We knew that Sir Keir Starmer has rotten judgment, which is why he changes his mind, and U-turns so often, on so many issues. But the first tranche of the so-called Mandelson Files released yesterday still comes as a tremendous shock.
They show that the Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson as our ambassador to the United States despite being warned that there was a ‘reputational risk’. Yet he nonetheless forged ahead.
The risk was not some vague danger dreamt up by civil servants. The facts are spelled out in a very clear briefing document. Mandelson stayed at the Manhattan house of Jeffrey Epstein in June 2009 when the convicted paedophile was still in prison. It’s there, in black and white.
The document states that Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein lasted until at least 2011. It also says he agreed in 2014 to be a ‘founding citizen’ in an ocean conservation group founded by Ghislaine Maxwell and funded by Epstein.
Maxwell was of course the paedophile’s very close friend, and is now serving a 20-year sentence in an American jail for child sex trafficking.
Mandelson’s chequered political career as a Labour Cabinet minister – being sacked twice by Tony Blair – is also mentioned in the document just in case Starmer, who had not been an MP at the time, had forgotten.
The strong pro-China sentiments held by Mandelson, which include the frankly barmy conviction that the rule of law and an independent judiciary prevail in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, are also referred to.
And yet, despite these specific warnings, Mandelson was made ambassador to America. We have had some pretty dud prime ministers in my lifetime but I can’t imagine any of them behaving in such a pig-headed way.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer with his former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who stepped down last month
Sir Keir appointed Peter Mandelson, pictured with Mr McSweeney, as ambassador to the United States despite being warned that there was a ‘reputational risk’
Why in God’s name did Starmer do it? It’s true that the Labour peer had some expertise in international trade, having served as EU Commissioner for Trade from 2004 to 2008. Starmer knew Donald Trump was planning tariffs, and he wanted a well-informed ambassador.
But there were other qualified candidates who hadn’t consorted with known paedophiles or left a trail of scandals in their wake throughout controversial careers.
One was diplomat Karen Pierce, whose stint as British ambassador in Washington was due to expire in January 2025. She could easily have been appointed for another term. Pierce got on with senior people in the Trump administration. Why not her?
One possible explanation for Starmer’s unfathomable stupidity in appointing Mandelson is that he didn’t expect that the clear advice he received in the briefing document would ever be revealed in public.
It only has been because the Tories, supported by irate Labour backbenchers, demanded it. Starmer resisted disclosure on the bogus grounds of national security – and now we can see why.
Yet even though he can’t have imagined that his reckless endorsement of Mandelson would be spelt out as it has been, one would have expected a politician with his head screwed on to have exercised caution about someone with a distasteful relationship with a convicted sex offender.
Didn’t it occur to him that more about Mandelson’s sycophantic association with Epstein might come to light? It did so spectacularly last September, when the US Congress released documents and photographs revealing a nauseatingly close relationship.
Starmer promptly sacked the untrustworthy ambassador, claiming to have been ‘lied to repeatedly’ by him about the extent of his friendship with Epstein. Really? He may not have described it in lurid detail but that doesn’t matter because the Prime Minister already knew the essential facts.
Mandelson emerges in yesterday’s documents as the grasping, disreputable person we know him to be – having the gall to ask for a payoff of £550,000. The Government settled for £75,000, which is £75,000 too much. He shouldn’t have received a penny.
But Mandelson we know about. His character defects are not in dispute, and his alleged crimes of betraying official secrets are being investigated by the Metropolitan Police. He has been disgraced, and will never again disfigure public life.
Starmer, however, is still with us. Somehow he clings to office. A month ago it seemed that his time was over. He survived, largely because his potential replacements – Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting – were for different reasons unable or unwilling to mount a coup.
But the latest evidence that he ignored advice any prudent politician would have taken, thereby once again exhibiting his gargantuan lack of judgment, will reignite calls in his party for him to go.
Many Labour backbenchers, particularly female ones, will be appalled by his evident lack of concern about the nature of Epstein’s crimes. If Starmer were the decent, highly moral man he purports to be, wouldn’t he have ruled out Mandelson as soon as he learnt of his shameless friendship with the paedophile?
Yet the PM was persuaded by his then chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and his then director of communications, Matthew Doyle, that Mandelson (with whom both men were friends) was a splendid chap, and there was nothing to worry about.
For once in his life, National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell – a man who loves to lurk in the shadows of public life – was right when he said that he found the appointment of Mandelson ‘unusual’ and ‘weirdly rushed’.
More documents are due to be released. They may sharpen even further the firm impression we have of a prime minster in a hurry, recklessly rubber-stamping Mandelson’s undeserved promotion.
But I believe that we already know all we need to. In fact, we did not require yesterday’s release of files to be certain that Starmer often lacks good sense.
If he had been a reliable, grown up politician, he wouldn’t have needed a briefing document to tell him what those of us who had followed Mandelson’s political career already knew – that he was wholly unfitted to take up the nation’s most important diplomatic post.
We knew about the sackings from Cabinet. We were aware that when he was an EU Commissioner he got close to the Russian oligarch and aluminium magnate, Oleg Deripaska.
His close links with Putin’s Russia, and his role for four years as a non-executive director on the board of Sistema, a controversial Russian conglomerate, were also known. So, too, was the compelling allegation that he had stayed in Epstein’s New York house in 2009.
If this and other discreditable facts were familiar to so many from reading the newspapers, why didn’t Keir Starmer, who presents himself as an intelligent and curious lawyer, also know?
Or did he – and simply not care? If a man can read information in a briefing document damning Mandelson and merely shrug his shoulders, what else might he have discovered, and also ignored?
Sir Keir Starmer has long been portrayed as someone at sea in the world of politics. A man without judgment who isn’t sure what he believes about anything, and can change his mind as quickly as the weather on a spring day.
But at least Keir is decent: that has been the cry of his defenders, and even the concession of his enemies. Yet it wasn’t decent to set aside Mandelson’s association with Epstein, who had done such harm to so many girls and young women.
It was a serious moral lapse, and one that sooner rather than later will finish him.
