The Unherd man backing Andy and Mandy

Yesterday Rats in a Sack reported on how the Spectator magazine appeared to be playing down the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, with a number of high-profile figures trying to muddy the story which has already led to the arrests of Andrew Mountbattern-Windsor and Peter Mandelson.

Brendan O’Neill, the magazine’s contrarian-in-chief, penned a piece bemoaning the “digital hounding” of the former royal, “the ugly gloating over a man’s downfall” and “the peddling of false accusations”. Columnist Matthew Parris, meanwhile, yawned that allegations of a business secretary handing secret government information to financiers were “just gossip, really”.

And the Spec’s publisher, Freddie Sayers, took to X to moan that “the British state seems to have hit upon the hazily defined common law offence of ‘misconduct in public office’ to string up anyone who has been deemed a bad person by media outrage but who hasn’t clearly broken any laws”.

Now Sayers has really warmed to his theme, writing a piece for his other title, the right wing website Unherd, to declare that “Epstein mania isn’t justice”.

Suggested Reading

The Spectator plays down the Epstein scandal

Rats in a Sack

“Epstein mania has swept all these checks and balances aside,” writes Sayers. “Of course, questions of due process and the proper functioning of institutions don’t sell newspapers. But they are more important than ever when the mob decides to pitchfork its victims.”

Day by day “innocent lives are being upended as the media discovers a new intriguing name among the cache,” wails Sayers about the files pertaining to a convicted paedophile running a global people-trafficking operation.

“Careers are ended on the flimsiest of pretexts, as companies and institutions abandon anyone with the remotest connection with the scandal; wild theories about supposed code words have flooded the internet and deposed rationality. The thrill of glimpsing how the rich and powerful correspond privately with each other may make good copy, but it is not justice.

“If ever we needed a reminder that the flip side of free speech is a right to privacy, it was surely this. Without privacy, there is no freedom, and everybody will be a little more fearful about writing to friends or associates after this.”

So, basically: nothing to see here, close it down, leave the rich and powerful alone to get up to whatever they fancy. It’s an intriguing new premise for a man running a journalistic endeavour!