Starmer should have dealt with Mandelson ages ago

Keir Starmer is desperately scrambling to distance himself from the (re)disgraced Peter Mandelson. The prime minister now says that Mandelson should be removed from the house of lords after Mandelson’s resignation from Labour for his extreme closeness to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein. But we have the receipts – far too many to fall for such craven arse-covering.

Last September, when a then-new tranche of Epstein files exposed Mandelson’s pining for Epstein, Starmer went to Parliament to insist Mandelson – a senior Number 10 adviser – had his full confidence as his personally-appointed UK ambassador to the US.

But Starmer had been warned more than a full day earlier that the damning revelations were coming out.

Starmer has no excuses

Nor was there any excuse for Starmer appointing Mandelson in the first place. Mandelson’s closeness to Epstein was not a new revelation. Labour had known about it for years, yet he still got the top job. This appointment was pushed by the appalling Morgan McSweeney, Mandelson’s protégé, Starmer’s chief of staff and one of the architects of Corbyn’s downfall.

Yet even when last September’s exposure came about, Starmer tried to protect him. With Labour out of options, Mandelson was then removed – kind of – as ambassador, but kept on the government payroll – and allowed to keep both his peerage and his Labour membership.

And Starmer was never powerless to remove Mandelson from the Lords, as he now tries to claim:

There’s a saying about Israel’s genocide in Gaza that “one day everyone will have been against this”. Starmer now wants us to believe that he has always been against Mandelson and his perks and peerage.

Nope. We’re not buying it – but we do have the receipts.

Featured image via the Canary