VIRGINIA GIUFFRE’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl, is a harrowing account of how she was trafficked and prostituted to the wealthiest and most high-ranking people in the world. She outlines how childhood sexual abuse, poverty, coercion and deceit were the toxic cocktail that placed her and many other teenagers and children in Jeffrey Epstein’s clutches.

Giuffre’s back-story is not dissimilar to the survivor testimonies of those campaigning for the Nordic model as a way of addressing prostitution. The promise of training, a career, a life, quickly turning into paid rape is a common entry route into the sexual exploitation also know as “full service sex work.” The most vulnerable women and girls, who have no other economic choices available to them, are routinely targeted in this way.

The mass dump of millions of Epstein files provides even further insight into the full horror and sheer depravity of Epstein and his powerful associates. He did not operate alone — he was supported and protected by those with influence in society. Others joined in, or turned a blind eye to the crimes committed. Those on the sidelines, who held power, who knew and either didn’t care or didn’t speak up are also being exposed.

And there is no guarantee that the wealthy paedophiles torturing children will ever be held to account for their crimes either. The forces of the state will swing into action all over the globe to protect these powerful criminals and minimise the fallout for them. The normalisation of “rough sex,” the “kink,” the “fetish” will be deployed to defend the indefensible.

When are the police investigations being launched and when are the arrests happening? Any woman or girl would be forgiven for reaching the conclusion that the sexually sadistic torture and murder of girl children matters less than protecting state and market secrets.

As Keir Starmer and the Parliamentary Labour Party fight for their political lives the Epstein/Mandelson scandal is being buried in the soap opera.

“Give Keir a chance,” or “Keir has the right to start what he finished” ring hollow in the ears of working-class people who themselves have been let down by an Establishment that’s rotten at root and branch.

What chances are workers on low pay with poor working conditions getting? What chances are the disabled or the youth struggling for a future getting? And what chance did Virginia Giuffre, now deceased, or any of the other victims of Epstein’s network get? Rapidly disassociating themselves from scandal and salvaging their failing political project is now the order of the day for these Labour politicians when they could be leveraging their power to secure justice for Epstein’s victims.

The exploitation of human beings is a common theme emerging in an ever-deepening economic and a political crisis.The capitalist system which rests on the oppression of women and girls is irreconcilable with our rights, needs and aspirations and those of the working class as a whole.

Increasing numbers of working-class people realise the system is working for the few but not the rest of us and this will play out in the elections to come. It will be the same old struggle between liberals on one side and a mix of conservative and right-wing forces on the other.

The real political answer, that champions the rights of women and girls, that ends all forms of exploitation, the socialist alternative, has yet to be put forward with clarity and purpose.