Keir Starmer must surely now be toast after McSweeney goes?

This isn’t about gotcha politics, and it’s not about partisan sniping.

This is about how Keir Starmer’s decisions reveal a deeper rot and a willingness to protect establishment insiders at the expense of core progressive values like justice and solidarity for the survivors of sexual abuse.

This isn’t just a scandal

The Mandelson-Epstein scandal isn’t just a personal failing. It is a damning indictment of Keir Starmer’s leadership and the hollowed-out soul of the Labour Party under his watch. I write about it most weeks. The Canary writes about it every day. Labour is finished.

Complicit Starmer, who campaigned on tackling violence against women and girls, chose to elevate Peter Mandelson to a prestigious diplomatic role. This was a political choice, much like wholeheartedly supporting Israel’s genocide of Gaza, or the continuation of perpetual austerity.

Why? Because the umpteen-time-disgraced Mandelson is part of the Labour old guard, a crooked fixer with elite connections that Starmer deemed more valuable than ethical red lines that simply cannot be crossed.

Labour under Starmer loves to tout its commitment to protecting women and combating sexual exploitation. Yet here he is, defending — until he couldn’t — a figure entangled with one of the most notorious elitist exploiters of our time.

Keir Starmer was fully aware of Mandelson’s ties with the vile, convicted predator when he appointed him as UK Ambassador to the US in late 2024. This really wasn’t some obscure detail. It was flagged in official security vetting, including reports of Mandelson staying at Epstein’s properties while the financier was in prison and maintaining contact after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Keir Starmer: ignoring the screams of victims and survivors

If Starmer truly believed in accountability, he wouldn’t have needed emails leaking Mandelson’s “litany of deceit” to act, would he?

Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson was a middle finger to every single survivor of child sexual abuse. He knows it. We know it. We went here with Jimmy Savile. Cover-ups, stonewalling, and the immunity of the elite until the rot bursts open.

You see, Keir Starmer values those grubby, child-raping, establishment ties more than the screams of Epstein’s victims and survivors — mostly poor, working-class girls trafficked like commodities.

Politicians of Starmer’s type frequently talk about “learning the lessons”, yet here is Starmer, making a deliberate choice to shield the powerful capitalist abusers from accountability.

Starmer plowed ahead, gambling that Mandelson’s establishment clout outweighed the moral abyss. He took a gamble on cronyism, and lost in the most dramatic fashion imaginable.

Starmer chose Mandelson’s “vital” US schmoozing over basic human decency. This scandal strips away the Prime Minister’s fraudulent progressive mask, revealing nothing more than a loyal fucking Blairite puppet who prioritises billionaire child rapist networks over the exploited masses.

Surely, this has to be curtains for the permacrisis Labour leader? If not now, when?

If not now, when?

Scandals of this nature have toppled governments before (think Profumo), and survival depends on party unity and public apathy. In all truths, Labour MPs are furious and public trust has completely eroded.

Keir Starmer might just cling on if Labour miraculously closes ranks, but Starmer’s internal challengers can smell blood. Of course, Starmer shouldn’t cling on because his judgment is fatally flawed, and clinging on to power would only deepen the party’s moral bankruptcy.

If you listen very carefully you can hear the echoes of a party fracturing along class lines. If these Labour MPs that claim to feel “physically sickened” and “widespread revulsion” had any spine left, they would lead a no-confidence push, not just a file release. Utter cowards.

I forced myself to watch Keir Starmer’s humiliating, grovelling apology speech on Thursday. Like many of you, I try not to listen to much of what he has to say because it always feels like he is doing the bidding for someone else.

The speech itself was an absolute disaster — a transparent, spineless exercise in damage control. Who do you think Starmer was grovelling to? The victims, or the media and the moderates?

I didn’t see any genuine contrition. It was a scripted plea from a failed, shit PR consultant, desperately bidding to cling on to power amid a scandal that highlights how Keir Starmer’s collapsing government is infested with the same network of elites that protected dangerous predators like Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer blamed Mandelson for “lies” and “deceit”, claiming ignorance of the full extent of the Epstein connection, despite it being publicly known for some time.

Who is this fucking disgusting charlatan trying to kid?

Keir Starmer has to go

This is the same Keir Rodney Starmer who rose through the establishment ranks as Director of Public Prosecutions. If he couldn’t vet a high-profile creepy-crony like Mandelson properly, what does that say about his already-questionable competence?

What have we been saying about his competence and his judgement for the last seven years? It’s not even just Keir Starmer’s incompetence and bad judgment, it’s a damning symptom of how far Labour has drifted from its anti-establishment origins.

The victims of Jeffrey Epstein deserve so much better than a Labour Prime Minister who looked the other way.

This disgraceful scandal shouldn’t just end Starmer’s career, it should bury him politically, shatter his joke of a legacy, and force a socialist reckoning in Labour to oppose the forces of hate before it further becomes another tool of the billionaire class.

Nothing less than a full purge of the centrist tumour that is terminally infecting Labour will suffice, once they have finished deleting their pro-Mandelson tweets.

It’s time to go, Mr Starmer, you’re not just a dead man walking, you’re a corpse in a suit, and we have had enough.

Featured image via the Canary