It’s over and out (again) for Mandelson, but how many political lives does Starmer have left? | Gaby Hinsliff

Once is unfortunate. Twice is clearly careless. But there are few words available for a family newspaper to describe hiring Peter Mandelson thrice, only for him to become mired in yet another scandal of career-ending proportions.

Rarely has the Labour party been so united as it is now in rage. Once again, the Prince of Darkness is dragging everyone through the mud, thanks to his moth-like attraction to wealth and power. Once again, awkward questions are being asked about his integrity, or what he disclosed and when. The only surprise is that this time it unravelled so fast: just seven months from resurrection to disgrace.

Though there is no good time to lose our ambassador to Washington over his friendship with a convicted paedophile, this one is biblically bad: days after losing Angela Rayner, in the middle of a deputy leadership contest that is being viewed as a power struggle between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham, ahead of a state visit by a US president with his own embarrassing connections to Epstein.

Yet this sacking couldn’t wait. Mandelson might have survived Monday’s publication of a gushing birthday tribute to his “best pal”, written before Epstein’s conviction for soliciting prostitution from minors. But the later emails that surfaced on Wednesday, fondly urging his now disgraced friend to fight for early release and promising that “your friends stay with you and love you”, were beyond toxic. No Labour government battling poisonous conspiracy theories about the left turning a blind eye to grooming gangs could tolerate this, but perhaps especially not from a man who had just effectively made a public fool of his leader.

Twice in a week now, Starmer has defended a scandal-ridden colleague to parliament, only for them to be gone 24 hours later. But where Angela Rayner’s resignation was met with sorrow on the backbenches, Mandelson’s sacking invites only rage that he was ever allowed to get this close to power again.

What hurts isn’t just the grubbiness – the impression created that pretty much any scandal can be overlooked if hiring someone is politically expedient, reinforcing all voters’ most cynical assumptions – but the crystallising of backbench concerns about Keir Starmer’s poor judgment and consequent overreliance on close aide Morgan McSweeney. Anger once aimed at Downing Street’s longsuffering monkeys is now converging on the organ-grinder.

Ironically, Mandelson and Starmer are not personally close, and in opposition his constantly proffered advice was sometimes a source of irritation. But Mandelson found a way in, as he always does, via friendlier shadow cabinet ministers and crucially his mentorship of McSweeney. It is precisely that ability to ooze through locked doors that got him to Washington: if anyone could get inside Donald Trump’s head at a time of existential danger for Europe, it was the man who for all his flaws is an extraordinarily gifted politician, possessing an almost supernatural ability to anticipate and manipulate those around him.

On his shift, Britain got its trade deal, escaped miraculously lightly from tariffs and helped persuade the White House, at least temporarily, not to betray Ukraine. Perhaps history will judge some of these victories worth having, though it’s hard to say precisely how much was owed to Mandelson and how much to his old friend (and now foreign policy adviser) Jonathan Powell, assorted cabinet ministers, or outgoing ambassador Karen Pierce. But if the prize was epic, so were the risks.

For the sake of full disclosure, I was a baby political reporter during Mandelson’s first resignation in 1998 – over taking a secret loan from the millionaire Labour minister Geoffrey Robinson to buy a swanky house he couldn’t afford – and part of the Observer reporting team that precipitated his second, this time over his response to allegations that he intervened on behalf of an Indian billionaire seeking a British passport.

Years later, my overriding memory of that time is the palpable anguish of his colleagues deciding that they couldn’t trust his version of events. What most surprises me isn’t that another prime minister took a risk on Mandelson’s talents and lived to regret it, but that when trouble came calling, Starmer seemingly gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Mandelson insists that he never personally saw any wrongdoing in Epstein’s homes, suggesting that as a gay man visiting with his then partner (and now husband), it’s perhaps not surprising that Epstein never offered him “any introductions to women in the way that allegedly he did for others”. But it was a matter of public record that their friendship survived Epstein’s exposure and every alarm bell should have rung on Wednesday morning, when the Sun’s Harry Cole posted clips of a forthcoming interview in which Mandelson said he regretted staying close for too long – a classic move to get ahead of a damaging story.

Questions will obviously be asked about everything from vetting to who knew what in advance of prime minister’s questions. But barely a fortnight after the last reset of the Downing Street machine, there are almost no minions left to fire.

What is left instead is a prime minister who in surrounding himself with Tony Blair’s brightest talents – not just Powell, but fixer Pat McFadden, policy chief Liz Lloyd and most recently spin doctor Tim Allan – inadvertently left himself nowhere to hide. If all the old ingredients, added to the pot in roughly the old order, can’t start producing something like the old magic by next spring’s local elections, then eventually there will be nobody to blame but the chef. Don’t be surprised if, at that point, someone else tries to take over the kitchen.

• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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