Keir Starmer may have technically been up against Kemi Badenoch at PMQs today, but his real adversary was Peter Mandelson. After the astonishing revelations over the past few days about Britain’s disgraced former ambassador to the US and his longstanding relationship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, there was only ever going to be one line of questioning. In short: how much did Starmer know when appointing him, and why did the appointment go ahead?
We know that Mandelson was not actually Starmer’s initial favourite for the role of US ambassador. We know that the government was aware not just of the scandals that led to his first two resignations from the New Labour government, but of his ties to with Epstein which continued after the financier had been convicted of a child prostitution offence – with Mandelson even staying in Epstein’s New York property while he was in prison. And we know that one of the most vocal backers for Mandelson being appointed despite all of that was the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.
Kemi Badenoch has in the past missed open goals such as this. Not today. It is a cliché to call a politician’s performance in the House “forensic”, but question by question the Tory leader built up her case against Starmer. Was he aware of the friendship? Starmer evaded by expressing his disgust at Mandelson’s conduct. Badenoch persevered: the information was, after all, in the public domain. “Did the Prime Minister conveniently forget this fact, or did he decide it was a risk worth taking?” Another feint, gesturing to the “process”. “The Prime Minister cannot blame the process,” Badenoch continued – the detail about Mandelson staying at Epstein’s property was on Google.
She asked again: did the vetting mention Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with the paedophile? “Yes,” Starmer admitted. “It did.”
We knew that it must have done, of course. To repeat: while no one had any idea until the last few days that as Gordon Brown’s business secretary Mandelson had been leaking market-sensitive government memos to Epstein, his continued friendship with a convicted sex criminal was publicly available – Badenoch herself noted it had been reported in the FT. Still, it was something to hear the Prime Minister admit it to the House.
Starmer’s defence was a mix of deferring to process and cold, righteous fury. Mandelson, he said, had “betrayed our country, our parliament, and my party”. He “lied repeatedly”. All appropriate steps had been followed; had anyone known what we know now “he would never have been anywhere near government”.
The trouble is – as Badenoch emphasised – surely we knew enough. “The Prime Minister chose to inject Mandelson’s poison into the heart of his government on the advice of Morgan McSweeney.” On the subject of McSweeney, who is at the heart of the decision of appoint Mandelson, Starmer doubled down, telling MPs he “is an essential part of my team. He helped me change the Labour Party and win the election. Of course I have confidence in him.” Those with memories that go back six months will recall him expressing similar confidence about Mandelson himself when the first tranche of damaging Epstein emails were released in September. Mandelson was gone as US ambassador hours later. We’ll see how long McSweeney lasts.
The real show-down is due this afternoon, with the Conservatives putting forward a humble address seeking to force the government to publish “all papers relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment as His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States of America”. The government has responded by submitting an amendment, promising to release everything except content that would be “prejudicial to UK national security or international relations”. Starmer also stated twice that the Metropolitan Police had been in touch with the government, stressing the need to ensure material that could be prejudicial to their investigation was not released. The Prime Minister surely did not intend for this to be reminiscent of the partygate scandal in the dying days of the Boris Johnson government, where questions were continually deflected on the grounds that investigations were ongoing. But in transparency terms, it looks like another dodge.
As for the government’s amendment, “international relations” can be interpreted incredibly broadly – we are, after all, talking about a diplomatic appointment. Labour MPs furious about Mandelson – for the latest scandal, and for his decades of meddling with the party both inside and out of government – might not be convinced. They would, Badenoch taunted, “have to decide if they want to be accessories to his cover-up” by voting with the government. Starmer tried to rise above it and take the moral high ground, arguing this was about national security. That’s a line that has worked in the past on Badenoch. It didn’t work today. “The national security issue was appointing Mandelson in the first place,” she pointed out.
It is gradually becoming apparently just how major an error of judgement that appointment was. Nor has Starmer been able to shake accusations of indecisiveness: he was slow to sack Mandelson in September, too slow to expel him from the Labour Party at the weekend, and tied himself in knots over whether the government would attempt to remove his peerage. Now the debate over the release of what we can now call the “Mandelson files” deepens the impression that this government is either weak or has something to hide. Both suggest something has gone very wrong with the Prime Minister’s judgement – a point which Liz Saville-Roberts of Plaid Cymru was quick to make. Starmer’s response was to repeat that Mandelson “lied, and he lied, and he lied”. But that doesn’t answer the question.
A final note should go to Ed Davey. While both Starmer and Badenoch began by paying lip service to the victims of Epstein’s multi-decade sex trafficking exploits, they then quickly forgot about them. The Lib Dem leader wanted to know: before Starmer gave such an important job to one of Epstein’s closest friends, did he think at all about Epstein’s victims? Starmer referred the House to his opening statement, to which Davey replied “I think the victims of Jeffrey Epstein deserve far better than that.” It’s a point the Prime Minister, whose pre-political career was centred around justice for victims, cannot dodge. Mandelson stayed in the house of a convicted sex criminal. The Prime Minister knew that, and chose to appoint him as US ambassador anyway. No amount of hiding behind process or blaming Mandelson’s lies can get around that. To govern is to choose. And that choice speaks volumes.
[Further reading: Mandelson’s adoration of wealth and power reaches its inevitable conclusion]
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