In the wake Prince Andrew’s arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer gave an interview in which he said “nobody is above the law.”
That line went everywhere, fast. On X, I called it the tagline of the movie they’re about to play:
And the media lost no time in proving my point. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson echoed it in an interview of her own. Everyone from Al Jazeera to the South China Morning Post has taken up the cry.
In one of those curiously timed coincidences, the UN actually used the same exact phrase just a day before Sir Keir:
Then there’s this long article in the Atlantic, I won’t sport with your intelligence by relating the bulk of the text, we concern ourselves only with the concluding paragraph:
The former Prince Andrew acted as he did because he lived in a world in which someone like him never faced consequences. That isn’t true anymore.
That’s the narrative in a nutshell. The system is fair and treats everyone the same. Old Guard bad, corruption being rooted out, accountability for the old boys club. Like #MeToo on crack.
In this vein we have the arrest of Peter Mandelson.
The investigation, and alleged attempted suicide, of Norway’s former PM Thorbjørn Jagland
The resignation of World Economic Forum chief Børge Brende over his “Epstein links”
The “retirement” of Harvard President and former Treasury Secretary of Larry Summers
Even stuff as small as the revelation of Bill Gates’ affairs with a couple of Russian women.
None of those latter four come close to actual arrests, of course. And the story is very much that while the UK (and Europe in general) are willing to act on Epstein, the US is lagging behind.
That’s why you get absurd headlines like this, in the I:
Epstein’s ghost has brought down Britain’s elites. Trump fears the same in the US
“Bringing down Britains elites”, in this instance, meaning the staged arrest of the least important member of an increasingly irrelevant Royal family, and chalking another scandal up on Mandelson’s long and distinguished list, but the story is clear: The US has some catching up to do.
Over on BlueSky, the foam-cornered play area of the internet, Senator Jacky Rosen was doing her part to tell that story…
Combine these low-level narrative reinforcements with column’s such as this in the Guardian from the omni-outraged Arwa Mahdawi:
Prominent Britons are facing a reckoning over Epstein. In the US, not so much
And perma-smug Marina Hyde:
So Epstein buddies Andrew and Mandelson have been arrested in the UK. And in the US? Zero, zip, nada
…and the safe prediction is that this age of pretended accountability has some way to go yet, and some flagging member of the American upper class is probably going to have to fall on their sword to push the narrative forward
Maybe starting today:
Read the full article here