“Brexit, just the beginning… Return to tribalism, counter to globalisation, amazing new alliances.” That line is from an email sent by paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein to Peter Thiel, the Donald Trump ally and tech billionaire, three days after the referendum. It has been much quoted in recent days.
With apologies to one very excitable user of the social media platform X, one super-rich man enthusing to another about possible gains to be made from Britain’s loss does not prove that “Thiel and Epstein ran a psyop to create Brexit”. What it does show is something more subtle and, in its way, more troubling: while millions voted Leave to strike back at a remote elite, parts of that same elite were calmly gaming out how the resulting disorder might be useful to them.
If the Epstein files are to mean anything beyond lurid scandal, they must prompt a long, hard look at how outside influence, money and access flow through British and European politics. The end result is highly unlikely to be a smoking gun proving Nigel Farage to be an agent of foreign control, or that Vladimir Putin “bought Brexit”. Politics is rarely that simple. But keep pulling at threads and some valuable truths about some familiar names will emerge.
Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, a veteran of the Brexit wars, suggests the rest of Europe should follow his lead by investigating Epstein’s links to the Kremlin. Judging by the hysterical reaction of Vladimir Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev – “desperate, depraved, lying leftist elites panic and try to misdirect… endgame for depraved and frequently Satanic liberal elites” – this is a good idea.
So is Tory MP Alex Burghart’s suggestion to scrutinise Mandelson’s relationships with Thiel’s tech company Palantir, and examine whether, in the light of what emerges, its £500m contracts with the UK for defence and health should continue.
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Neither the Brexit email addressed to him nor anything else yet revealed in the Epstein files implicates Thiel in Epstein’s crimes or in the apparent corruption of Mandelson. But Palantir already seems a strange bedfellow for the National Health Service, given that Thiel believes the “NHS makes people sick” and requires an introduction of “market mechanisms” in which “you just rip the whole thing from the ground and start over”. Is it wise to have such an outsider on the inside, especially one so intrinsically tied in with a regime that makes no secret of hating European values and institutions?
Similarly, there must be examination of Epstein’s links to Steve Bannon, the sweaty MAGA insider/outsider who once fancied himself a Brexit architect and dreamed of setting up a pan-European far right movement that would ultimately destroy the EU. Was this just Bannon’s normal grandstanding, or did Epstein’s network facilitate introductions, funding conversations, or access across borders?
It seems likely that closer study of Epstein’s Kremlin connections will provide compelling new chapters of the story. A supervillain, or villains, may emerge, but that seems too cinematic.
More likely, the end result of all this will be confined to some resignations, some prison terms and some long overdue tightening of rules on foreign lobbying and funding of political parties.
That may sound underwhelming but it would, in fact, be a significant gain.
The Epstein scandal is most likely to end up showing not that our politics was secretly run from a single dark room, but that too many doors were left unlocked. Those must now be slammed shut.
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