4 hours ago
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Good morning. Keir Starmer knew that Peter Mandelson had had a long and close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him ambassador to Washingon. He also knew that Mandelson has been a scandal magnet for most of his career. But he was not appointing him archbishop of Canterbury. He calculated that Mandelson would be the right person to forge a good relationship with the immoral plutocrat narcissist now running America (also an old friend of Epstein’s), and by all accounts Mandelson has done this very successfully.
But, as Rowena Mason reports in her overnight story, Starmer is now under pressure to ditch the ambassador because new revelations about his relationship with Epstein have made it increasingly hard to defend – not least because Mandelson continued to support him in private even after he was facing charges for child sex offences.
Yesterday the leftwingers Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Kim Johnson were about the only Labour MPs calling for Mandelson to be sacked. But this morning, in an interview with the Today programme, Andy McDonald, a shadow cabinet minister under Jeremy Corbyn and under Starmer until 2021, also spoke out, saying Mandelson should go immediately.
McDonald told the programme:
[Mandelson] should go immediately. His position is completely and utterly untenable and him staying on in post is causing the government and the Labour party further damage. I’m afraid if he doesn’t do the right thing and resign today then the prime minister should sack him …
Angela Rayner did the right thing. She was under pressure for an inadvertent failure to pay tax. This is of a completely different scale. This speaks about morality and judgement, and Peter Mandelson’s position just is totally untenable, and he needs to act and take responsibility for his failures and withdraw from the political scene immediately.
More significantly, McDonald also claimed this was the private view of most or all Labour MPs. Asked how many other Labour MPs agreed with what he was saying about Mandelson, McDonald replied:
It’s 100%. People have got their heads in their hands over this and I haven’t spoken to anybody who is offering any glimmer of support for Peter Mandelson. It is widespread revulsion that we, by association, being in the same party, are being brought under the microscope for something that he has done.
He’s got to take responsibility for his actions and bring this to a close.
There isn’t anybody in the Labour party who is supporting Peter Mandelson today and the prime minister’s got to hear that and understand that he’ll weaken his position if he continues to support him. He cannot defend the indefensible.
When it was put to him that it was worth keeping Mandelson in post because he was helping the UK to get favourable decisions out of the White House, McDonald replied:
There’s got to be a moral compass. There are women who have been so fundamentally damaged by the behaviour of Epstein and his associates, and, in honour of them, we’ve got to put down a marker and say this is wholly and utterly unacceptable.
And the consequences that flow from somebody having to fall on their sword will be the consequences, and we will deal with it.
It will not derail the relationship between the United States and the UK. That will sustain way beyond this current prime minister and this current president.
In part this is just Labour factionalism; it’s the latest skirmish in a battle between Mandelson and the left that has been going on since the 1980s. Mandelson once famously said he wanted to consign the Corbynite left to a “sealed tomb”, and the MPs who have been speaking out against him, like McDonald, are leftwingers who are returning the favour. But it is not just that. Opposition parties are demanding Mandelson’s resignation too, and the rightwing papers are gunning for him as well.
There will be quite a lot more of this as the day goes on.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: NHS England publishes its latest monthly performance figures.
9.45am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, speaks at a Policy Live event in London.
10.3am: Alan Campbell, the new leader of the Commons, takes business questions in the chamber.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions at Holyrood.
2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, speaks at the DSEI conference in London.
Afternoon: David Lammy, the new deputy PM and justice secretary, visits a prison in south London.
5pm: Nominations close for the Labour party deputy leadership. As Jessica Elgot reports, Bridget Phillipson is definitely a candidate, and it is likely only one other MP will be nominated – Lucy Powell.
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