The new naughty list just dropped, as the kids say these days. The pre-Christmas release of the Epstein files, or at least some of them – elves heavily redacted – has brought much-needed good cheer to all of us. Not every red face on Christmas afternoon will be down to port and brandy this year. And the cast of characters – Mick Jagger, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Richard Branson and all the rest – sounds like the guest list for the worst Graham Norton Christmas Special ever.

The release of the files as they stand, though, seems to me to add fuel to all sorts of conspiracy theories. In the first place, they really do seem to confirm what many of us normies have long suspected. The rich and famous really do pal around with each other in a way that transcends ideological divides.

Much as we might be distracted by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor stretching like a showgirl across the laps of four young girls on a Sandringham sofa, or Bubba Clinton soaking smugly in a hot tub with another chick wearing a black box instead of a face, the real eye-opener was Noam Chomsky posing genially for a snap with Steve Bannon. This determined radical leftist, the picture will lead many to believe, is more than happy to break bread with a white nationalist representing everything Chomsky loathes, so long as there’s a good party with pretty girls, a free ride on a private jet and a bit of Caribbean sunshine. (Chomsky has said, incidentally, that he valued Epstein’s intellectual........

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