Epstein files rock UK -- but the real rot runs much deeper

[marmar]

Epstein files rock UK — but the real rot runs much deeper
The contrast with Trump's America is both obvious and shocking — but it’s not the whole story

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published February 15, 2026 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) Over the last couple of years, the long-term political parallels between the U.S. and the United Kingdom seem to have come unstuck. It’s a political-science truism that the two largest Anglophone democracies — both rooted, at least in principle, in the common law tradition and near-universal voting rights — tend to function as mirror images of each other, however approximately. Maggie Thatcher came a few years before Reagan, but they were closely allied and historically linked as figureheads of the triumphant New Right. Skip ahead a decade and Bill Clinton’s New Democrats preceded Tony Blair’s New Labour as avatars of the technocratic neoliberalism that promised to rule forever after the “end of history.”

What we see today, some years after the end of history came to a crashing end, looks very different at first glance. I would argue that the parallel still holds, in that the fundamental crisis of democracy afflicting both countries is strikingly similar. It’s tempting for Yank commentators to beat our breasts and proclaim that at least our elder siblings in Blighty are providing some accountability for the Jeffrey Epstein revelations, while the unhinged fascist regime in Washington plows straight through them like an Arctic icebreaker. That may be true, to a boring and limited extent, but it isn’t even close to the whole story. As to which of these formerly house-proud democracies is more badly damaged, that feels like a coin-flip.

It is certainly shocking, but hardly surprising, that the shamelessly corrupt Trump administration appears determined to survive the massive info-dump of the FBI’s Epstein files by admitting nothing, apologizing to no one and vigorously prosecuting its critics, protesters and other perceived enemies on threadbare charges. Whether this will “work,” in terms of larger political calculus or the midterm elections, is impossible to say. But it’s working well enough in terms of the Trump regime’s proximate goal, which is to hold as much power as possible for as long as possible. No one anywhere close to the White House has been forced to resign or been charged with a crime, and we can confidently predict that no such thing will happen.

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the situation appears almost upside-down. Prime Minister Keir Starmer had no known personal connections to Jeffrey Epstein but has been badly damaged by the latest set of revelations, although an intra-party coup attempt last week was apparently thwarted. Just 19 months after leading the Labour Party to a huge parliamentary majority in the last general election, Starmer looks to be on borrowed time, with his rivals in Labour’s various “soft-left” or centrist factions understood to be plotting his demise. .....................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/02/15/epstein-files-rock-uk-but-the-real-rot-runs-much-deeper/

[Joinfortmill]

1. And the saga of depravity continues.

[calimary]

2. This! Just boils it right down to its essence:

“… the Trump regime’s proximate goal, which is to hold as much power as possible for as long as possible.”

Yes. THIS!!!

[Kid Berwyn]

3. When the police are also the crooks in the files...

…We the People need to swear in different police.