I believe Starmer is finished. It is not a question of if he goes but when. I don’t see how he can possibly come back from this situation. He is a dead man walking.
It is not as if he has any political capital in the bank to draw on. As one newspaper put it he is now shunned by his own MPs and loathed by the public. The latter was from a very early stage during his tenure. He was being called a w****r at Doncaster racecourse only two months after taking office.
He might have got away with it if he had appointed a pillar of the community to the role of ambassador, who subsequently turned out to have a skeleton in the cupboard no one else could possibly have known about. But he didn’t. He appointed Peter Mandelson of all people.
This is a sleazy little creep who had to resign from the Cabinet twice over corrupt behaviour. OK, he was later cleared of having done anything technically or legally wrong the second time but it still wasn’t good behaviour.
Starmer was warned not to appoint Mandelson but went ahead and did it anyway. That is a mixture of arrogance and catastrophically poor judgement.
I find it very difficult to believe the security services had no knowledge of Mandelson’s behaviour. They must have plenty of files several inches thick on him. Starmer must have been warned.
What finishes Starmer is his admission he knew Mandelson was still on very friendly terms with Epstein even after the latter was convicted of serious sexual offences. I don’t see how he can possibly survive.
Plenty of Labour MPs never miss an opportunity to tell us how much they care about womens rights. How do those MPs – especially the large amount of female Labour MPs – square that commitment with supporting a Prime Minister who appointed the best buddy of a serious sex offender to the most important post in the diplomatic service and knew he was still friends after the criminal was convicted?
Plenty of Labour MPs know they are doomed under Starmer. He can hardly call on their loyalty. Since assuming office he has lurched from crisis to crisis, making one avoidable error after another.
And it is not going to get any better. It never does with Mandelson. There is sure to be more to come from the Epstein papers.
Time to resign while he still has a few shreds of dignity left.