At last, Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th-birthday book—you know, the one full of messages from boldface names wishing him many more happy years of inappropriate relationships with young girls—has destroyed a political career. Just not an American one.

Peter Mandelson, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Washington, was recalled Thursday after the extent of his friendship with the disgraced financier became impossible to deny. In a 10-page message in the now-infamous 2003 scrapbook, he called Epstein his “best pal” and included several photos of himself. Describing the financier as “mysterious,” Mandelson said that he would often be left alone with Epstein’s “interesting” friends—an assertion that appeared over a picture of an unknown young woman in her underwear.

The first thing to say is: What an awkward diplomatic situation. The British government has just fired its U.S. ambassador for writing a message in the same book that the American president reportedly contributed to. (Donald Trump steadfastly maintains that the letter attributed to him by The Wall Street Journal is a fake.)

Mandelson’s departure also adds to a sense of crisis around Britain’s Labour government, which came into power just a year ago. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, appointed Mandelson to this important diplomatic post and initially defended him in Parliament. On Wednesday, with the book’s contents already public, Starmer stood up for his weekly grilling by the leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, at Prime Minister’s Questions. The Conservative used all her allotted questions to challenge whether Starmer was really going to stand behind his ambassador. Starmer confirmed that he was. Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein had been declared during the vetting process, he said, and therefore he had “confidence in the ambassador in the role that he is doing.”

[Read: You really need to see Epstein’s birthday book for yourself]

That evening, however, Bloomberg and the tabloid The Sun published a series of old emails between Mandelson and Epstein. These made clear that the former was not remotely fazed by his friend’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor. “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened,” Mandelson wrote after Epstein reported to jail to serve his sentence, having obtained a generous plea bargain from federal prosecutors in Florida. “I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain.” (It could: Sex with underage girls is also illegal here.) There is no suggestion that Mandelson, who is gay, was involved with any of the women trafficked by Epstein. But the messages suggest that Mandelson did offer to use his contacts to help Epstein clear his name.

This was too much for the British government. “The emails show that the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment,” the Foreign Office declared in a statement Thursday. “In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information.”

The Foreign Office’s viewpoint reflects the now-established consensus on Epstein: Powerful people who associated with the financier before his 2008 conviction can plausibly deny knowing about his sexual interest in minors, and have emerged unscathed. But those who continued their relationship with Epstein, such as Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, and the JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley, cannot—and have faced career and personal penalties as a result. Donald Trump falls into the former group, even if his own birthday message (“Enigmas never age”) and other statements from the time suggest that he knew Epstein was interested in much younger women.

This is, of course, a convenient distinction. Enough messages in the birthday book reference “girls” or Epstein’s “mysterious” nature that his friends should have had some questions about his lifestyle. Instead, they demonstrated the same incuriosity that has lately swept through the MAGA movement ever since Trump declared that the Epstein saga was a nonstory. But the president’s power to decide what is and is not real does not extend to Britain, and so Starmer has not been able to limit discussion of the scandal in the way that Trump has.

The timing of Mandelson’s departure is terrible for Starmer and his team: Trump is due for a state visit this month, and Starmer is hoping to negotiate more favorable trade terms for Britain and more support for Ukraine.

By all accounts, Mandelson had made a success of his role as ambassador. The 71-year-old life peer has superb contacts and deep political knowledge, and he relishes his reputation as the “Prince of Darkness” brokering backroom deals. Still, his appointment in December was a controversial gamble by Starmer, because he had booted out the respected (and apolitical) Karen Pierce and replaced her with a serial ethics offender.

[Read: The woman keeping the ‘special relationship’ special]

Mandelson’s ouster this week is his third involuntary departure from a government position in 30 years. He first had to quit in 1998, only a year into Tony Blair’s premiership, when it was revealed that he had taken an undeclared loan from a fellow minister. He was brought back, before leaving again in 2001 over a scandal involving passports for wealthy businessmen. A few years later, Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, brought him back again—effectively as deputy prime minister—in a move that conceded Brown’s government lacked political direction and Mandelson was the best man to provide it.

Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson to the ambassadorship can be read the same way. He wanted a schmoozer and flatterer to charm Trump, and a little baggage seemed like a price worth paying for that. When an interviewer from the Financial Times raised the subject of Epstein in February, Mandelson initially said the politically astute thing: that he regretted meeting the financier and regretted the harm the sex offender had caused. Then Mandelson added, somewhat less diplomatically: “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?”

Mandelson’s exit is the second political scandal for Starmer this month. Just last week, his deputy Angela Rayner resigned after failing to pay enough tax on the purchase of a second home. Even before that, though, Starmer’s government was floundering: He recently told the BBC that his government would now be entering “Phase Two”—essentially an admission that Phase One had been a bust. In just over a year in office, he has already cut loose his first chief of staff amid a controversy over her high pay and his transport minister after a long-ago fraud conviction resurfaced. He lost his homelessness minister in a housing scandal and an anti-corruption minister in an alleged corruption scandal.

Added to that, the British economy is sluggish and loaded with debt, and Starmer’s chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has no obvious options for raising revenues in her November budget, having ruled out tax hikes on working people in the election campaign. In the polls, Labour currently trails Reform UK, the right-wing anti-establishment party headed by the Brexiteer Nigel Farage. That dynamic has been helped by the unpopularity of the center-right Conservatives, who left office after 14 years last July.

Starmer’s right-wing critics suggest that he has not done enough to limit the arrival of small boats carrying immigrants across the Channel from France, or the use of hotels to house asylum seekers waiting for their claims to be processed. Left-wing critics—including members of his own party—have resisted his attempts to cut welfare spending, and argue that Britain hasn’t sufficiently criticized Israel’s war in Gaza. He is beset on all sides.

The prime minister’s problems are compounded by the growing belief that he lacks the political ability to rescue his government. Standing up in front of the House of Commons on Wednesday to back Mandelson—before firing him less than 24 hours later—was embarrassing. But Starmer can only blame himself. Appointing Mandelson was a time bomb, and the prime minister planted it.

Americans might be tempted to look at the situation in Britain and think: Consequences for misguided actions—remember them? That’s the right impulse. In the United States, the Epstein scandal has devolved into a mere political soap opera, in which the victims are largely forgotten and Trump is so far unscathed. British voters who are angry with their government might find some small consolation in the fact that on their side of the Atlantic Ocean, ethical lapses can still carry a serious political price.

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