Who Runs The World?

We now know —The Epstein Files told us

The UK’s disgraced ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson must feel like he’s been hit by a lighting bolt. Since his emails appeared in the latest release of the Epstein files, his fall from grace — if that’s the right word — has been dramatic and so far there seems to be no bottom to it.

Since losing the ambassadorship, he’s resigned from the Labour Party, resigned from the House of Lords and is now facing an investigation by the Metropolitan Police which threatens serious jail time, if those emails which revealed the political equivalent of insider trading of financially sensitive material are correct.

And Mandelson isn’t the only one to be caught in the Curse of Epstein. Norway’s economic crime police unit Oekokrim wants to investigate former prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland on suspicion of aggravated corruption based on information revealed in the latest files drop.

Miroslav Lajčák, Slovakia’s national security adviser to the prime minister Robert Fico, has quit after it was found he exchanged messages about girls and diplomacy with Epstein.

They won’t be the last. Consequences are coming.

Understandably, it’s hard to see past the shocking and disgusting widespread rape of children that Epstein and his traffickers committed. But the files also reveal something fundamentally disturbing about the very nature of the world we live in: who actually runs it.

The clues lie in Mandelson’s emails which show he sent Epstein critical information from the heart of Gordon Brown’s Labour government before any official announcements were made.

Even if we disregard any potential criminality, the extent of Epstein’s global web of influence is itself massively revealing. He worked extremely hard to connect himself with powerful people everywhere. Musk, Trump, dignitaries from Europe, the Middle East, anyone with money, anyone connected.

The former British prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, Bill Clinton, Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Richard Branson, Steve Bannon, Steven Tisch, Casey Wasserman, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, all were mentioned in the files. Remember, these are only the ones that have been revealed so far. There are bound to be more.

And they all signed up to be a part of this brotherhood (and it is a brotherhood — very few influential women are mentioned). That’s because they recognised their tribe, one linked by power and money.

In a shocking interview with LBC, Lady Victoria Hervey, who briefly dated the former prince Andrew in 1999, said if you’re not in the Epstein Files you”re “a loser”:

“You know, the thing is, what people can see from these Epstein files, he was… He knew everybody that was very powerful.

“So, if you were on the scene and you were powerful, to be honest, if you’re not in those files, it would be an insult because it just means that you were a bit of a loser.”

Not a loser, the very wealthy Lady Victoria Frederica Isabella Hervey is mentioned in the files 23 times. She’s the daughter of the 6th Marquess of Bristol. Leka, Crown Prince of Albania, is one of her godfathers.

It’s important to stress none of this means these people were involved in anything illegal. But that’s not the point. Influence comes from connections and conversations. On jets, on islands, in messages and calls and emails. Sometimes people won’t even realise they’re being influenced by a master manipulator like Epstein.

Epstein talked about the success of Brexit, how that forum for the rich and powerful Davos could replace the United Nations. The management of the world by the high and mighty is stitched deeply in the emails released.

In Epstein’s wide circle, differences of race, religion and politics can be easily surmounted. It’s power and money that runs things. New Labour architect and Far Right fixer. Democratic President and White Supremacist. They’re all there, tied together in Epstein’s web.

On one level we all knew how the world operated. It’s something else to see it confirmed.

Rumours are everywhere that Epstein worked for Israel and had links to the intelligence service MOSSAD. He had many ties to Russia and people very close to Putin. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Countries working to establish power zones often have a symbiotic relationship as their interests cross and connect. A freelance powerbroker can work for everyone.

If you’re playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, it’s a very small leap from Peter Mandelson to Putin.

Thinking people naturally recoil from conspiracy theories, the favourite hobby of the unthinking. But here is a conspiracy where the evidence is laid bare.

What’s striking is that all these rich and powerful people considered themselves so untouchable that they were happy to commit damning conversations to something as insecure as email. That’s because these, generally, older men are 20th century people, forged in a time when they really all were untouchable.

Perhaps now they will start to see that everything has changed.

It’s easy to slip into a slough of despair at the moment. The world appears to be falling into the abyss. Dark powers are seemingly in the ascendent.

I would argue that we’re now in one of the best places we ever have been. The world isn’t becoming a more terrible place — it always was.

It’s just that now we can see it.

One of the major but underreported aspects of the 21st century is that we are living in an age where the light gets in. The technology and communication we currently have means that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to operate in the shadows.

The secret connections of powerful men operating behind the scenes of newspaper headlines has existed for decades, perhaps even centuries, but it’s now spilling out into the daylight. The abuse of children and women, the weak and vulnerable and powerless, was always part of that world. Everyone was simply blindly ignorant of its scale. That’s how they got away with doing everything they ever dreamed of doing.

Now we are starting to see it for what it is.

Lift up a rock, shine the light under it and watch the horrors wriggling away from where they were hidden.

The world isn’t becoming a worse place, the terrible things have just been exposed. And once you can see them you can fight them.