Keir Starmer is Finished. But What Have We Learned From the Mandelson Affair?
Revelations that Prime Minister Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the US despite knowing that he had maintained his friendship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein have had and will continue to have a series of long-running consequences.
First and most obviously, Starmer’s goose is cooked. He will likely survive the week for the very same reason he is extremely unlikely to survive the year: his rivals can read the tea leaves. As I predicted in the wake of Starmer’s supposed “landslide”, which was, in reality, merely the British public punishing the Tories without any enthusiasm for Labour, things were inevitably going to get worse for Labour with every day in power.
The pretenders to Starmer’s wobbly throne know they are likely to get trounced in the Gorton and Denton by-election later this month, having haemorrhaged votes to Reform and the Green’s emerging green-green alliance (more on this later). They also know that local government, mayoral, as well as Scottish and Welsh parliament elections are coming in early May. A scapegoat will be needed to explain the inevitable disaster that will unfold for Labour at those elections. Why depose Starmer now, only to be fed into the mincer for “his mistakes” a few months down the line?
This is why, the Polymarket odds for Starmer leaving vary so widely between him leaving in the next couple of months (unlikely) and leaving by the end of the year (very likely).
Second, and equally obviously, this entire scandal confirms something that anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear already knew: Labour is utterly devoid of talent. Even a weak and damaged Prime Minister will linger on because his potential replacements are, hard as that may be to believe, even less impressive. Indeed, his appointment of Mandelson was itself a symptom of the same problem: the Labour party is so short of serious operators that appointing a convicted paedophile’s best friend seemed like a good idea. David Lammy, who in opposition described President Trump as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath“, is this country’s Foreign Secretary whose most important job is to establish a productive working relationship with the US Administration. Most of Labour’s front bench should be stacking shelves at Lidl. Instead, they’re running the country.
Finally, and still equally obviously, the fallout from this episode has revealed in writing something that we all knew logically but had not previously heard a senior Labour figure say out loud: they are terrified of the Muslim vote. In an attempt to distance himself from Mandelson, Health Secretary Wes Streeting released their private WhatsApp exchanges. Hidden among these was a telling comment:
“I fear we’re in big trouble here - and I am toast at the next election. We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats. There isn’t a clear one answer to the question: why Labour?
Labour’s chickens are coming home to roost. For years, they fostered, encouraged, and profited from religious sectarianism. A significant number of the seats they hold were won by en bloc Muslim votes. Labour naively believed that these votes would stay with them no matter what, provided they continue to say and do nothing to offend this “community”. Their silence on grooming gangs, their failure to ban the Muslim Brotherhood and their aggressive push to criminalise thought crime under the guise of combatting “Islamophobia” are just some of the surface consequences.
The problem, as they have discovered, is that unlike the Labour Party, whose only guiding principle is political expediency, the Muslim “community” has a clear and well-defined political agenda.
