Keir Starmer Gains Breathing Space Amid Political Tensions

Keir Starmer threw himself on the mercy of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims today as he desperately tried to save his premiership.

The prime minister stared down the barrel of a TV camera and apologised to them for appointing Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, despite his known links to the convicted paedophile.

“I am sorry,” he said. “Sorry for what was done to you. Sorry for having believing Mandelson’s lies and appointed him. And sorry that even now you are forced to watch this story unfold in public once again.”

But the prime minister’s audience was as much his own MPs as it was the women who were abused by Epstein.

They are the ones who hold his fate in their hands, and the bad news for Starmer is that, if anything, they are even angrier than they were yesterday.

One veteran backbencher described the mood among his colleagues as “universally low”.

Another MP said: “Taking refuge in constituency stuff this weekend seems appealing.

“But trying to pretend it’s all a bad dream for a few days won’t work, as constituents will be taking the chance to make very clear how they feel about Starmer and Mandelson and that’ll end up feeding into things back in parliament next week.”

Starmer’s argument is that he was unaware of the extent of Lord Mandelson’s ongoing friendship with Epstein, and was lied to by the then Labour peer during the vetting process for the ambassadorial post.

“He portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew,” the PM said. “And when that became clear and it was not true, I sacked him.”

But that is failing to convince even his own ministers, with one telling HuffPost UK: “Everyone knows Peter was always going to be a high risk appointment and that’s the most disappointing thing.

“On balance the ‘is this worth the risk’ question should have been answered with a ‘no’.”

For a prime minister and former barrister, Starmer does seem to be remarkably incurious.

The full extent of Mandelson’s deep connections with Epstein were, of course, unknown until the latest tranche of documents on the billionaire financier were released last week by the US Department of Justice.

Details of him allegedly passing on market sensitive information in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash has stunned Westminster and have put Mandelson at the heart of a criminal investigation.

Nevertheless, there was enough evidence available long before Starmer made Mandelson his ambassador to show that he had maintained contact with Epstein after his conviction.

An internal report from 2019 by the JP Morgan bank containing emails between the pair was reported on by the Financial Times in 2023.

Photographs of the pair shopping in the Caribbean and blowing out candles on a birthday cake in Epstein’s Paris apartment were also widely in circulation.

Given that, it is hard to understand how Starmer could have bought Mandelson’s line that the pair “barely knew” one another.

Labour MP Richard Burgon – no fan of Starmer’s, it must be said – remarked: “No minister should be giving the impression that Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein – even after his jailing – wasn’t known before Mandelson became ambassador. It was.”

Other MPs insist the moment of maximum danger for Starmer has passed, at least in the short term.

But the feeling remains that the PM is now just one mis-step away from a full-blown leadership crisis – and his rivals are preparing to strike.