Nish Kumar

So when people say they didn't know, they certainly knew in 2008 that he had pled guilty to charges for procuring a child for prostitution.

So again, the sort of obfuscations and explanations...

are pretty nauseating.

And it's hard to even start to imagine how Epstein's victims are feeling this week.

It's also a massive headache for Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.

Mandelson was his mentor and reportedly McSweeney promoted his move to US ambassador.

As we're recording at 11am on Wednesday, the news has broken that Starmer is going to attempt to try and

Get ahead of this latest turning of the wheel in this scandal.

So he is going to release files relating to Mandelson's appointment as Britain's ambassador to the US.

And then government ministers apparently described this as drawing a line in the sand.

The Conservative Party was preparing to force the publication of the records, including what Mandelson may have told Starmer about his relationship with Epstein.

But instead of facing that vote, Starmer has ordered the publication of the records.

So that's going to be emails, documents and messages.

There will be some that are redacted.

that are deemed prejudicial to national security or that could damage diplomatic relations.

So I imagine as with a lot of the revelations relating to Epstein, when those are released, there will be some controversy and scrutiny over what has been redacted here.

I mean, you know, we're talking about kind of international crisis of trusts in government and, you know, this kind of rise of conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking.

You try and fight really hard to defend principles of trust and accountability and to say to people you can't allow that to be eroded, you know.

And we talk a lot about social media algorithms eroding trust and that is true and really important.

But I mean, sometimes it's really fucking hard to tell people that they should have confidence in government and not believe in conspiracy theories when this kind of information is revealed.