Mandelson Slams Keir Starmers No 10 Operation In Leaked Messages

Peter Mandelson launched a brutal attack on Keir Starmer’s No.10 operation in private messages with a senior cabinet minister.

The former US ambassador told Pat McFadden that Downing Street was “beleaguered and bereft” under the PM’s leadership.

He also said the government lacked “verve” and needed to act “in a more Trumpian risk-taking and dare-devil way” to turn around Labour’s fortunes.

The disgraced ex-Labour peer’s stinging criticisms were revealed in nearly 1,500 pages of documents released by the government into his appointment as the UK’s ambassador to Washington at the end of 2024.

In one message to McFadden, who was Cabinet Office minister at the time and one of the PM’s closest allies, on July 30 last year, Mandelson said: “I went in to No.10 after I saw you. It is beleaguered and bereft.

“It requires complete revamp and infusion of purpose and confidence to get anywhere.”

That came two months after Mandelson had also condemned the government’s performance in the wake of the local elections in May last year.

He said: “The problem is the government doesn’t give a sense of crusading to turn round and change Britain. That’s what I mean by panache, verve.

“It does start right from the top, I am afraid, but you must all contribute more to it by breaking out of the Whitehall system and mould and appearing less like business as usual conventional ministers and, dare I say it, behaving in a more Trumpian risk-taking and dare-devil way.

“At the moment ministers seem to be looking more to the Whitehall machine and the party base than to the public who are crying out for leadership.”

Later the same month, McFadden expressed his frustration with Labour MPs preparing to rebel against the government’s plans to cut £5 billion from the welfare budget.

He said: “Every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’. They’re asking the wrong questions.”

The government was ultimately forced to abandon its welfare reforms because of the size of the Labour rebellion.

In a message to Mandelson before the climbdown, McFadden said: “I think it’s very bad. Defeat, pull bill or gut it all destroy his authority.”

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: “They are no longer the Labour Party, they are the Welfare Party. It doesn’t matter who is in charge of these people, the party for Benefits Street will tax us all into poverty to pay for more welfare.

“Pat McFadden has said in private what he and the Prime Minister deny in public. As I’ve said repeatedly, Labour MPs don’t understand where money comes from. They think our taxes are their money to spend, rather than the result of the hard work of the people in our country who deserve so much better.”

The government was forced to hand over the latest tranche of documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment after MPs backed a so-called “Humble Address” in the Commons.

Mandelson was appointed by Starmer with great fanfare in December, 2024, but was sacked just nine months later following fresh revelations about his links to the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

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