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There is a strong push in Washington for Britain to turn once again to Dame Karen Pierce to fill the post of His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States, having served already from March 2020 to February 2025. Surely she’d jump at the chance to ditch the Balkans, where she’s currently a Special Envoy, and return to the luxurious Sir Edwin Lutyens-designed residence at 19 Observatory Circle NW? It is filled with exquisite art including Andy Warhol’s silk-screened take on Queen Elizabeth II, and always the capital’s most in-demand party venue.
However, it seems a man’s ego is blocking the appointment. And for once, it’s not Donald Trump’s.
The Right Honorable the Lord Mandelson, better known as Peter Benjamin Mandelson—or “Mandy” to his friends—lost his job as King Charles’ representative in D.C. last week amid an avalanche of awkward publicity about his old “best pal” Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson’s note to Epstein in the Birthday Book, released to the public by Congress, praised the child predator for “taking you by surprise… in one of his glorious homes he likes to share with his friends (yum yum).”
This revelation, along with a damaging tranche of emails published by Bloomberg in the U.S., came as Mandy’s new “best pal” Donald Trump was hoping to put stories of his Special Relationship involving the aforementioned Epstein behind him.
Unfortunately, for Trump, and for British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the president was heading right into the hornets’ nest in the UK, where news of the ambassador’s close friendship with the convicted child sex offender has been front page news for days.
It couldn’t have come at a worse time for either leader. Trump needs a diversion from Epstein, and Starmer has literally been disarmed by his choice of Labour’s scandal-prone “Prince of Darkness” to replace the calm professionalism of his predecessor.
Pierce, 65, was liked by both Joe Biden and Trump, no mean feat in itself. Before that, she was the Permanent Representative of the UK to the United Nations from 2018 to 2020 and Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2015 to 2016. She was the first woman appointed to the U.S. and U.N. roles, and the second in Afghanistan. In other words, she was an effective diplomat.
Mandelson, at 71, a more flamboyant, political choice, was not. He even got stuck in a train siding on the way to his own, ultimately abandoned, welcome party.
Starmer should have known his bold pick was doomed. The last time a political pick was chosen over a career diplomat it ended in scandal and a Hollywood movie. Peter Jay, who was married to the Labour prime minister’s daughter, was sent to Washington by his father-in-law in 1977. His service was best remembered for his wife’s affair with Watergate icon Carl Bernstein and his own fling with his children’s nanny at the embassy. The whole messy saga was turned into a movie, Heartburn, written by Bernstein’s then wife, Nora Ephron, and starring Jack Nicholson as Jay and Meryl Streep as Ephron.
The Swamp is told that Starmer won’t choose Pierce because to do so would be to admit he made a mistake in ditching her for Mandy.
Boys will be boys. Frontrunners for the job include the current caretaker James Roscoe, who was Pierce’s deputy, former UK foreign secretary David Miliband, and Sir Richard Moore, the departing head of MI6, Britain’s spy agency best known as home of James Bond. At least he would be more discreet than Mandy.
But The Swamp is still pitching for Dame Karen. She threw way better parties than her successor. And we hear her dog, Jock, was better behaved.
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The post Why Only a Dame Can Solve D.C.’s Other Epstein Crisis appeared first on The Daily Beast.
