Keir Starmer, we learn, would have “never appointed” Peter Mandelson if he had known about the full extent of his Jeffrey Epstein links.. He had known that there were questionable emails when he said that he had “confidence in him” at last Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, but he had not known about “the content of those emails”. Granted, I’ve never worked in politics. But if your Ambassador to the United States had been exchanging emails with the world’s most infamous sex offender, would you not want to know what they said before you declared your “confidence” in him?
Let’s put these emails aside. Had the prime minister not heard that Mandelson was reported to have kept meeting with Epstein for years after his initial arrest — for procuring an underage girl for prostitution — in 2008? You would think he would have done — even if it was reported in a marginal outlet like the Guardian. Can it really be surprising that Mandelson sent supportive emails to the disgraced Epstein? Did Starmer and his advisers think that he had kept in touch with the man only to scold him?
Surely, Starmer has to be a worse judge of men than an explosives manufacturer who gives a key job to someone with chronic hand tremors. Madelson is a man who has had to resign before, in 1998, over his dubious connections to extremely wealthy men (even if the dubiousness of that earlier event had been solely related to financial matters). Was Lord Mandelson’s relationship with perhaps the world’s most dubious extremely wealthy man not reason enough to exclude him from consideration for one of the most important jobs in British politics? Granted, President Trump had his own questionable relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, so perhaps Keir Starmer thought that he and Mandelson would have something in common, but it still seems fantastically stupid that Mandelson won this appointment. What did Starmer and his advisers expect to happen?
The truth is that Peter Mandelson might have no obvious exceptional advantages as a political actor, and might have exceptionally weighty baggage as a political actor, but he is one of the team. Keir Starmer and his advisers think of themselves as fundamentally sensible, moderate, competent et cetera, and so anyone on the team must be sensible, moderate and competent — even if they were great mates with the world’s most infamous sex offender.
The Starmerites defined themselves in opposition to Jeremy Corbyn and his fans … But there is more than one way to fail
A lot of this has to do with Labour Party politics. The Starmerites defined themselves in opposition to Jeremy Corbyn and his fans. Corbyn’s Labour Party had proved itself to be unelectable in its militant commitment to fringe left-wing causes. By distinguishing themselves from Corbyn’s Labour Party, then, the Starmerites thought they were its opposite. In this, they were clearly influenced by New Labour, which had shrugged off its association with the Labour Party of the 1980s. Mandelson, with his New Labour experience and his history of opposing Corbyn — who he claimed to try to undermine “every single day” — seemed like one of the team.
But there is more than one way to fail. Corbyn might have been unelectably radical, but that does not mean that Britons were going to be satisfied with limp and unfocused managerialism. More peculiarly, Corbyn might have had a toxic brand after welcoming his “friends” from Hamas and Hezbollah, but that does not mean that his opponents were not going to have their own toxic friendships with, for example, the world’s most infamous sex offender.
Aaron Bastani wittily calls Starmer’s government “a sort of 1997 re-enactment society”. Unlike New Labour, though, Starmer does not have a functioning economy. Nor does Starmer have Tony Blair’s charisma. Shocking political errors like giving a job to Peter Mandelson are going to reflect worse on him than the errors of Sir Tony (and at least Sir Tony did not have the knowledge of Mandelson’s earlier resignations).
It’s about time that Starmer and his team looked in the mirror. Even the most dull-minded progressive commentators who thought that the Labour government represented the grown-ups being back in the room must have woken up to the fact that they are still in a political crèche. They might think of themselves as being Britain’s rightful governors but that does not mean that anybody else feels the same. I think even the manager of Nottingham’s least up-market pizza place would have asked more questions about giving a front of house job to an employee with as checkered a past as Mandelson. And at least they would be serving pizza and beer rather than just taxing them.
