5 hours ago
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Some days you just have to write off. Keir Starmer might have guessed that this was going to be one of those days when he was woken up at 4am to be told that Russia had launched a drone attack through Poland. It was a time to count his minimal blessings. Principally that he wasn’t the French prime minister. That is a zero-hours contract job. You’re lucky to survive a three-month probationary period.
But even Keir can’t have been expecting to be thoroughly duffed up by Kemi Badenoch at prime minister’s questions. That’s just never been part of the script. The whole point of the Tory leader was that she had always been Keir’s strongest ally on a Wednesday lunchtime. Guaranteed to miss every trick. Miss every open goal. Only last week she had failed to land a significant blow when Angela Rayner was fighting for her political life. It was Kemi who kept Angela in a job for an extra day.
Still. A stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. So sooner or later Kemi was almost bound to get it right at PMQs. And this Wednesday she managed to get all her ducks in a row. She was well prepared. She dispensed with the scatter-gun technique and fine-tuned her questions. Her own backbenchers couldn’t believe what they were hearing. Their cheers sounded almost genuine. This won’t be enough to save her job. Many insiders think she will be gone by Christmas. But she will have something to put on her career highlights resignation show-reel.
You could argue that Keir might have seen this coming. If not at PMQs then at some other time. It was never a matter of if. Only of when. Hubris in waiting. It may have seemed a good idea at the time to send Peter Mandelson to Washington. After all, the prime requirement for a British ambassador was sycophancy. Donald Trump likes nothing more than people who fawn over him. And in Mandy there is a man who was born to fawn. He’s yet to find a rich and powerful person by whom he hasn’t been impressed.
Mandy’s reputation as a fixer-in-chief – a man who knows how to oil the wheels of government – is largely self-invented. He’s been bitten not once, but twice. Having to leave the cabinet on both occasions. The first for failing to declare a loan from Geoffrey Robinson. The second a passport scandal involving the Hinduja brothers. Rich men on both occasions. Wealth is Mandelson’s fatal attraction. You’d have thought someone might have seen a pattern there.
And here we are again. You would have thought that someone in the Labour government might have smelled a rat before sending Mandy over to the US. After all, even Donald Trump managed to dissociate himself from Jeffrey Epstein long before his lordship got round to it. What does that say about his moral radar?
Or maybe Starmer didn’t really think it mattered. That Trump and Mandy would get along just fine precisely because they had no moral standards.
Mandy had been always happy to give a mega-wealthy convicted paedophile the benefit of the doubt. Because that’s what old friends do for one another. Solidarity, brother.
Now – as it always does with Mandy – it’s beginning to unravel again. The dirty secrets are becoming public. The creepy letter to Epstein, signed off by “your best pal”. The rumours of more to come. And suddenly a slew of shallow apologies from Mandy. He wishes now that he had never met Epstein. Hmm. Yet again an abdication of personal responsibility. He was powerless when near Jeffrey. He had no control over his behaviour. Others might have taken one look at Epstein’s lifestyle and reputation and run a mile. His lordship was like a moth to a flame. Helpless. Really it was all Epstein’s fault for ever being born.
Even then it might have been possible to credit Mandy with a flicker of genuine remorse. Only you just had to look back to an interview Mandelson had given to the Financial Times. Asked about his relationship with Epstein, Mandy got sniffily defensive and told the journalist to fuck off. So much for any concern for Epstein’s victims. It seems that when it comes to apologising, the only person he feels really sorry for is himself. The unluckiest man alive.
Armed with all this, Kemi went for the kill. Was Mandelson the right person to be our ambassador to the US? What did the prime minister know of Mandy’s relationship with Epstein? What vetting procedures had taken place prior to his appointment? Where was the morality in all this? And didn’t we owe it to the victims to sack him? The ambassador should be in the White House talking to the president about Poland and Qatar. Not giving video interviews to the Sun to try to save his career for a third time.
Keir looked surprised by the ferocity of the attack. And its forensic precision. Not Kemi’s usual trademarks. His replies were totally inadequate. Forced to defend a man whose resignation he would be demanding if the roles were reversed. Full process had been observed throughout, he said sullenly.
What the hell did that mean? That Mandelson had told his interview panel all about his long relationship with a convicted paedophile and the government had said: “You know what, let bygones be bygones. Anyone can make that sort of mistake”? As for the morality, Starmer said that the victims of Epstein’s crimes had been uppermost in his mind. No doubt he then thought: who cares? Far better to have a man in Washington who was on the same wavelength as The Donald and who could chat about the good old days Chez Jeff. Morality a distant cousin to diplomacy.
Come the end, Starmer completely lost it. Started telling Kemi that she should have adopted this level of questioning over Rayner the previous week. Almost an admission that he should have sacked Angela before she had a chance to resign. His former deputy could have done without that lack of support. But for now Mandy apparently retains the prime minister’s confidence and will be taking centre stage at Trump’s state visit next week. At this rate it won’t be just Mandy that Mandy takes down. It will be those around him, too.
