates has done irreparable damage to his reputation amongst the liberal intelligentsia who spent decades lauding him, while confirming to his many critics that they were wholly correct in their sustained criticisms of his political bankruptcy.
Not only was he an avowed and open supporter of the Democrats in the United States and an ardent critic of communism wherever it has found success, but we now know he was completely integrated into the social circles of the ruling elites and their agents and servants.
Media response to Epstein revelations
Various British media and politicians have tried, but singularly failed, to frame the Epstein revelations as evidence that ‘the Russians’ (and specifically Russian president Vladimir Putin) have been somehow involved in stoking the chaos that has beset the ruling classes of Britain, the USA and many European Union nations over recent years.
This attempt to amplify russophobic hysteria flies in the face of all the available evidence, however. For while Epstein seems to have been somewhat obsessed with trying to gain access to the Russian president (including asking him to arrange a visa), he was consistently stonewalled, and there is no evidence to suggest that they ever met. In fact, emails from Epstein to his associates betray his deep frustration at not having made the desired contact.
The effort being made to frame the scandal as somehow Russia-inspired or related reveals a certain desperation on the part of Britain’s client media to protect the British ruling class at all costs – and a willingness to sacrifice every last vestige of journalistic integrity in the process. While the Epstein scandal is opening the eyes of many in the working class to the degeneracy of their ruling class, it is also clearly revealing the complicity of media, politicians and other state institutions.
The British bourgeois media have for decades provided cover for the worst excesses of the ruling class, suppressing potentially explosive scandals and protecting perpetrators such as Jimmy Saville, whose crimes are believed to date back as far as 1955 (when he managed a dance hall) and continued for decades on BBC and NHS premises, as well as in children’s homes.
Let it not be forgotten that when Keir Starmer was director of public prosecutions, he was instrumental in making sure no charges were pursued against Saville, despite the increasing awareness of his criminality. In the end, an investigation was only allowed to take place after this intimate associate of our present king and former prime minister Margaret Thatcher had died.
There was also the industrial-scale abuse of boys at the Kincora care home in east Belfast, run by housemaster Wiliam McGrath, a far-right loyalist and MI5 informant known as the ‘Beast of Kincora’. The home was frequented by members of a notorious paedophile ring that included many establishment figures, including Lord Mountbatten, and which seems to have been run by British intelligence agencies.
The abuse at Kincora dated back to the 1970s at least, and over the decades many victims tried to blow the whistle on what was going on there, but the abuse never found its way onto front pages and authorities repeatedly failed in their duty to investigate the allegations.
Cyril Smith, Liberal (and subsequently LibDem) MP for Rochdale from 1972-92 serially abused young boys in care homes in his constituency, some of whom suffered from emotional and behavioural difficulties. Smith’s abuse dated back to before his election as MP, when he had been a local councillor with regular access to the Cambridge House hostel in Rochdale, for which he served as an honorary secretary. Despite having no formal childcare qualification, Smith exercised considerable control over which boys were admitted to the hostel.
When British satirical magazine Private Eye tried to publish allegations against Smith, the story was largely ignored by the mass media and suppressed by legal threats. As with Jimmy Saville, wider reports regarding Smith’s abuse and the sheer scale of his crimes only entered the public domain after his death in 2010.
The fallout
The release of this latest tranche of Epstein files (of which many more remain undisclosed), has impacted the ruling class across the imperialist and imperialist-aligned bloc, not only in the United States and Britain but also in Norway, France, Slovakia, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Gulf autocracies and the Baltic states. Senior officials have been forced to resign from their posts or have been investigated by authorities (or both) when their connections to Epstein were revealed.
But there has been a much greater human cost to this scandal, which is of course the number of young vulnerable girls coerced, trafficked or otherwise recruited – some aged as young at 14 – who often came from vulnerable and unstable backgrounds and had already suffered abuse and trauma.
Young girls like Virgina Giuffre, Marina Lacerda and others have become the unwitting prey for the degenerate predilections of the ruling elites, who evidently feel themselves to be above the law and above the masses of humanity.
As a result of the Epstein revelations, the very worst excesses of the decaying, decadent and moribund system are on display. The development of monopoly capitalism has created a vast and ever-widening gulf in wealth and power, producing a tiny elite class that feels itself to be superhuman, which exists in a bubble that is entirely divorced from all law and social norms.
This class has its own culture that justifies its exalted position and reinforces it by dehumanising and commodifying the vast mass of human beings, turning them into items of exchange to be consumed in whatever ways it sees fit.
In this context, a class solidarity has developed, whereby the ruling elites and their most trusted agents (including those of law enforcement) protect themselves by encouraging perverse and heinous acts and making sure that those who participate can do so unfettered by the fear of prosecution.
We note also that the degeneracy on display in the Epstein files is not confined to the rich and/or powerful but now permeates the whole of society with the systematic promotion of pornography, violence and drugs – all weapons aimed at demoralising and demotivating the working class.
It is today almost impossible to watch a film drama that doesn’t feature explicit sex scenes, gratuitous and often horrifying violence and/or the normalisation of drug-taking. Our children are being exposed to violent and pornographic videos at a younger and younger age, brutalising and desensitising them, and fundamentally affecting their development. The perverted ruling elites are thus setting the tone for the whole of society, warping our sense of what is right and what is normal, numbing us to the brutality of their rule and preparing us to accept the horrors of their genocidal wars.
In the case of Epstein, it is clear that he was part of a large-scale intelligence operation: spying and gathering compromising material that kept all those implicated secure so long as they didn’t try to step out of line, but which allowed the imperialist state machinery to deliver instant retribution against any individual who might be tempted to go off message.
What today stands exposed is the contorted bourgeois morality that sees the ruling class extolling family values in public while, away from the gaze of the working class and hidden from view by the bourgeois media, its members are engaging in the most depraved, exploitative and dehumanising behaviours imaginable.
It is increasingly evident that for the billionaire overlords of today’s imperialist world, ordinary workers are entirely expendable assets – be that on the frontline of their wars, in their mines and factories, or as accessories to their most sordid practices and elite ‘bonding’ sessions.
*****
Mandelson, Starmer, Maxwell … they all work(ed) for the ruling class, not for us
The following text is from two social media posts by our party chair Joti Brar.
The repeated revelations of paedophilia in high places, along with the details of Jeffrey Epstein’s role as an agent for Anglo-American and zionist intelligence agencies have convinced me of this:
– That there is no weird coincidence at play. It is not so much that high office breeds depravity as that a predilection for depravity is a precondition for promotion.
– That access to illicit behaviours like drug-fuelled orgies and sex with minors is presented as a perk of high office.
– That those who are not interested in these ‘perks’ are unlikely to be allowed to achieve the highest level in any public field, whether Hollywood, Fleet Street, Parliament or Church.
– That the existence of a file of compromising material on all those in the public eye is considered as necessary insurance by the ruling class, whose power is more precarious than it looks.
– Essentially, those who go along with this game can ‘enjoy’ the privileges of feeling themselves to be above the law, members of the club etc, and will remain untouchable while engaging in the most disgusting behaviours so long as they never step out of line.
– But Fleet Street and the police will be mobilised to denigrate and incarcerate any whistleblower the second it looks like they might be going to spill the beans about the true nature of the ruling class, its wars, its lies and its dictatorship.
We should note well in all of this the absolute discipline of the highest media editors in preserving silence for decades regarding well-known degenerates and their heinous crimes. If they are not members of this club themselves, they certainly understand the way the game is played and are willing to play their parts.
Moreover, they accept the premise that society’s most vulnerable members (ie, poor working-class children in care homes, young girls trafficked from eastern Europe) can be considered disposable fodder for the twisted urges and political manoeuvrings of the ruling elites. (Telegram, 3 February 2026)
*****
The deeper truth about the Epstein web is not that it reveals one corrupt individual, or even a network of degenerates, but that it exposes some of the means by which the unofficial, behind-the-scenes mechanisms of capitalist class rule are exercised.
Epstein was not just a sexual perversions fixer and party-giver, he was a business intermediary, a behind-the-scenes negotiator for bankers and governments, and a part of the secret services/compromat-creating machinery of the Anglo-American imperialist state machineries.
Anyone who thinks he was the only one is delusional. This is how the system really works. The social bonding of the elites at depraved parties goes hand in hand with the sharing of information and the making of backroom deals.
Participation brings access for aspirational mandarins of the financial oligarchy. And a detailed file of compromising material is a necessary condition for high office.
VI Lenin may not have had insights into the sexual debauchery of the bourgeoisie, but their mechanisms of rule were perfectly clear to him. He described in his 1916 book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, how the ruling class of the imperialist countries was becoming numerically very small, but was interconnected in ways that created a personal and entirely unelected network of decision-making.
“A personal link-up, so to speak, is established between the banks and the biggest industrial and commercial enterprises, the merging of one with another through the acquisition of shares, through the appointment of bank directors to the supervisory boards (or boards of directors) of industrial and commercial enterprises, and vice versa.” (chapter 2)
As Friedrich Engels pointed out even earlier:
“In the democratic republic … wealth employs its power indirectly, but all the more surely. It does this in two ways: by plain corruption of officials, of which America is the classic example, and by an alliance between the government and the stock exchange.” (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 1884, chapter 9)
This state of affairs cannot be affected by inquiries or by voting. It is the result of the development of capitalist production relations and it is enforced by a state machinery that has been perfected over many centuries of class rule.
To abolish the heinous criminality that is evidenced not only by paedophile sex rings but by endless genocides in the colonised countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America requires a complete change of social system – the smashing of the financiers’ machinery of rule and its replacement by the economic and political institutions of working-class rule.
Read Lenin on The State and Revolution. Arm yourself with knowledge. And get organised.
There is work to be done. (Telegram, 4 February 2026)