British newspapers are alive with reports of people trying to explain away their embarrassing relationship with various luminaries no longer seen as respectable.
Published: 26 February 2026
Heads are being kept down about Jeffrey Epstein as friends and admirers pray their names won’t come up in the next tranche of his unfortunate emails, but Peter Mandelson, so recently our ambassador in Washington, and the former prince Andrew are a constant worry.
I don’t enjoy the theatre of cruelty, but I have to admit to enjoying watching sanctimonious people like Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey wriggling with embarrassment as they eat their words.
Back in 2011, when Davey was in the coalition cabinet he had praised Andrew for doing “an excellent job” as a trade envoy and dismissed concerns as “innuendo”.
Now he says he “wasn’t really over the brief”, adding “no MP mentioned Epstein in that debate and I think that tells a tale about how Parliament and MPs…didn’t hold Prince Andrew, in that really privileged position, properly to account”.
“Including me”, he might have said.
I wish politicians could learn to admit occasionally to bad judgment – particularly our current prime minister, who is busy over the Mandelson debacle, with his familiar routine of saying a big boy did it and ran away.
Still, the trouble British politicians get into over loose words reminds me constantly that compared to many people in government in Northern Ireland or aspiring to rule also in the Republic, most of them are shining beacons of frankness.
Consider what Mary Lou McDonald published on February 21 about the first anniversary of the death of Bik McFarlane.
“One year ago, we lost our comrade, Bik McFarlane.
“He dedicated his life to the pursuit of freedom, unity, peace and equality.
“It was a life well lived, a life that shaped a legacy that will inspire generations to come.”
You could read everything Sinn Féin members say about McFarlane without learning that he had been involved in a 1975 bomb and gun attack on a pub he and his two companions thought was being used by members of the UVF.
They succeeded in killing five people: two machine-gunned to death and three in the subsequent explosion.
He escaped being chosen for the hunger strike because Provo HQ thought a sectarian mass murderer was the wrong PR image.
A ringleader in the Maze escape in 1983, there was strong evidence that he was involved in the killing of Private Patrick Kelly and Garda Gary Sheehan that year during the kidnapping of businessman Don Tidey.
For complex technical reasons, the trial in Dublin many years later was dropped and the European Court of Human Rights obligingly awarded him €17,000 euro for the delay he had to endure.
One of Sinn Féin’s favourite entertainers with his ballads of oppression and suffering, most popular was his ‘Song for Marcella’, which was about Bobby Sands.
“They tried to break you in a living hell/But they couldn’t find a way/So they killed you in a H-Block/And hoped that all would turn away.”
He sang this pack of lies to the end.
Some inspiration for the young, Ms McDonald.
At least the British politicians are ashamed.
