Keir Starmer Calls For Mandelson To Lose Peerage

If a week is a long time in politics, 14 months is a lifetime.

Back on December 20, 2024, Keir Starmer said he was “delighted” that Lord Peter Mandelson was going to be the UK’s next ambassador to Washington.

“The United States is one of our most important allies and as we move into a new chapter in our friendship, Peter will bring unrivalled experience to the role and take our partnership from strength to strength,” the prime minister gushed.

Two months later, on February 26 last year, Starmer gently poked fun at Mandelson at a welcome reception hosted at the newly-installed ambassador’s plush residence.

“I’ve only just arrived but already I can feel there’s a real buzz around Washington right now,” said the PM. “You can sense that there’s a new leader. He’s a true one-off, a pioneer in business, in politics.

“Many people love him. Others love to hate him. But to us, he’s just … Peter.”

Less than 12 months on, however, and Starmer has performed what may well be his biggest U-turn yet.

It is a crowded field, of course. In just 18 months in No.10, the prime minister has performed a 180 on winter fuel payments, benefit cuts, the two-child benefit cap, farmers’ inheritance tax and pub business rates, to name just a few.

But his change of position on Mandelson is particularly breathtaking.

Once the indispensable bridge between Downing Street and the White House, the former Labour peer is now persona non grata and should, according to the PM, be expunged from public life forthwith.

In September last year, just hours after telling MPs he retained full confidence in him, Starmer sacked Mandelson over his links to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Now, he has gone even further by demanding that that Mandelson – who resigned his Labour membership on Sunday night before the party could kick him out – should lose the peerage given to him by Gordon Brown in 2009.

“The prime minister believes that Peter Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords or use the title,” his spokesman said on Monday.

“We want to reform the House of Lords and that includes strengthening the circumstances in which disgraced members can be removed.”

Of course, no one will shed any tears for Mandelson, who maintained contact with his “best pal” Epstein even after his conviction for soliciting a child for prostitution.

A fresh trove of documents released by the US Department of Justice over the weekend also suggest that the former business secretary received $75,000 from the late billionaire financier, and sent him highly-sensitive, market-moving government information while sitting round the cabinet table.

Starmer has been left with no option other than to cut all ties with the man he lauded less than a year ago.

But this mother of all U-turns once again exposes the PM’s woeful lack of judgment and comes at a time when his MPs’ wafer-thin patience in him is already at breaking point.

With a crunch by-election to come on February 26, and local elections to follow on May 7, this latest scandal could hardly have come at a worse time for a prime minister fighting for his political life.