Don’t you know there’s a war on? That was the main takeaway of the somewhat bathetic head-to-head between Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer today, as the UK scrambles over whether or not it will deploy warships to free up the Strait of Hormuz. With the world teetering on the brink of an energy crisis (for a taste of the looming devastation if the situation is not resolved, read this terrifying interview with oil market researcher Rory Johnston) and President Trump continuing to needle our Prime Minister about Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition wanted to talk about last week’s news: Peter Mandelson.
As a reminder: the government released the first tranche of the so-called “Mandelson Files”, regarding the disgraced former US ambassador’s appointment process, on Wednesday afternoon once PMQs was safely done and dusted and Starmer had escaped the Commons grilling. This was therefore Badenoch’s first opportunity to raise the revelations with him, and she wasn’t going to let little things like a seven-day wait and war in the Middle East deter her.
Badenoch wanted to know: Did the Prime Minister personally speak to Mandelson before appointing him? That was her first question, and the basis of the next five. As the Tory leader pointed out, the published documents reveal Starmer was warned that Mandelson had stayed in Jeffrey Epstein’s house after the latter’s conviction for a child sexual offence. So had he picked up the phone to ask him about it?
In response Starmer talked about… well, other things. Namely: Badenoch’s initial gung-ho impulse for the UK to be drawn into the US-Israeli conflict in Iran without any kind of plan, and comments made by shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy decrying Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square. What either of these have to do with Mandelson is unclear – except in the vaguest, most tangential sense that if Starmer’s poor judgement is under the microscope, he might as well drag Badenoch’s under the lens too. He appointed a man who had been fired from government twice for deception and maintained a friendship with a sex trafficker to the most high-profile diplomatic role, she wanted to rush into war and has someone on her frontbench who gets antsy about seeing other religions pray in public – one-all.
From this excruciating exchange, we can surmise that the answer to Badenoch’s question is probably no, Starmer did not speak to Mandelson before appointing him, for if he had he surely would have mentioned it rather than repeatedly hiding behind the “process”. Badenoch’s attack line that Starmer “outsourced” this decision and left it in the hands of two aides who were themselves close to Mandelson (Morgan McSweeney and Matthew Doyle – who embarrassingly had another friendship with a different convicted paedophile) is difficult to dodge.
We also got a reminder that last week was only the start: there are far, far more Mandelson-related documents to come, which will both confirm what assurance to the ex-ambassador gave to the government that his Epstein friendship was nothing to worry about and reveal how he communicated with various members of Team Starmer while in Washington. This has the potential to do extreme damage, both to Starmer himself and to those around him – far more damage, in fact, than Badenoch was able to cause today. Perhaps she should have kept her powder dry, which would have had the added bonus of not making her look utterly irrelevant by ignoring the main issue of the day.
On that front, Starmer’s deflections came across as desperately scattergun. This is the third week when he has tried to channel some gravitas and make a serious point about not recklessly leading the UK into war as Badenoch (and Nigel Farage) initially appeared to demand. What was a valid point is now wearing thin. And the Timothy attack came out of nowhere. Starmer has tried this tactic before, deflecting Badenoch by drawing attention to what her frontbench has been saying or doing (Robert Jenrick on not seeing white faces in Birmingham, for example) and demonstrating the similarities between the official opposition party and those on the fringes of British politics (hence the Tommy Robinson reference). But again, this has nothing to do with Peter Mandelson. And acting as though it does managed to both highlight Starmer’s lack of an answer to a straightforward yes-or-no question and weaken his overall suggestion that the only thing a prime minister should be thinking about right now is war.
Perhaps the PM was distracted by the knowledge that Nigel Farage was – for once – in the chamber and about to ask his own question. It was about the looming energy crisis and oil and gas in the North Sea, with the Reform leader asking “Isn’t it time we followed Norway?” and opened up drilling. Starmer gabbled his answer on the “consequences” of a war Farage had said Britain should “rush into”, once more trying to get mileage out of that initial response. All well and good, but when energy bills start to rise the British public are unlikely to be satisfied by a blame game on who started the war. They will want government intervention. And if Reform can put forward a seductive (if wildly impractical) story about North Sea drilling, Starmer will need a better answer than “this is the war you wanted”.
A final mention should go to the Tory MP Andrew Snowden, for bringing things full circle and returning to Mandelson – a subject Starmer probably hoped he’d escaped by this point in proceedings. “What is he scared about? What is he hiding?” Snowden demanded. Starmer’s response was that he wasn’t surprised the Tories did not want to talk about the war in Iran or Nick Timothy’s Muslim comments – which is fair enough. But it does emphasise once again that Starmer doesn’t want to talk about Mandelson. And at some point, he is going to have to.
[Further reading: The new world war]
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