Oh, Mandy! Starmer’s naïveté comes back to bite him

There have been two people nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness” in my lifetime. One, Ozzy Osbourne, was an occult-inspired singer known to bite the heads of live doves; the other, Peter Mandelson, is by comparison a truly sinister figure whose antics are now threatening to bring down British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. For Canadians unfamiliar with Lord Mandelson’s career, it will suffice to say that the tabloid epithet “scandal-plagued” has followed him like Nemesis through two ministerial stints—and two forced resignations—in Tony Blair’s Labour government, a sinecure as EU commissioner, and an improbable return to government under Gordon Brown, during which it appears he may have leaked confidential financial information to Jeffrey Epstein. What does any of this have to do with Keir Starmer, who, for all his political faults, is hard to picture at a Caribbean orgy, or, indeed, having any kind of fun at all? In 2024, Starmer called Mandelson out of political exile and sent him as His Majesty’s ambassador to Washington. As the government’s man in Trumpland, this made Mandelson the most important man in what some Brits still flatter themselves to call “the special relationship.” To say that Mandelson was a controversial choice would be to stretch understatement to the breaking point. Mandelson’s past relationship with Epstein was already a matter of public record, as was his propensity to self-destruct in spectacularly embarrassing ways, usually involving dodgy loans and self-dealing. To Starmer’s political guru (and former Mandelson protégé) Morgan McSweeney, however, this history appears to have been considered an asset in dealing with Trump, and he sold the appointment to Starmer as a calculated risk. If anyone could smarm his way into the president’s good graces, the logic went, it was Lord Mandy. Send a thief to catch a thief. And for almost a year, it seemed to work—right up until the revelation that Mandelson had signed Epstein’s infamous 50th birthday book with an entry that, even by the nauseating standards of that document, stood out as particularly emetic, and that around the same time he had encouraged the convicted child sex offender to “fight for early release.” The risk had backfired, and Mandelson was recalled. This weekend, the scandal moved from the “I told you so” phase to “someone’s got to go.” As I write, it is being reported that McSweeney has resigned as Starmer’s chief of staff. Now Westminster waits to see whether this sacrifice is sufficient to satisfy the mob. It shouldn’t be. There is no evidence that McSweeney misled Starmer, so sacking, er, resigning him for advice that Starmer himself agreed with isn’t exactly a profile in courage or accountability. I doubt that the more ambitious Labour MPs will be satisfied with the explanation that the buck should stop just short of Starmer’s desk. Blood will have blood. Can Starmer survive in the short term, and does any of this ultimately matter? On the first question, your guess is as good as mine; on the second, no, not really. In time, the Epstein scandal will blend into the tawdry history of our low dishonest age, another lurid but unexceptional example of the old story of political decadence. From Tiberius’s “minnows” on Capri to Sultan Ibrahim’s concupiscent appetites, the marriage of power and money has always spawned monsters or attracted them. Starmer’s buffoonery may be more Malvolian than malevolent, but his naïveté made him an easy mark for an operator like Mandelson. And for that, sooner or later, he must go.