I'm John Batchel with my good colleague Joseph Sternberg, who's in London.

For the Wall Street Journal editorial page, he writes political economics. I'm John Batchel with my good colleague, Joseph Sternberg, who's in London. For the Wall Street Journal editorial page, he writes political economics.

I'm asking Joe to help me understand how the Lord Mendelsohn story is being handled by BBC 4, by the television, by the headlines.

I see the Financial Times and the Telegraph, but that's not the sweep of partisanship in

newspapers and online. The allegation is that Mantleson, not only is a bad actor with Epstein

exploiting young people, but also passed a document that is said to have been classified to Epstein. And that is very

serious. And there's calls for an investigation. I've calls for all kinds of attention. Is it a

big story in London, Joe? Or is this something, it reminds somewhat of the perfumos scandal of many

decades ago, but then there's this seriousness about it

that is new to me.

Yes, I think this has ended up becoming a very big story here, and I think there are a couple

reasons for that.

One is just the sheer element of surprise.

I think that if you had told Britain's that a huge new tranche of Epstein documents were going to come out,

they would have assumed that most of the any revelations that might be in there would be

related to Andrew, formerly Prince Andrew, who certainly has been dragged into this scandal

in various ways for many years now.

You know, there had been some hints before now that Peter Mandelson had some kind of

connection with Jeffrey Epstein.

What is in the documents is, has surprised people with the alleged extent of that.

And I do need to emphasize one of the issues here is that it is allegations. I think that

people are grappling with the fact that what has been released is this vast trove of basically

...