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PRESSURE IS MOUNTING on British prime minister Keir Starmer from Labour MPs, angry at his decision to approve the appointment of Peter Mandelson to the role of British ambassador to Washington despite knowing about his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Starmer admitted at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday that he knew about Mandelson’s friendship with the convicted paedophile when he appointed him, but said that the peer “lied repeatedly” about the extent of the relationship.
Downing Street then tried to control the release of potentially explosive documents, which provide insight into how the decision was made.
But in the face of a mutiny from Labour MPs – led by former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner – the British government had to back down and cede control to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to decide what could be released into the public domain.
Starmer will make a bid to focus attention on the “grievance” he will accuse rival political parties of peddling in a speech today, before a crunch by-election in Manchester and local and devolved parliamentary elections in May.
But the controversy surrounding Mandelson – who has quit the House of Lords, resigned from the Labour Party, been removed from the Privy Council and faces a criminal investigation following new revelations from the so-called Epstein files – has led to intensifying questions about Starmer’s political future.
MPs approved the release of documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment yesterday, but a minister told the House of Commons the files would not be released right away, suggesting it could take weeks or months.
This is because the Metropolitan Police has asked the UK government not to release documents that would “undermine” their investigation into Mandelson.
Starmer faced a backlash from his own back benches, including his former deputy Rayner, over an attempt to have some papers “prejudicial to UK national security or international relations” withheld.
Labour MP Andy McDonald said he thought it was “reasonable to expect an answer pretty damn quick” on how Mandelson passed vetting.
It beggars belief that we could ever get a security vetting process that would sign off affirmatively on somebody in these circumstances.
He told the Press Association it was “an appalling failure of judgement” that Starmer appointed Mandelson given what was already in the public domain about him.
Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch told ITV’s Peston she wanted Downing Street to provide the documents in “48 hours or so”.
She is holding a press conference in Westminster later this morning, where she is expected to keep pressure up on Starmer.
Her next intervention will come after Housing Secretary Steve Reed – a Starmer loyalist – tours the television and radio studios for the government, where he is likely to face further questions about the level of anger the parliamentary Labour Party feels towards the Prime Minister.
Labour’s Mainstream group has called for a “clean break” after the “betrayal” of the peer’s appointment to “one of the most powerful diplomatic posts on the planet” despite his friendship with Epstein being public knowledge.
The centre-left grouping, which is backed by Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham – long seen as a potential leadership rival to Starmer – said its members did not want to watch the party “succumb to the same old sickness” of “elite privilege, spin and toxic factionalism”.
Labour peer John Hutton, who served as a Cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, said he thought the handling of the scandal could mark the end of the Starmer’s time in office.
He told LBC it is “clearly” the end of Mandelson’s career, but added that “it could well mark the end of the Prime Minister’s time in office”.
He said he expected Labour MPs would be having some “very serious reflections” on the direction of government and cast doubt on whether sacking his chief of staff, Cork native Morgan McSweeney, would be enough to fix the troubles facing Starmer.
“I don’t think the Prime Minister can be rescued by an avalanche of new parliamentary aides or aides in No 10. I think the change has got to come from the very top, not from the other ranks of the Government,” Hutton added.
“And I don’t know whether that change is possible tonight. It doesn’t really look to me like it is.”
The latest tranche of Epstein files released appear to show Mandelson passing potentially market-sensitive information to the financier in 2009, while he was business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government.
Mandelson has been approached for comment and while he has yet to speak publicly, the BBC said it understood he maintains he did not act criminally and that his actions were not for personal gain.
The BBC reported Mandelson argues he had sought Epstein’s expertise in the national interest before the financial crisis.
The files also suggest that Mandelson tried to secure a Russian visa for Epstein, with an email exchange showing Epstein asked how he could get a visa, to which Mandelson responds that “Ben can get visas thru OD”.
This is thought to refer to Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, the co-founder of Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel, and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
Deripaska hit the headlines in the UK in 2008 when it emerged he had hosted then-shadow chancellor George Osborne and then-European trade commissioner Mandelson on his superyacht off Corfu.
Epstein survivor Ashley Rubright told the BBC she felt “vindicated” to see accountability for the financier’s UK associates and said she cried when she learned Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who features several times in the released documents, had moved out of Royal Lodge.
“It’s a feeling that I can’t describe. If this amount of justice and accountability, even being asked questions about it makes me feel vindicated from another country’s actions,” she said.
“I can’t imagine what it would feel like to have my abuser personally held accountable in my country.”
With reporting from Press Association
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