‘A week is a long time in politics’ is an aphorism originally credited to Labour prime minister Harold Wilson to illustrate how dramatically, suddenly and unexpectedly things can change. During the decades since, it’s become rather a hackneyed, over-used phrase among politicians and journalists alike. But not for another Labour prime minister as Sir Keir Starmer has discovered over the last extraordinary week or so.
With the fallout from Angela Rayner’s ministerial code-breaking downfall triggering a rushed, divisive, draconian ministerial reshuffle / bloodbath, Keir Starmer has been left reeling from the resulting onslaught not only by opposition parties and the usual suspects in the right-wing papers but by Labour’s natural media allies. With front page leads, op-eds and columnists in The Guardian and Observer reflecting the scale of the government’s crisis and questioning whether Keir Starmer is capable of solving it.
Double scoop Telegraph ices it!
OK, it was the Daily Telegraph who exposed and doggedly pursued to the political death Angela Rayner’s £40,000 property tax non-payment scandal. Although I’m hardly a Telegraph cheerleader, I readily acknowledged on GB News before her resignation it was a genuine, old-fashioned public interest scoop which the deputy prime minister couldn’t expect to survive given Keir Starmer’s tightening of the ministerial code and public pledge to show no mercy to those who broke it, no matter how senior. Not least after he — and Angela Rayner herself — had rightly savaged Boris Johnson for notoriously failing to sack ministers his ethics advisers had found ‘guilty’, compelling one to resign in disgust.
But in the court of public opinion, another unfolding scandal exposed by the Telegraph (quite a week for them!) erupted around Britain’s US ambassador Lord Mandelson and his relationship with the infamous paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that will almost certainly spark far greater outrage than the Rayner saga. It was why I found myself back in the studio again praising the Telegraph, on the basis of being a columnist who had argued against Mandelson’s appointment before Starmer bowed to the intense lobbying to give him the role he nakedly craved. Something that was transparent at a lunch I attended where His Lordship was unnervingly open about his ambition.
Wednesday’s Telegraph front page revealed Epstein brokered a deal with Lord Mandelson over the £1bn sale of a UK taxpayer-owned banking business at a time when Mandelson was business secretary in the UK government and Epstein was already a convicted child sex offender only recently released from jail, a fact known to his close friend the minister. It was also revealed that Mandelson had even stayed in Epstein’s New York mansion while he was in prison.
Birthday book tales
The Telegraph exposé came hot on the heels of the global headlines that followed Democrats in the US congress releasing the 238-page photo book compiled to celebrate Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003 by his currently imprisoned British co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late disgraced newspaper baron, Robert Maxwell. It featured a gushing, sycophantic 10-page handwritten tribute to Epstein by Mandelson who called Epstein his ‘best friend’. Together with several photographs, one of which showed Mandelson, wrapped only in a fluffy bathrobe, chatting to Epstein on the tycoon’s private Caribbean Island. The island, officially Little St James, but now known around the world as ‘Paedophile Island’ and ‘Orgy Isle’.
Even as Keir Starmer might have hoped Israel’s botched, Trump-sidelining attempt to wipeout Hamas’s Gaza ceasefire negotiating team in Doha, capital of key US ally Qatar, together with Russia’s provocative drone attack inside Ukraine’s NATO-member neighbour Poland , would eclipse the Mandelson revelations on the front pages and broadcast bulletins, he was badly mistaken.
Badenoch’s best PMQs... Starmer’s worst?
So much so that the Mandelson affair not only inspired Kemi Badenoch to produce by far her best performance at PMQs (admittedly not a particularly high bar), but Keir Starmer’s worst as he struggled to defend the ambassador and ducked and dived questions about what he knew and when about the Mandelson / Epstein relationship and whether Mandelson was fit to remain in post.
Opposition parties are now pressing for an official inquiry into what due diligence came before the prime minister’s decision to appoint Mandelson and for the publication of all documents and correspondence surrounding it.
On Labour’s own backbenches, and even among some on the front bench, glum expressions greeted Badenoch’s attack. It’s an open secret that a growing number of Labour MPs — at least in private, and soon in public — favour Mandelson’s dismissal. The feeling is growing that by standing by his man in Washington, the prime minister is only compounding the damage the last week or so has inflicted on both his personal judgement and the Labour government’s prospects as it struggles to combat Reform’s momentum.
Some MPs on the foreign affairs select committee plan to push for Lord Mandelson to appear before them to be quizzed over his Epstein links, but cannot force him to do so. It’s now emerged that the committee wanted to question the peer when the prime minister appointed him last year but the Foreign Office blocked their request.
Mandy and the monster
Wednesday’s Daily Mail’s front page was devoted entirely to the Mandelson issue with the capped splash headline, ‘MANDELSON ON RACK OVER ‘BEST PAL’ EPSTEIN’. With a red ink trail for polemicist Stephen Glover’s inside column, ‘Why in God’s name did our bathrobe clad Ambassador to Washington fawn over wicked paedophile who called him Petie?’.
Inside, under the strapline ‘MANDY AND THE MONSTER’, in a piece headlined, ‘Why in God’s name did the bathrobe-wearing Prince of Darkness become ‘best pals’ with The Apostle of Satan?’, Glover effectively clears ‘Petie’ of sharing Epstein’s perverted taste for under-age girls, saying, “There is of course no suggestion whatsoever that Jeffrey Epstein laid on anything of that nature for Mandelson, whose taste are anyway well known to lie in the opposite direction. Other factors must explain the pervert’s attractions to Mandy. His vast wealth? His charm? His array of rich friends? Only His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to Washington can truly know the answer.”
Whatever the reason, it was a reckless friendship. In 2003, at the time of the birthday book, Mandelson was a mere Labour MP. But he had in the recent past twice been a cabinet minister — being sacked by Tony Blair for misdemeanours both times — and was about to become one of Britain’s European commissioners in Brussels.
Pressure on Keir Starmer stepped up with a public demand by Epstein’s US victims to strip Lord Mandelson of the ambassadorship, contending that it seriously compromised Britain’s international reputation.
Not much of a defence case, Prime Minister
At PMQs, Starmer sought to big up Mandelson’s role as key in Britain’s relationship with the Trump White House and the president himself. The inner barrister in Sir Keir should have told him in that in that court called public opinion, it wasn’t much of a defence argument. Even if his lack of political instinct didn’t.
Which is how ,as a left leaning columnist who had written in the run up to the general election that Starmer would be wrong to appoint Mandelson to the Washington post given his chequered history, I found myself back in the GB News studio on Wednesday morning, arguing the case for the prime minister to dismiss him, making the point that for many people, the Mandelson revelations merit the sack more than Rayner’s offence that rightly cost her the deputy prime minister and Labour party deputy leader gigs. Along with quoting another old cliché, ‘timing is everything’ and the bad timing here is that Lord Mandelson is scheduled to play a key role in President Trump’s already sensitive and controversial state visit from September 17-19, including attending the royal banquet in Trump’s ‘honour’ hosted by King Charles at Windsor Castle.
Nigel Farage, already smarting over not receiving a royal invite to the event given his close friendship with The Donald, can be expected to kick up loudly again. Despite the fact that Trump himself was a well-known longtime close friend of Epstein and figures in the ‘birthday book’ while denying and suing over a lewd drawing of a naked woman and suggestive signed tribute to Epstein he’s alleged to have contributed.
In truth, Farage isn’t the victim of a royal snub. His non-invite is purely protocol because while he may be leading the opinion polls and capturing headlines, he’s still at the moment the leader of a party with just four seats in parliament.
State visit dilemma
Whether Sir Keir’s apparent determination to keep Lord Mandelson in place can continue to resist the mounting pressure to rid himself of the ‘Mandy problem’ is a story that won’t go away as the clock ticks toward the state visit with the prospects of mass anti-Trump rallies stress testing the politically toxic line between strong policing and the public right to peacefully protest.
Can Lord Mandelson still credibly play a prominent role at the royal banquet? Or could a discreet phone call to Washington from Number 10 suggest he diplomatically develops a heavy cold that rules out flying? Or even that, for Keir Starmer and the Labour government’s sake, he does the honourable thing like Angela Rayner and resigns.
Knowing Mandelson, the odds favour him bluffing it out unless the prime minister bites the bullet and demands his resignation. But don’t bet against that happening if the political and media heat becomes unbearable. Don’t forget it was only a week before that Keir Starmer foolishly stood at PMQs robustly defending Angela Rayner before she was gone by Friday.
While breaching the ministerial code was the cause of her downfall and doesn’t apply to His Lordship the Ambassador to Washington, there’s another code — a code of honour — to which ‘Petie’ Mandelson might like to refer in the wake of the latest Epstein revelations, with strong rumours in the US that there are even more damaging and embarrassing disclosures to come.
Back to the beginning...
To finish where this column began, beware, Sir Keir, of that old Wilsonian aphorism. A week is indeed a long time in politics especially when you’re already on the ropes with an ultra-tricky party conference in Liverpool to come at the end of this month and with the ticking timebomb of a divisive all-woman contest for Angela Rayner’s other influential position as deputy leader of the Labour party already primed. And with Nigel Farage and his team celebrating Rayner’s demise wildly on the basis of the Reform leader’s not so private admission that she was the charismatic, streetfighter Labour politician they feared most on the electoral campaign trail.
Meanwhile the great can Mandelson survive ambassadorial dramarama has some way to run.
If Keir Starmer hoped his robust Commons defence of Mandelson would take the heat out of the story then Thursday’s front pages will have disabused him of that, with The Times, Telegraph, Mail, Independent, i all splashing on it with The Sun and Guardian also featuring it prominently on page 1...
Stop press:
On Thursday morning, Mandelson’s sacking was announced in a dramatic Commons statement. It came as cross-party pressure on the prime minister intensified. But the question marks over Keir Starmer’s judgement certainly aren't going away with opposition parties demanding a full inquiry into Mandelson’s appointment, what security vetting was conducted and what Keir Starmer knew and when about the Mandelson / Epstein relationship.
Downing Street claimed that the prime minister acted after The Sun published emails in which Mandelson expressed support and “love” for Epstein AFTER he was convicted of child sex trafficking.
Within minutes, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch drew parallels with Starmer defending Mandelson at PMQs yesterday only to sack him today and last week when he defended Angela Rayner at PMQs before ousting her 48 hours later.
She accused the prime minister of serious misjudgement and being a “ditherer”.
One senior government source told me privately: “The prime minister was determined to keep Mandelson despite advice not to. But it finally became clear that with the Trump state visit so close and Lord Mandelson due to play a big role, it would be an embarrassment for the King and not just the government.”
For those of us who had followed the Mandelson / Epstein connection for some time and wrote warning that it would be a mistake for Starmer to appoint him just two words apply. QUELLE SURPRISE!
Things became trickier still for Number 10 later on Thursday with confirmation that the security services had advised against Mandelson’s ambassador appointment but the PM still went ahead. Some sources claimed the prime minister’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who is well known to be an admirer of Mandelson’s political skills, was influential in Keir Starmer’s decision to give Mandelson the benefit of the doubt.
With the Mandelson sacking continuing to dominate Friday’s front pages, Tory Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel accused the prime minister and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney of a “blatant disregard” for national security by overruling security service advice not to appoint Mandelson. She called for the publication of the security advice along with all documentation associated with the appointment.
Deeply worrying for Starmer is that a growing number of Labour MPs are expressing similar views in public as well as privately.
Meanwhile, White House officials briefed that President Trump is “irritated” by the Mandelson furore. The unspoken concern is that his own links to Epstein will become a major media focus of next week’s state visit.
