496. Mandelson’s Disgrace: How Epstein Poisoned Our Politics

What do Peter Mandelson's ties to Jefferey Epstein reveal about the influence of the rich and powerful in British politics? Why did so many prominent figures continue associating with and supporting Jefferey Epstein after his conviction in 2008? How do wealthy elites exploit political systems, and what structural reforms can protect democracies from corruption? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Join The Rest Is Politics Plus: Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/politics. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith, James Clayden Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Senior Producer: Callum Hill General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

  There is so much in this latest batch that is bad for Trump, that is bad for Bill Gates, that is bad for Elon Musk.

• 0:07Rory Stewart?

  We've only seen this because Epstein happens to be the most famous sexual predator in the world, otherwise we'd never have seen any of this.

• 0:13Alastair Campbell?

  They've allowed something to be created where scandal is no longer scandal. It's just a story and it lasts half a news cycle.

• 0:20Rory Stewart?

  There's a very interesting question of intelligence connections. He's the perfect agent of influence from an intelligence agency because he can compromise people, he can blackmail people, he knows everybody.

• 0:30Alastair Campbell?

  Peter was always going to be a risk as an appointment.

• 0:32Rory Stewart?

  What is the nature of the world in which Mandelson is operating that Epstein can walk in when he's in his underwear and take a photograph of him?

• 0:39Alastair Campbell?

  That stuff I found really shocking.

• 0:44Rory Stewart?

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• 1:30Rory Stewart?

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• 1:45Rory Stewart?

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• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed... Managed to watch it. There you go.

• 1:59Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve. And of course, the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 2:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think you're not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this. Or should I say Fiona Fiona managed to do this?

• 2:30Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 2:46Speaker 02

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• 3:25Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 3:27Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 3:28Rory Stewart?

  And Alastair, we're going to be focusing on this episode exclusively on the question of Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Mandelson, and the bigger story, because I think it's time to really step back and see not just corruption in the British government, but the bigger story of what's happening in the world of democracies around the world, how very wealthy people are beginning to distort and influence politics in so many different ways with implications that go a long way beyond Epstein and Mandelson. Let's start with the Epstein story and then bring Mandelson into that story. So as almost everybody in the world now is aware, this is a man who was a sexual predator,

• 4:10Rory Stewart?

  a human trafficker of underage girls, abused and violated and destroyed them, some of whom have subsequently taken their own lives. He rose in a slightly mysterious way to extraordinary wealth and social connections. And the story as it relates to Britain really gets going about 25 years ago. When he becomes close to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, former Prince Andrew. And it's in 2001, before nine eleven, that we have these stories around Virginia Jeffrey and Prince Andrew. Virginia Jeffrey, of course, had taken her own life.

• 4:47Rory Stewart?

  Then fast forward 2008, Epstein is sent to prison for trafficking after a very, very complicated investigation that takes place with a lot of resistance. And the next part of the story is about people who continued to see him and associate with him even after his 2008 prosecution. One of whom, of course, is Peter Mandelson, who stayed in his apartment as the first Secretary of State, effectively the Deputy Prime Minister after Epstein had been convicted. He flies out as the second most senior person in the British Cabinet and stays in Epstein's flat. And then many, many other people are brought into this. And then in 2019, Epstein, of course, killed himself.

• 5:30Rory Stewart?

  His partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father, Robert Maxwell, you knew very well, is currently in jail appealing. This has become absolutely the heart of MAGA and Trump and the release of the Epstein files. First thing to say, the real core of this story, of course, are the victims who are underage girls, many of whom have found their names dragged in to the press in ways that they never consented to, some of whom have taken their own life. And we're about to go on to a story which is also about insider trading, political corruption, networking. But nobody should forget that at the core of this story is the extremely horrifying evil actions of this predator.

• 6:16Rory Stewart?

  And the men who with him engaged in this extraordinary pattern of industrial abuse.

• 6:23Alastair Campbell?

  There's so many names in here and we shouldn't assume or allege that just because your name is in these files that somehow you're guilty of crime.

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  Very quickly, before we get to Mandelson, here's some figures. So between two thousand three, two thousand four, Epstein sent seventy five thousand dollars to accounts linked to Mandelson. In June two thousand nine, Mandelson, now the first Secretary of State, effectively Deputy Prime Minister in Gordon Brown's government. So he's right there at the core of the government. Forwards an internal government memo to Epstein on the government's plans to sell twenty billion dollars of assets and Epstein asked for some questions, which Mandelson replies to. December two thousand nine, Mandelson tries to amend government policies on banker bonuses at Epstein's request. Also in December two thousand nine, Mandelson encourages Epstein to tell Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, to mildly threaten

• 7:15Rory Stewart?

  the government around banker's bonus tax plans. Three months earlier, Epstein had sent ten thousand pounds to Mandelson's partner, now husband from osteopathy course, and in May twenty ten, Mandelson gave Epstein advance notice for five hundred billion euro bailout from the EU to save the euro. Over to you.

• 7:34Alastair Campbell?

  There are exchanges with Epstein during the five days between the election that led to David Cameron being Prime Minister. Those five days between the election and the coalition being formed when Gordon Brown was kind of trying to hang on. And I was in the room for most of that time and as was Peter.

• 7:55Alastair Campbell?

  There's a sort of curious mix of the obvious shocking sense that he's actually talking to Jeffrey Epstein about that while it's happening.

• 8:04Rory Stewart?

  You almost could have been the Roman Hill is texting under the table to his mate Jeffrey Epstein while you're trying to pull stuff together.

• 8:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't know, but there's one bit where he talks about, he describes how there is, you may know, there's this secret passage from Number Ten through Underground to the Ministry of Defence, where if you're as tall as I am, it's quite a difficult place to walk. And he talks about how he's going there with Gordon.

• 8:25Rory Stewart?

  In that case, he's sort of showing off.

• 8:27Alastair Campbell?

  I think that is a kind of show, it is a form of showing off. Look, I was paranoid to the point of, I don't know how you describe it, but I was always very conscious when I was talking publicly, doing briefings or talking privately, including to colleagues. Just be very, very careful with what you know that has the potential either to move the markets or to move the political dial. Just be very, very careful.

• 8:52Rory Stewart?

  And this, let me just go back to the basics. So you'd been a journalist professionally. You then come in to be director of communications. And one of the big changes is you go from having a job of essentially trying to get as much information as you possibly can out of the government to now understanding that you're privy to government secrets. And there's some things which actually journalists shouldn't know because it's against national interest.

• 9:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, you know, we talked when the budget, the recent budget was published, we talked about just how incredible it was that so much stuff got leaked out. I mean, you're always talking to people, you're having private conversations, you're having public conversations, but you've just got to be very, very wary. And what you have a sense of with some of this stuff that Peter was sending to Jeffrey Epstein, including in one case, you know, quite a detailed note about some decisions that were being made in relation to the management of the global financial crisis. Now, that is, every line of that has got the potential to be market sensitive. You just got to be very, very careful.

• 9:44Rory Stewart?

  And everybody in the system is aware of it. The Treasury officials are incredibly aware of it. So Sir Nick MacPherson, who was eventually the permanent section in Treasury, talks about his unbelievable shock because the one thing that senior Treasury officials are aware is that you can make an enormous amount of money if you know what the government's going to do before it's going to do it, right?

• 10:02Alastair Campbell?

  Or even to go back to the sort of walking under the tunnel, you know, if and when a prime minister is going to resign, it's not just that that's big news, but that is news on which people are betting. I don't just mean betting at the bookmakers, I mean betting.

• 10:16Rory Stewart?

  On shorting markets.

• 10:17Alastair Campbell?

  Big time, on shorting markets, on the bonds. So there's Epstein, who is not just Epstein, the guy who's got his sort of, as we see from these files, has got his tentacles into all sorts of people across economies all around the world. But it's, you know, one of his, he's talking there about, there's one point, which again, I think was, people were genuinely shocked by, where Alistair Darling is chancellor and Epstein is lobbying Peter, it would seem, on behalf of Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan, who was one of Epstein's associates. And Peter is advising that Jamie Dimon mildly threatens Alistair Darling with

• 11:00Alastair Campbell?

  presumably saying, you know, we're a big bank, we've got a lot of interest, we can pull out if you don't do what we want. And again, that to me is just like, I mean, look, I've I've known Peter for a very, very, very long time. He's we've had a very up and down, chequered relationship. But that that stuff I found really shocking.

• 11:18Rory Stewart?

  One of the things that I'm trying to get my head around is before they sent Peter Mandelson to be the ambassador in Washington, so Keir Starmer, Morgan Mott Sweeney, et cetera, will have vetted him before they decided to send him out to be the ambassador to Trump just over a year ago. And they will have been aware already that he's somebody who knew Jeffrey Epstein, and they will have been aware that this was probably the biggest story in the world. So they will have sat him down and they presumably would have said, now's your opportunity. Tell us everything about your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, so that we can understand. I mean, did you take money from him? Did your husband take money from him? Did you pass information from him? Was he trying to get you positions on boards?

• 12:01Rory Stewart?

  Were you staying in his private apartments after the thing? Tell us about the relationship with Epstein, and what is it you think happened in that meeting?

• 12:08Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know. I honestly don't know. I think what happened with that, and you know, we talked about this at the time, Peter was always going to be a risk as an appointment.

• 12:16Rory Stewart?

  And why was he always going to be a risk?

• 12:18Alastair Campbell?

  Because you look at the record, you know, we had two very, very high profile resignations, both of them really relating to issues of powerful men with money. And, you know, you've seen me in places like Davos, I have a I have a natural, not revulsion is the wrong word, but I'm I'm naturally very suspicious about very, very wealthy people. I look at the MAGA crowd now, and I feel that's justified. Just be careful with them. Whereas I think there's something in Peter that he's that he's drawn to them, finds them interesting, finds them finds them attractive. And, you know, there are people are interesting that have got sort of all the sort of connections that Epstein has.

• 13:00Alastair Campbell?

  But I think it was a risk and the but on the vetting, you see, I think what happens, you know this from having been a minister. So when I was when I was went into to government as a government spokesman, I was vetted in all sorts of different ways. But politicians aren't vetted in the same way. So Peter's been a politician. He was an MP, then he became a cabinet minister, the European Commissioner. Now, at various stages, there may have been background vetting going on. But I think actually what you think with particularly very high profile politicians, of which Peter has been for a very long time, whether there's just a bit of complacency in things, well, if there's anything really bad, it would come up by now. Yeah. And I just don't know. Yeah. So I don't know that I look, the way this thing has developed, you know, he's had

• 13:44Alastair Campbell?

  to resign from the Labour Party, he's, there's this talk about him, whether he loses his peerage, whatever, I doubt very much whether he'll be appearing in the House of Lords anytime soon. But at the same time, you do now have some pretty senior people inside the Labour Party, calling for the police to get involved, to see whether there was actually any potentially criminal insider trading type activity going on with this, this interaction with with Epstein. I think this is damaging to all of us. Because it just looks, I don't know, it's it's not just the, you know, there, there we are, New Labour, I would argue, and I see part of my kind of role in life actually as making the case as to why New

• 14:26Alastair Campbell?

  Labour was a successful political project. And this just kind of drags you down again. Yeah. So I think it's bad for Labour now. I don't think it helps in relation to this by-election that's, that's coming up. It just looks like politics is a kind of horrible, murky game. And the thing about Peter, look, he's, he's, he's got all sorts of talents. But, you know, it's no, you know this because we had conversations about it at the time. I, I think it was always going to be a risk. And I think part of the appointment at the time was actually Keir, possibly more even more so Morgan McSweeney, wanting to project a sense of big characters, not afraid of having big characters around and, you know, and Peter is talented, there's no doubt. If you push to one side the reasons for his

• 15:11Alastair Campbell?

  resignations, he was an effective cabinet minister, he was an effective European Commissioner, people say he was an effective ambassador. But I think his two weaknesses to me, one has always been. He's constantly wanted to tell the story about how effective he is. Rather than just get on and do it. I've seen the whole third man thing, you know, the title of his book was all about. Kind of, you know, I'm just as important as they are, kind of thing, rather than just get on and do the job and. And be the kind of proper political operator. And then the second thing is this, this sort of, I guess, this propensity for risk and for. You know, men of power and wealth, because I, I, I think there was, I mean, he did an interview a while back, actually quite recently.

• 15:54Alastair Campbell?

  I, I sense he was doing a number of interviews. He did Laura Koonsberg. There's an interview that's come out today. Tuesday in the Times, which clearly was done some time ago, which said to me, he was trying to engineer a way back into some sort of public position. And therefore he developed another narrative about himself that would maybe allow that, allow that to happen. You know, so he clearly, I sense, was trying to get back into some sort of sense of back in public life. And yet he must have, I suspect he must have known there was more to come.

• 16:26Rory Stewart?

  He must have done. I mean, he must, I mean, he must, I mean, I always feel that, that with a politician. It's that terrible sense that I think a lot of my colleagues went through once they're. The press is after them, that they're lying there in bed with their partners thinking. Are they going to find out this? Are they going to find out that? What skeletons in the cupboard are they going to find?

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  Or you develop an attitude that says, well, yeah, that brought me down, but I came back and then that brought me down, but I came back. And I can do it again. You know, we, we saw with. People like Marco Rubio in Davos, you know, people in public life can often, they're very good at giving themselves a narrative. You know, the old Marco Rubio would be completely ashamed of what Marco Rubio is doing now.

• 17:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Alastair Campbell?

  But the new Marco Rubio.

• 17:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Alastair Campbell?

  Is giving himself justification for, for doing it.

• 17:15Rory Stewart?

  To J D Vance.

• 17:16Alastair Campbell?

  J D Vance.

• 17:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 17:17Alastair Campbell?

  Who, by the way, has been completely silent on all this stuff. And this is the J D Vance. Who said this Epstein files is going to be the thing that destroys the left. And maybe, maybe just on the broader. Picture, because I think, you know, here in the UK, we're all talking about. Peter Mandelson and to some extent Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. But actually, there is so much. In this latest batch, that is bad for Trump, that is bad for Melania, that is bad for Howard Lutnick, that is bad for Bill Gates, that is bad for Elon Musk, that is bad for Peter Thiel, that is bad for Steve Bannon, who's in there boasting that he's kind of got his Nigel Farage and Le Pen round his little finger. So there's so much stuff in there.

• 17:58Rory Stewart?

  We'll continue to go through this allegation. It's also worth remembering, and this applies to people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Bill Clinton and even Peter Mandelson and others, that Epstein was also a notorious liar and a blackmailer. People like Bill Gates very, very firmly are on the record saying all the emails from Epstein to him suggesting the most outrageous things are completely fabricated. So one of the challenges to this whole thing is trying to work out where the truth lies from a man who's taken his own life, where some of the victims have taken their own lives, and where criminal cases haven't yet been finished, which I guess may have been one of the reasons why Department of Justice was reluctant to release all this stuff.

• 18:41Alastair Campbell?

  You've worked in the States and you've worked in the charitable sector, trying to get these very, very wealthy people to give you money. I don't know how much time you've had to actually look at this latest stuff, because there's so much stuff. But what's your US take on it?

• 18:54Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's start with that, because one of the questions is, what the hell did all these people, and you've mentioned some, and you can add Woody Allen and Larry Summers, and George Stephanopoulos is turning up at parties, and George Mitchell, right? So what are they all doing? How do they all get dragged in? I was thinking about this, and I do know, partly because when I was fundraising initially at Harvard and charities and many other things, I saw a little bit of this world. And the first thing is that somebody like Epstein is able to network by leveraging.

• 19:31Rory Stewart?

  Money and contacts.

• 19:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Rory Stewart?

  And in the case of Epstein, this is a evil man who is also simultaneously trafficking and abusing vulnerable underage girls. But the bigger story actually applies to many, many, many of these people. Their ability to create these networks. So what actually happens at Epstein's parties? Number one, let's, let's take Larry Summers. So Larry Summers was the, is somebody I know reasonably well. He was the president of Harvard.

• 19:59Alastair Campbell?

  Also cabinet minister.

• 20:00Rory Stewart?

  And a cabinet, was actually the treasury, yeah, under Bill Clinton. So really big figure and was the chairman of OpenAI most recently. He's just had to resign because of Epstein. So what happens there? Well, first thing is Epstein is somebody who's giving money to Harvard, gives eight million dollars to Harvard. So one of the things these universities do, they're perpetually fundraising. Anyone running a charity, they're always short of money. So someone comes to you and they'll say, listen, you've got to meet this guy, Jeffrey Epstein. He's extraordinary. He could give you eight million dollars like that if he wanted to come along to the dinner party meeting. Number two, it turns out Larry Summers is raising money for his wife's small charity. So, so now we have the university, which is professional, we have the wife. Number three, Epstein is giving him dating advice.

• 20:43Rory Stewart?

  So the texts going back and forth, Larry's saying, I went out for dinner with this girl, but she hasn't been back in touch with me for a few days. And Epstein's writing back saying, don't worry about it, Larry. Play hard to get. She's pretending she's going out with a biker, but really you'll get back in. With other ones, these billionaires, he's giving them apparently medical advice on their sexually transmitted diseases. With a wealthy Emirati who owns a huge global company, that's this man called Sultan Ahmed bin Sulim, they're sharing pornographic videos with each other. They're sharing sick jokes, so. Guys going out in Dubai and Epstein's like, no girl in Dubai is safe tonight.

• 21:26Rory Stewart?

  But they're also trading endless micro favors. So Sultan bin Abu Sam will say, I'm going to the Trump inauguration. Can you arrange for Trump to shake my hand? And Epstein's in front of Trump's, right? Then Epstein will get back and say, I have

• 21:40Alastair Campbell?

  Zaki, another sexually transmitted disease.

• 21:41Rory Stewart?

  Say I have a Russian woman who I want

• 21:43Alastair Campbell?

  There's a lot of Russian women in this.

• 21:44Rory Stewart?

  Who I want to be trained as a massa. Can you arrange for him to be trained in a hotel in Turkey? Then he will get in touch with a Turkish billionaire who owns a huge hotel chain, who says, no problem, I'll make it happen. Now, I, if you break down all the things that I've mentioned in my last sort of two minute rant, there are so many different things going on there. There's professional fundraising, there's personal fundraising, there's business connections, there's political introductions, right? Now, add to this, he also will invite Nobel Prize winners to dinner. He will put 21 physicists on a private island with him in order to discuss the future of gravity. You go to a dinner at his house and you've got Nobel Prize winners on one side and you've got film stars on the other.

• 22:29Rory Stewart?

  And then he does another trick, and I'm gonna stop doing this, but I just want to sort of explain the way that someone like this works, right? He now becomes the guy who, if you want to know what's happening in British politics, he's got Mandelson on speed dial. If you want to know what's happening in Israeli politics, Ehud Barak is staying in his house. He's got insight into what's happening in Russia.

• 22:50Alastair Campbell?

  He's also offering his services, it strikes me, to the Russians in how to deal with Trump.

• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  Offering services to Russians, how to deal with Trump. And then there are all these Russian girls. There's a very interesting question of intelligence connections with Russia, with other intelligence agencies around the world, because he's the perfect agent of influence from an intelligence agency, because he can compromise people, he can blackmail people, he knows everybody. He's also moving their money around. So let's imagine you were a big American investment bank.

• 23:17Alastair Campbell?

  Like JP Morgan.

• 23:18Rory Stewart?

  Like JP Morgan, which actually instantly has settled separately with Epstein's victims for other stuff. But let's not get specific on JP Morgan. Generally, the structure is like this. Somebody contacts you, they could be from a country that's on the edge of being sanctioned, or there could be some questions about where their money came from. You facilitate with the American Investment Bank to open an account for them. You provide tax sheltering advice so that the person putting the money in doesn't get too involved. Then in return, you help the bank get inside information on how to change banking regulation in another country. And at the centre of this whole world is this guy. Now, the really extraordinary thing is not how people are seeing him before 2008,

• 24:03Rory Stewart?

  because before 2008, the story is quite straightforward, right? I say to you, Alissa, listen, you know, you're interested in raising money for this mental health charity. I know this amazing guy called Jeffrey Epstein, who has these incredible parties in his penthouse in New York. Come along, it's extraordinary. You will meet Woody Allen, you will meet a Nobel Prize winning physicist, Larry Summers will be there. He'll write a cheque for you. Oh, and listen, if you are late for a football match, he's got a private plane and he'll fix it to get you there. But then he's sent to jail. He's sent to jail for trafficking. And the extraordinary thing is that then after 2008, Mandelson continues to stay with him.

• 24:40Alastair Campbell?

  Summers.

• 24:41Rory Stewart?

  A lot of these people that we've mentioned, very, very well-known people, continue to go to his parties.

• 24:47Alastair Campbell?

  Including people like Howard Lutnick, current Commerce Secretary, who has made a big thing about how he and his wife were disgusted by this guy way back when. But now we see the emails saying, can we come to the island? Can we hang out? Elon Musk endlessly trying to hang out with him.

• 25:04Rory Stewart?

  Steve Bannon trying to get his plane. Richard Branson saying, come around to the island, bring your harim. Bring your harim with him. So my question is, what is it that they told themselves? Is it that nearly 20 years ago, somehow people could convince themselves, some people, not Tina Brown, who to be fair, when she's invited to one of these parties with Woody Allen and Jeffrey Epstein and Charlie Rose, is like, what the hell is this, a predator's party? No, I'm not going, you can F off, right? So there are people who already by then are like, excuse me, no. But a number of other people, apparently from a certain generation, are somehow saying, I don't know what they're saying, maybe they're saying there's some misunderstanding. He slept with a prostitute that got caught up in the law somehow, but he served his time. It's fine now, he's a great philanthropist.

• 25:48Alastair Campbell?

  I know that Peter Mandelson said that, you know, he wishes he hadn't believed him. In other, and I guess what he was being forced to believe or asked to believe was that somehow, and this is what predators do, they they project themselves as victims.

• 26:02Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 26:02Alastair Campbell?

  So that, you know, somehow the system is working against him, whereas in fact, he's got the system in the palm of his hand.

• 26:08Rory Stewart?

  And then presumably it helps if at the same time that you're going, everybody else is also going.

• 26:14Alastair Campbell?

  That's how great networkers work. They, people are drawn to them in part because of their network. And this guy had an incredible network.

• 26:21Rory Stewart?

  So when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is taking money from him and also getting him to invest in startups, he is doing this trick of saying to MIT, yes, I'll give you money, but what I really want to do is match fund with other philanthropists. So invite the other philanthropists to Ireland, I'll match fund that donation. So he's then rebuilding his network after his conviction through his philanthropic giving. And I think they must be saying to themselves at the board meeting, when people are like, are you sure we should be taking money from this? They're saying, well, but he's also, you know, talking to the Clinton Global Initiative, he's talking to its foundation, he's talking to all these other things. So we're probably okay. They want money for their foundations.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other thing is maybe the difference between the UK, there's lots of differences in the UK and the US. But I think the role of money in their politics and their public life is it plays a far bigger role than it does here. And I think people like that get away with a lot more. I think the reason why this is so damaging on the political front is because you do have this sense of what what working people kind of think exists, which is a sort of global elite that can get away with anything. And okay, Epstein went to jail and he's now dead, but this, these papers are full of names of people.

• 27:34Rory Stewart?

  And we haven't seen it all, have we?

• 27:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't think we have.

• 27:37Rory Stewart?

  Which is presumably why Trump was reluctant to release the Epstein files and Biden was reluctant to release the Epstein files. I mean, Biden and Trump have been sitting on a bomb that basically detonates under everything. But my guess is if you were to get hold of the emails of Elon Musk or the emails of Sam Altman and their photographs and things, you wouldn't get sexual predator activity, but you would get all the other stuff that I'm talking about, the peddling of influences, the introductions, the political information. Well, let's take a break.

• 28:12Speaker 03

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• 29:12Speaker 05

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 29:15Speaker 06

  On October 2nd.

• 29:16Speaker 05

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 29:21Speaker 06

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 29:28Speaker 07

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what...

• 29:33Speaker 06

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 29:36Speaker 07

  I'm not the first, Danny.

• 29:37Speaker 06

  Digger. See the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.

• 29:47Alastair Campbell?

  I mentioned Bannon, this is the thing, because what I found really interesting about the reaction to all of this, MAGA and their kind of fellow travelers here, the sort of Farage Reform Law, they've been pretty silent about the whole thing. Except one bitter MAGA, which is completely furious and obsessed with it. Okay, right, but okay, but I'm talking about the sort of the leaders, like JD Vance, who's, you know, got a pretty active Twitter finger. He's been silent for five days, okay? This is the guy who said this was going to bring down the left. Trump comes out yesterday and basically just says, we've talked enough about Epstein and there's nothing bad about it for me, which is not true. He and Melania are all over this stuff.

• 30:26Rory Stewart?

  And he's broken though, hasn't he, with Marjorie Taylor Greene, because this is her obsession instead.

• 30:30Alastair Campbell?

  Why he's broken, I don't know. But let me just give you this one, right? There's so much stuff in here. There's an exchange between Steve Bannon and Epstein. Bannon, I'm now an advisor to front, I think he means the National Front, Salvini and the League, AFD, Swiss People's Party, Orban, Land and Freedom and Farage. Next May, European Parliament elections, we can go from 92 seats to 200 and shut down any crypto legislation or anything else we want. Reply, Roger that.

• 31:01Rory Stewart?

  So we've got far-right nationalists, we've got crypto legislation, but what is he actually asking for? He's asking for support, financial support for their campaigns and probably also introductions to these very shadowy groups that do campaigning, the kind of groups that I was talking about, came to me with the Lana Merrill thing, that are going to do sock puppets and things. And that's where his connection to other jurisdictions, intelligence agencies, other campaigns come in. Partly Epstein is a massive bullshitter, right? So he's endlessly exaggerating his influence, but he will have given Bannon the impression, probably that he's worth 10 times as much as he has, and that he can make politics and campaigning happen all over the world.

• 31:37Alastair Campbell?

  And the truth is Bannon is connected to all those people. It has been helping all of those people. But I think that's one of the reasons why Farage et al have just been pretty much silenced about this.

• 31:45Rory Stewart?

  One of the interesting things that goes on when you read this is that they're all bullshitting each other.

• 31:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, for sure. But just to give you a few more, because I mean, there's so much stuff in here. But like, so for example, Epstein setting up a meeting between Peter Thiel, tech bro, libertarian, and the guy that Biden was going to make head of the CIA in 2014, and doing that, not just saying he's doing it, doing that. Thiel comes up a lot in this stuff.

• 32:12Rory Stewart?

  Peter Thiel is also the major cornerstone investor in tech companies employing former CIA staff and working on contracts with the CIA and the Department of Defence to deliver. And he's meeting the new director of the CIA. So there is a direct commercial interest for Peter Thiel. And the nominated future director of the CIA should not, in a functioning system, be meeting Thiel without officials in the room because of the sensitivity of the procurement contracts.

• 32:41Alastair Campbell?

  Right. But look at the world that we're in now. I mean, that was in a world where there were kind of rules and there were guardrails. And now we have a president who says he doesn't need rules and he doesn't need guardrails. He just needs his own morality, whatever that that might mean. We then have Teal, essentially, this goes back to my sovereign individual theory of life, essentially saying they need more chaos. When there is chaos, this is on the international front, America has a better chance of becoming a hegemony.

• 33:08Rory Stewart?

  This is him saying to Epstein.

• 33:09Alastair Campbell?

  He and Epstein having this this this conversation. I mean, Musk, honestly, Elon Musk comes over as truly pathetic in these. You know, I've had this theory that Musk's big, you know, the guy's smart and he's built himself into, you know, supposedly the richest guy in the world. But he has this embarrassing need to be cool and to be considered funny. So he's constantly badgering Epstein to know when the coolest party is going to be on the island, whether he can go there. Epstein's helping him sort his publicity for Tesla. Epstein was also giving Peter Mandelson advice on his biography. He's just sort of, he's into these people at every level, all of the time.

• 33:46Rory Stewart?

  And he connects more. So the man that I was talking about, who he's doing sick jokes about chasing girls in Dubai, is also getting in touch with him, asking whether Mandelson can be on the board of his new company. And then he's reaching out to Mandelson, recommending. So he's got something different for everyone. For some people, it is very, very young girls. There are other people in his network who are not interested in that at all. Peter Mandelson is gay. Uh, there's no suggestion presumably that, you know, some of the women he's dealing with are interested in young women, right? They instead are chasing him because they want tiny bits of money for their partner or they want money for their charity. The third category is people like Elon Musk, who may well not be interested in any of that stuff, but just wants to be at a cool party.

• 34:28Rory Stewart?

  Steve Bannon, a lot of what he's texting about is, can I get on your plane? Can I have a free plane ride? The genius of Epstein is to be able to use the ability to offer something different to everyone. I mean, even you ended up in his apartment, right?

• 34:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I did, yeah.

• 34:44Rory Stewart?

  And you met him?

• 34:45Alastair Campbell?

  I did.

• 34:46Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 34:46Alastair Campbell?

  Once.

• 34:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, no, but I mean, I, if I was honest, if I was on.

• 34:50Alastair Campbell?

  Judgment.

• 34:51Rory Stewart?

  But if I was honest with myself, um. Uh, would I, uh, when I was running a Harvard Center, two thousand eight, before he was convicted, if somebody had said, oh, you've got to get together with this amazing guy who has these great parties in New York. He could give money to your center. Come along with me. I'll take you to the dinner party.

• 35:10Alastair Campbell?

  I think maybe the fact that I met him on my own in some very odd circumstances where I just bumped into Ghislaine on a plane. And she said, what are you doing tonight in New York? And come and meet my boyfriend, that it was one on one.

• 35:21Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 35:22Alastair Campbell?

  Because he, he, I'm not saying this in hindsight. I said it at the time, did you know that? He gave me the creeps.

• 35:26Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 35:27Alastair Campbell?

  Not in any, he wasn't sort of saying, oh, do you want to come and meet some young girls? There's none of that.

• 35:30Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 35:31Alastair Campbell?

  But he gave me the creeps.

• 35:32Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 35:32Alastair Campbell?

  Mainly the name dropping.

• 35:33Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 35:34Alastair Campbell?

  And the sense of being the center of his own universe.

• 35:36Rory Stewart?

  Presumably though, you failed the test in a way also, because those, his name dropping is designed to try to see whether you're prepared to drop names with him. Um, as he explores these different contacts, are you getting interested? And are you, Alistair, gonna say, oh, well, actually, I know this guy and there's a business deal here? Or here's some gossip from this particular world leader or?

• 35:56Alastair Campbell?

  And the only thing that's interesting, when you see, cause like, yet again, over the papers today, there's the picture of Peter Mandelson in his underwear.

• 36:02Rory Stewart?

  Um. What's with the underwear?

• 36:04Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I wonder.

• 36:05Rory Stewart?

  Why is he standing with it in his underwear with a girl in his room?

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  I wonder whether Epstein was filming everything that went on within his houses.

• 36:12Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yeah, I think definitely.

• 36:13Alastair Campbell?

  So that picture is probably, and Peter's not gonna volunteer to have himself taken, his picture taken.

• 36:18Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, no, no. These pictures are, if you look at all the pictures that have been released, so many of them have been deliberately got by Epstein. Because he has something of you. I mean, it's no accident that his pictures of Prince Andrew are pictures of him trying to kiss someone or lying over a girl or Mandelson in his underwear or Mandelson in his bathrobe.

• 36:36Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 36:37Rory Stewart?

  But, but it is also questionable, what is the nature of the world in which Mandelson is operating? That Epstein can walk in when he's in his underwear and take a photograph of him.

• 36:47Alastair Campbell?

  Now, and I'm wondering whether it is even a photograph.

• 36:49Rory Stewart?

  Or is it a secret camera?

• 36:50Alastair Campbell?

  Whether it's just some sort of CCTV. I don't know. I've got no idea.

• 36:53Rory Stewart?

  I, I, I almost get the impression because of the way they're looking at them, they're often looking up. He's come in and sort of surprised them and taken a little picture of them.

• 37:02Alastair Campbell?

  But that particular one isn't, it's like, literally, it looks like somebody's. Briefing or dictating.

• 37:07Rory Stewart?

  I don't know in a weird way what's more creepy, hidden cameras or the idea that actually you've created a world where everybody's in a permanent state of undress and your host can walk in and out taking photographs of you. Can I finish with a big politics point, which is how do we protect our democracies against this, right? We've got hundreds of MPs on low incomes, some of them very insecure, struggling to get jobs when they leave. They are perfect prey for wealthy, well-connected men who can offer them board positions, invite them to parties, put them on private planes.

• 37:45Rory Stewart?

  We have to think about what it is with laws, structures, incentives, culture, which stops this happening again and again and again, because we've only seen this because Epstein happens to be the most famous sexual pedophile in the world who killed himself. Otherwise, we'd never have seen any of this, right? Mandelson would have got away with this for the rest of his life. And my guess is there are dozens, dozens, dozens of people involved in very, very odd relationships of this sort. And that's why I think that although Keir Starmer is a very honorable man, he should not actually even have been taking favors like glasses, clothes for his wife, et cetera.

• 38:26Rory Stewart?

  Because as soon as you get into these relationships, however innocent they seem, somebody's got something over you. You know, once they've bought clothes for your wife, they can always pick up the phone and you've got to pick up the phone.

• 38:39Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think you've got to be very, very wary of it. A lot of people are not. I'm afraid, I think it's partly the influence of American politics. American politics has a massive influence on all of us, all of the big democracies. And it is driven by money, it's driven by the lobbyists, it's driven by, and what we're seeing now with Trump is a level of open, admitted, boastfully embraced corruption that is almost unthinkable. But the reason why I find, you said you're going to make a political point, the reason why I find this politically. So upsetting and so difficult is because it just it feeds into this idea, they're all at it, they're all they're all the same, they're all it plays into that kind of anti-politics

• 39:21Alastair Campbell?

  agenda. And the truth is, I hope people get the message that actually know, we're not all the same, that we're not all driven just by money. We don't all see a link between connection, network and policy decisions. We're not all insider traders. But it's terrible, it's terrible for politics. And the thing about Trump, I mean, Trump just brazenly yesterday says, oh, people fell up and talk about Epstein, there's nothing bad about me. There's loads of stuff that's bad about him. But he managed to drown out this week alone, he's the most mentioned person in the files. He's had this big crypto thing going on with the Emiratis, which is, again, no previous president, I don't think

• 40:03Alastair Campbell?

  would have done. He's suing the IRS for, is it 13 billion? Because they put out his his tax returns, he's suing the comedian Trevor Noah, they've arrested Don Lemon for turning up at a protest, and he's announced the closure of the, what was once the respected Kennedy Center, which is now the Donald J. Trump Kennedy Center. This is the Steve Bannon flood the zone with shit. And nobody knows where to look. And I think the success, this is what the American media and American politics really need to look deep into themselves for. They've allowed something to be created where scandal is no longer scandal, it's

• 40:46Alastair Campbell?

  just a story, and it lasts half a news cycle. It's a scary, bad world.

• 40:52Rory Stewart?

  I wonder actually whether we may not be underestimating the damage this will do to Trump. Because Marjorie Taylor Greene famously has broken from Trump around this issue. I think the MAGA base has made the Epstein files, and I'm not talking here about the leadership, I'm talking about the base has made the Epstein files right at the heart of that whole ideas of conspiracy theories, politics, child sex rings, etc. And of course, there's a bit of this, which actually seems to be a real life version, almost of a kind of QAnon conspiracy, where genuinely powerful wealthy people are involved in abusing underage girls.

• 41:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Rory Stewart?

  I think it's it will damage Trump. It's probably the one thing for his base that he's done more actually than what's ICE has been doing, more than what he's been doing in terms of domestic civil liberties. Given that their whole movement is about an out of touch billionaire elite class that's above the law and is abusing underage children, I think this is a big problem for him.

• 41:56Alastair Campbell?

  Even though Trump has sort of just weighed this latest batch away in that in that way that he has, and he's he's helped to do that by lots of the media. I think you're right. I think there's a lot in here that provided the American media doesn't just play his game, I think has the potential to do him damage. But I think on your bigger point, I think this is so damaging for politics everywhere. Because your question about how do we deal with corruption, if you have what is seen and what is styled as the leading democracies of the world, in America's case, so drowning in this stuff, you know, where we talk about billion dollar campaigns,

• 42:38Alastair Campbell?

  or even local campaigns, you're so dependent on going out to the people with the money, who then want something in return. So I think unless we do get away from the way that money controls politics, then we're all going to drown with this stuff. Because the truth is, American politics is so dominant in all of our lives right now.

• 42:56Rory Stewart?

  So first thing we could do is campaign finance reform. I mean, what I found when I went from running as a local constituency MP to trying to run for Mayor of London where I needed to try to raise a million, two million for a race, is suddenly you become very, very aware of how compromising that is, trying to get people to write you cheques of ten, fifty, hundred thousand. So campaign finance reform. Tories shouldn't be funded by the very wealthy. Labour shouldn't be funded by the trade unions. We should do what Alan Oskus is doing in South Australia.

• 43:23Alastair Campbell?

  Who's funded by Iranians, he's off with some church warden with links to Kazakhstan, that's why he was in Dubai or somewhere getting more money.

• 43:31Rory Stewart?

  People who make money on crypto and are living in Thailand, etc. Absolutely. So campaign finance reform. Number two, I'd like MP salaries and pensions to be increased so that

• 43:40Alastair Campbell?

  Very popular with the public.

• 43:41Rory Stewart?

  So that they're less tempted to get involved in this dubious stuff. And you would combine that with very, very strict rules. Very strict rules on what jobs they can take within three years of leaving Parliament and make sure that they're properly paid and rewarded, so they're not tempted to bend those rules. And then I'm afraid, absolutely, and this again is something that Farage has done and again and again, come down like a ton of bricks on people like Farage and Boris Johnson, who don't properly declare these trips, these connections. I mean, what is the Lebedev party story with Boris Johnson other than an exact version minus the underage girls of the Epstein story?

• 44:21Rory Stewart?

  Glamour, film stars, celebrities, party, networks, connections, money, intelligence, connections, compromise, and finally ending up in the House of Lords. So I would love to see maybe Keir Starmer, because this is in his wheelhouse, making cleaning up politics part of his business. But you don't clean up politics, I'm afraid, by continuing to reduce MPs' salaries, their pensions. You just create more and more desperate people who are going to get greedier and greedier. Not all of them. I mean, there are there are figures like Jeremy Corbyn, who I suspect is not on the make.

• 44:56Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, let's be fair, there are a lot of MPs who are not bent. There are a lot of MPs.

• 45:00Rory Stewart?

  Ed Miliband famously was an expenses saint, did very well, didn't claim as expenses. But I saw Peter Malmesum in 2011, 2012, going around handing his business card out to people. I saw people in my own party moving on and getting jobs. I saw this whole question of what are you doing putting MPs on your board? What's it about? What are they bringing to the party? Well, they're not bringing great expertise in private equity. The only thing they're bringing is connections, lobbying, et cetera. So cleaning that all up, so important.

• 45:39Alastair Campbell?

  I think we've kidded ourselves for a long time that because we're not as bad as America, we're not, we're not a corrupt country. No, we're not as corrupt as America. Our politics is not as bad as American politics. But there's another example where we just turned blind eye. You mentioned the Levadef trip with Johnson. We still don't know what that was about. I mean, why is Levadef in the House of Lords? Why did Roman Abramovich end up owning Chelsea? I mean, Bill Browder was genuinely shocked that the British establishment, of which at that time I was a part, allowed this stuff to happen. So I think you're right. I mean, look, we said this when Labour were in opposition. I think cleaning up our politics, making people feel that democracy means something,

• 46:20Alastair Campbell?

  I think is an urgent political challenge. And, you know, if you're Keir Starmer, there he goes off to China, has a pretty successful visit, comes back, does a statement in the House of Commons. And what was he talking about, had to talk about yesterday? Epstein, Mandelson, corruption in politics. Got to clean it up. Okay, and tomorrow we're back with the question time. We're going to talk about Iran, and we're going to talk about Hungary, election coming up there. We're going to talk about the upcoming by-election in Manchester, and a very interesting special election that's just happened in Texas with a massive swing against the Republicans. See you then.

• 46:57Rory Stewart?

  See you then. Bye bye.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. If y'all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 47:21Speaker 07

  What would happen if I stopped moving? You start, you freeze in there, that's what...

• 47:25Speaker 06

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 47:28Speaker 07

  I'm not the first then.

• 47:29Speaker 06

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 not a minute without parent.

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