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Epstein Files Push Britain Into Institutional Crisis (6/10/26) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

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Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
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Epstein Chronicles. When the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was breaking once again,
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all the way back in July of last year, I
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told you that things were going to get hectic over
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in the UK, and boy have they become hectic. The
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situation over in the UK is not only growing by
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the day, but it's putting a lot of people in
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serious jeopardy. There's a lot of questions now about why
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people look the other way and why the Metropolitan Police
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didn't step in to stop what was going on sooner.
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And not only that, but according to polling, the Royal
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family's approval ratings are the worse they've been in decades.
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Then you add to the mix that Starmer has a
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lot going on as far as people trying to get
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rid of him, and you got the perfect environment for
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some shit to pop off. So today we have an
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article from the Eastern Herald dot com and the headline
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Epstein files are tearing Britain's institutions apart and the polling
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proves it. This article was authored by the europe Desk.
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The first question is not about Jeffrey Epstein, It's about
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what kind of country allows this much to happen and
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still can't name who bears responsibility. And I think that's
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a pretty fair question. Somebody made the choice to look
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the other way, somebody made the choice to protect them.
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Who's at somebody? And it's the same question we ask
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here in the United States. There's all these people involved
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in protecting this dude. How come we don't know who
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they are? And don't give me that, Oh, it's a
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nameless bureaucrat BS. That's nonsense. I think we've already disproved
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that time and time again. That's the question now hanging
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over Britain, and it has no clean answer. The Epstein files,
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roughly three million documents released by the US Department of
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Justice since January of twenty twenty six, have not merely
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damaged reputations. They've done something more durable. They have quantified
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in polling data, in parliamentary votes and resignation letters, the
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degree to which the British public no longer trusts the
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state that governs it. And it's the same shit we're
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dealing with here in America. All of these institutions nobody
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trusts them, and that's the big problem. If you can't
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trust the Department of Justice to go after people like Epstein,
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then what are we even doing here? No single institution
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has been spared. The monarchy, Parliament and Metro Police have
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each absorbed body blows from the same scandal in the
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same months, with consequences that are compounding rather than settling. Look,
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I know it's rough, I know it sucks, and I
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know it's painful, but now's the time to pull the
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band aid off and I would love to see the
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UK do that. I'd love to see them lead the way,
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But I feel like it's more of a cover up
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and it sucks. It really sucks that we can't trust
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anybody that's in a position to go after the people
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that should be hemmed up. But they have no one
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to blame but themselves, right, They're the ones that made
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the choices. They're the ones that look the other way,
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They're the ones that shirk their responsibility, and they're the
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ones now that have to answer for it. The data
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at this point is not subtle. According to ipso's polling
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conducted between February thirteenth and sixteenth, every senior member of
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the royal family saw personal approval ratings declined compared to
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November of twenty twenty five, support for King Charles fell
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nine percentage points to forty six percent. Prince William dropped eight,
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Princess Ann nine. Most strikingly, backing for the monarchy as
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an institution slipped to forty seven percent, the first time
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in modern polling it has fallen below a majority. Yo,
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I've said this for how long. The monarchy is something
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of the past, and the Queen did a lot of
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damage by protecting Andrew. I know people don't want to
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hear that. I get a lot of love for the Queen.
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I'm not saying she was a bad person, but she
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made a lot of bad decisions when it comes to Andrew.
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And now that bill is come and do and do
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you really think that Charles is the guy to handle it,
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He's the guy that's going to fix everything, that's going
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to usher the monarchy into a new century. Well, if
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you think that, you're now in the minority in the UK.
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A separate Savanta survey for the anti monarchy group Republic
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put institutional support for the crown at forty five percent,
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down three points in four months. Not exactly the trajectory
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you're looking for, And those numbers arrived before Andrew mount
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Batten Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles, was arrested
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on February nineteenth a suspicion of misconduct in public office,
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the first senior British royal to be taken into police
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custody in nearly four centuries. What an absolute embarrassment, all
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of you out there that never lived up to your
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parents' expectations. Have no fear you pell in comparison to
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Prince Andrew. Imagine being given all that privilege, all that money, wealth,
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access and doing this with it. Absolute scumbag. Thames Valley
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Police were examining whether Mount Baton Windsor, during his time
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as UK Special Envoy for International Trade, forwarded classified government
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reports to Epstein. King Charles responded with a statement signed
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Charles R. Rather than routed through Buckingham Palace. The deliberate
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informality was its own signal the Palace was distancing itself
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by name from the King's own brother. Mount Baton Windsor
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was released under investigation after approximately eleven hours. No charges
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have been brought. The investigation remains open and I have
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my doubts, I really have my doubts just how far
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it's gonna go. It should go real far right, should
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be real expansive, a full on league colonoscopy. But remember
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we're talking about power, and power protects power. So I
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have serious reservations if that's about to change. As Eastern
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Herald reported in April, the arrest triggered a global reaction
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precisely because it demonstrated that formal legal accountability was, at
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a minimum possible, even for figures who had previously seemed
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insulated by proximity to the throne. Whether the investigation ends
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in charges is a question that as of June twenty
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twenty six, no one inside or outside the Metropolitan Police
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has been willing to predict. Look again, I don't know.
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I would hope that it would, and I would hope
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they have the evidence to go after whoever they need to.
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But I have my doubts. The crisis that the Palace
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would be serious enough on its own, But the Epstein
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files arrived in a country whose political class was already
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struggling to justify itself. Kiros Starmer won the twenty twenty
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four general election with a majority of one hundred and
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seventy two seats. Within eighteen months, IPSOS recorded his net
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favorability rating at minus sixty six, the lowest for any
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sitting prime minister since the polling firm began tracking the
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figure in nineteen seventy seven. The mechanism of that collapse
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runs directly through the Epstein files. In December of twenty
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twenty four, Starmer appointed Peter Mandelsson as the UK's ambassador
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to DC. Mandelssohn's social connection to Epstein was publicly known
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before the posting was announced big time, and it wasn't
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just like a rumor. Everybody knew that Mandelsson and Epstein
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were very close. Starmer appointed him anyway. Starmer later told
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Parliament that he knew of Mandelsson's friendship with Epstein, but
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that Mandelssohn had died repeatedly to my team when asked
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about his relationship with Epstein before and during his tenure.
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He fired Mandelssohn in September twenty twenty five after emails
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emerge showing Mandelsshn had made contact with Epstein following Epstein's
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two thousand and eight conviction. So did everybody else. Let's
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not make pretend here that you know, mister mister Mandelssohn
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was the only one all these scumbags did. Further document
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releases in January and June twenty twenty six deep in
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the damage. According to the Washington Post, documents released on
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June first showed mandelssh had assured Starmer the Washington appointment
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was won, the government would never regret bank statements in
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the files. As Time reported suggested, Epstein had made payments
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totaling seventy five thousand two accounts connected to Mandelssohn between
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two thousand and three and two thousand and four. Mandelsh
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resigned from the Labor Party in February twenty twenty six,
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and subsequently from the House of Awards. Yeah, he was
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forced to. If he had his own way, he would
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have stayed there forever getting rich on the public dime,
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stealing from the people of the UK. The parliamentary fallout
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was severe and rapid. By May, over ninety five Labor
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MPs had called on Starmer to resign or set out
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a departure timetable held Secretary west Reading resign from cabinet
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on May fourteenth, telling colleagues that Starmer will not leave
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the Labor Party into the next general election. He stops
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short of formally triggering a leadership contest, which requires signatures
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from one fifth of the Parliamentary Party. As of June eighth,
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Starmer remains in office, insisting he will stay. What comes
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next is genuinely unclear. The Labor Party's internal arithmetic and
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the ninety five plus pms on record suggests a resolution
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will not be tidy. And look, when it comes to politics,
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especially in places like the UK, when is it these
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guys are going to be looking to, you know, go
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after their opponents, just like here in America, same kind
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of shit, and they're going to look to try and
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capitalize on these missteps. The Metro Police faces a different
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kind of accounting. Trust in the force had already been
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corrooting for years through scandals including the murder of Sarah
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Evrard by a serving officer and the Spy Cops inquiry findings.
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A Guardian poll in twenty twenty four placed trust in
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the Metro Police at just thirty four percent. The Epstein
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files have added specific documented allegations to that general mistrust.
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That met officers were present at dinner parties hosted by
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mountbat and Windsor and attended by Epstein, that eighty seven
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Epstein linked private flights entered and departed UK airports carrying
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unidentified female passengers without meaningful scrutiny, and that the met
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had identified a London property rented by Epstein in which
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young women were reportedly housed under conditions of financial coercion,
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trafficked and declined to investigate further on the grounds that
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no formal criminal allegation had been made against the UK
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based individual. That last decision, now public and document, has
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been widely characterized as a failure of institutional responsibility. The
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question leaves it open whether it reflected operational caution, inadequate procedure,
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or something worse is one The Metro Police has not answered.
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The force's statement that officers had followed all reasonable lines
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of inquiry was made in a context that those lines
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of inquiry are now subject to parliamentary and judicial scrutiny.
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A UK prosecutor, as Eastern Herald reported last week, warned
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in early June that a full inquiry could take over
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a year. Survivors have characterized that timeline as a continued injustice. Look,
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I get it, they want this shit to get growing,
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get cracking, as it should, but it's going to take time.
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Taken separately, any one of these threads, the monarchy's polland collapse,
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the Labor government's parliamentary crisis, the police unanswered questions would
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be manageable. Britain's political culture is experienced at absorbing individual scandal.
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What makes the present moment structurally distinct is the convergence
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all three institutions are damaged by the same source in
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the same news cycle. If those data from April twenty
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twenty six found that two thirds of British adults do
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not have confidence the government is running the country with integrity,
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that figure is not the product of one scandal. It
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reflects the effect of watching the institutions designed to prevent
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this kind of thing fail simultaneously to prevent it, and
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not only that, but clean it up. It's one thing
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to fail and admit, look, we fucked up. We got
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to get our act together. That's not what happened here.
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They just keep doubling down on the bullshit, over and
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over and over again. None of this has a clear
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resolution in sight. The investigation into Mountbatten Windsor remains open.
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Starmer as of Monday, continues to insist he will lead
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Labor into the next general election. Whether that turns out
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to be true is one of several things in this
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story that no one has been able to promise with
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a straight face. And I'm certainly no expert in UK politics,
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but I think that eventually Starmer has to go, and
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I don't think that it's a question of if. I
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think it's a question of when. So like usual, we'll
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keep an eye on things, and when we have some
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more information one way or the other, we'll get it
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added to the catalog. All the information that goes with
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this episode can be found in the description box.