The real Keir Starmer scandal

Keir Starmer is doing his angry face. Again. And no one is buying it. Again. The news last night that New Labour slimeball Peter Mandelson was appointed ambassador to the US, despite failing his security-vetting clearance, has supposedly left the prime minister as shocked and appalled as everyone else. He’s ‘furious’, we’re told. And he’s now sacked top Foreign Office mandarin Olly Robbins to prove he means business. I wonder if even Starmer believes what he’s saying at this point.

Since Mandelson was canned – following revelations about just how chummy (and allegedly remunerative) his relationship was with the disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein – the government line has been that the right process was followed at all times, that all potential risks were properly weighed up. Now we’ve learned that Mandelson failed a ‘developed vetting process’ by security officials, but their conclusions were overruled. And all this took place after Starmer had announced the appointment. With civil servant Robbins taking the fall, we are expected to believe that neither No10 nor the relevant ministers were aware the check was ignored. So Starmer is either telling porkies or is often blissfully unaware of what’s going on within his own government.

Both explanations are plausible. Having landed in Downing Street promising to banish sleaze and restore competence, Labour has swiftly reminded everyone that it can be at least as crooked and useless as the previous lot. The media class seemed to briefly forget that New Labour was also mired in scandal from the off, with Mandelson often neck-deep in the swamp water; a man whose every dalliance with high office ended in disgrace, and who – as we now know from the Epstein Files – was ferrying financially sensitive information to Epstein while serving in Gordon Brown’s government. Meanwhile, those breakfast clubs aside, Starmer has been left with precious few actual achievements to point to that might allow him to move on from Mandygate.

No doubt, Starmer has wrecked his carefully crafted image as a man of principle and process. Certainly, the commentariat – who, in some cases, were literally aroused by his 2024 election triumph – seem bitterly disappointed. But again, you wonder if they were ever paying attention. Starmer’s increasingly hard-to-believe explanations over Mandelson come after years of him taking one position, shifting to the diametrically opposed position, and then insisting nothing has changed. He campaigned for the Labour leadership on a soft Corbyn platform, before junking his left-wing pledges and purging the Corbynistas. In the run-up to the election, he seemed to have had a dramatic change of heart on everything from nationalisation to drug legalisation to immigration to gender. It’s almost as if he’ll say anything to get into power. Now his reputation for political untrustworthiness has been underscored by these mounting allegations of plain old dishonesty.

Starmer has certainly been hoist by his own moralistic petard. Having spent his time in opposition insisting Tory ministers resign whenever they did so much as pass wind, or painting Boris Johnson as a uniquely treacherous character, he’s now enveloped in a scandal that makes ‘cash-for-curtains’ or Chris Pincher’s wandering hands seem cute by comparison. But I’m almost less bothered by his routine attempts to take us all for mugs than I am the daily affront that is this government and its agenda (such as it still exists). At the risk of sounding cynical, one can forgive a politician his lies and sleaze if he is delivering on what people want. You can also almost respect a politician who has the courage of his convictions, even if those convictions are monstrous. Instead, Starmer has proven himself unwilling or incapable to address the public’s mounting fury over immigration or the economy, all while struggling to do the things no one really asked him to do, like ushering in digital ID or legalising offing granny.

The Peter Mandelson scandal is big enough to rock any government. But this is not any government. Led by a man who has no ideology beyond a reflexive deference to polite-society opinion, and who is so inept he would struggle to deliver a pizza let alone a policy, Starmer’s Labour stands particularly exposed, with nothing else going for it and cratering public support. We’ve ended up with a prime minister who believes in nothing, can’t really do anything, and who will say almost anything he thinks might stagger him through another bruising news cycle. What did we ever do to deserve this?

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater_.