Peter Mandelson¡¯s ties with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein should trigger a reckoning for Britain¡¯s House of Lords.
The legitimacy of the 700-year-old second legislative chamber rests heavily on tradition, with members wearing scarlet-and-white ermine robes on ceremonial occasions and referring to each other as ¡°my noble lord¡± or ¡°the noble baroness.¡± Seeing a peer of the realm pictured in his underwear in the house of a pedophile sex-trafficker tends to undercut the mystique. The disconnect is becoming untenable.
Mandelson, facing a police investigation for passing internal government communications to Epstein during the global financial crisis, bowed to pressure to resign from the House of Lords last week. The 72-year-old remains a peer, though, and can only be stripped of that title by act of parliament ¡ª a route that hasn¡¯t been used for more than a century. Contrast that with the speed with which King Charles III denuded his brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his royal prerogatives and associated titles when the former Duke of York¡¯s associations with Epstein became too much for ¡°The Firm¡± to bear, and the problem becomes glaringly apparent.
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