Majority Of Brits Want Keir Starmer To Resign Over Mandelson Scandal

A majority of Brits believe Keir Starmer should resign over the Peter Mandelson scandal, a new poll has found.

The survey, by Public First for Politico, found that 52% think the prime minister should take responsibility for making the disgraced former peer the UK’s ambassador to Washington a year ago.

Starmer sacked Mandelson after just seven months in the post over his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson is now under police investigation over allegations he sent market sensitive information to the billionaire financier while he was business secretary in the wake of the global financial crash.

Morgan McSweeney quit as No.10 chief of staff on Sunday, saying he was taking responsibility for advising the PM to make Mandelson ambassador.

But the new poll found that the public do not believe his departure from Downing Street is enough.

While 52% think Starmer should go, just 19% think his advisers should quit rather than the prime minister.

Only 15% of voters believe no one needs to resign over the affair.

The findings are a further blow for the PM, who has faced the biggest crisis of his premiership in recent days.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar broke ranks to publicly call on Starmer to resign on Monday.

However, No.10 was able to persuade every member of the cabinet, as well as other senior Labour figures including Angela Rayner and London mayor Sadiq Khan, to pledge their loyalty to the PM.

Speaking on Tuesday, Starmer insisted he “will never walk away” from Downing Street.

He said: “There are some people in recent days who say the Labour government should have a different fight, a fight with itself, instead of a fight for the millions of people who need us to fight for them.

“And I say to them – I will never walk away from the mandate I was given to change this country, I will never walk away from the people that I’m charged with fighting for, I will never walk away from the country that I love.”