New revelations shed light on a deeply corrupt system of government that functions in the interests of criminal elites
Peter Oborne’s new book, ‘Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza’, was recently published by Or Books.
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
Is Prime Minister Keir Starmer finished?
He gave Peter Mandelson one of the most cherished jobs the British state can offer: ambassador to the United States. Now Mandelson is embroiled in the gravest political scandal in more than a century.
We now know that Mandelson was leaking sensitive inside information about British government decisions to his financier friend Jeffrey Epstein, one of the most repulsive criminals of the 21st century – a criminal, moreover, who had recently been convicted in a Florida court for procuring a child for prostitution.
The depravity is beyond belief.
At the time, Mandelson was business secretary (and effective deputy prime minister) in the Gordon Brown government as it weighed up how to confront a financial crisis. On the evidence of the Epstein emails, Mandelson may well be guilty of misconduct in public office – an offence that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
To make matters worse for Starmer, his decision to despatch Mandelson to Washington breached historic foreign office conventions.
In the US, ambassadors are often political appointments. This is not the case in Britain. Karen Pierce, a career diplomat, preceded Mandelson in Washington, and after Mandelson was sacked, another British diplomat, Christian Turner, succeeded him.
Bear in mind therefore that Starmer was making a personal intervention when he sent Mandelson to the White House. This makes the prime minister directly responsible for the most reprehensible and disastrous appointment in the postwar history of the British diplomatic service – an appointment that blew up in his face, humiliating Britain in the process.
Public record
Starmer knew that Mandelson had been twice forced to resign from the Tony Blair government – first for failing to declare a loan from fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson, and then after being accused of seeking to influence a passport application for Indian tycoon Srichand Hinduja.
Starmer would also have known about Mandelson’s longstanding friendship with Epstein – sustained after the disgraced financier was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor.
As the Guardian has reported, this was a matter of public record before Mandelson’s appointment to the ambassadorship. It was also publicly known that Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s flat in Manhattan in 2009, the year after Epstein was sentenced to prison.
Yet Starmer still went ahead. It beggars belief.
Despite all this, I believe there is a chance Starmer can survive. This is because Mandelson’s fundamental values have long dominated the British political and media establishment.
When Starmer sent Mandelson to Washington, it was widely hailed as a masterstroke, on the basis that only Mandelson could handle US President Donald Trump.
Remember Starmer’s cringemaking tribute when Mandelson was appointed: “You can sense that there’s a new leader. He’s a true one-off, a pioneer in business, in politics. Many people love him. Others love to hate him. But to us, he’s just … Peter.”
Yet everybody knew that Mandelson was a liar and a cheat.
Shaping the Labour Party
Mandelson has been celebrated – one might almost say loved – by the political and media classes for nearly half a century.
During this period, more than any other politician, he has shaped the modern Labour Party, exercising hypnotic influence over four leaders: Neil Kinnock, Blair, Brown and Starmer.
The scale of the latest political scandal cannot be understood outside of this background.
As a young man, Mandelson flirted with communism, reportedly selling copies of the Morning Star outside Kilburn underground station. In the late 1970s, as chairman of the British Youth Council, he attended a Soviet-sponsored event in Cuba.
But he then signed up to Labour. In the early 1980s, the party boasted a social democratic heritage that could be traced to its founding fathers, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald.
The party he resigned from on Sunday is a husk. It is no longer a vehicle of the left. It has broken its relations with the trade unions, becoming a vehicle for the billionaires who today own British (and world) politics.
Ideologically and practically, Starmer’s Labour is closer to Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform than to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party of the 1960s.
Though others bear a share of responsibility, Mandelson can claim with justification that he, more than anyone else, has turned Labour into what it has become today.
Through charm and force of personality, he hypnotised three Labour prime ministers: Blair, Brown and now Starmer. Through them, he turned Labour from the party of the working class into a party of the rich.
This meant forging alliances with the big newspaper groups, especially the Murdoch media, while taking Labour’s traditional supporters for granted. This strategy worked in the short term by securing three victories in the polls for Blair – hence Mandelson’s reputation as a political genius.
Greed and self-interest
Yet over time, Mandelson hollowed out the party, causing millions of voters to defect to Reform or to insurgent groups on the left.
This was a strategy that left Labour infatuated by power, obsessed with money and bereft of values. Hence the fundamental Mandelson paradox: an individual who loved billionaires joined the party of the working class.
Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, is a Mandelson protege. “I don’t know who and how and when he was invented, but whoever it was,” sighed Mandelson, “they will find their place in heaven.” McSweeney repaid the compliment by pressing for Mandelson to be given the Washington job.
Will Hutton, a respected old Labour thinker, now judges that McSweeney’s emails and mobile “should be examined by the police”, noting that Starmer’s chief of staff spoke with Mandelson “almost daily”.
But it is not simply Starmer and McSweeney who bought Mandelson’s greedy and self-interested politics. If Starmer goes, remember that his likely successor, Wes Streeting, is another Mandelson protege.
The Labour Party’s decision to bar Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from standing in the forthcoming Gorton by-election now looks like a mortal error. It can be compared to a dying man refusing to call an ambulance.
Meanwhile, Farage’s Reform has been mysteriously silent over the Epstein scandal. Farage, more at home in Dubai or Washington than in Britain, reveres money too.
Indeed, vanishingly few politicians have stood outside this corrupt system. The most notable was Jeremy Corbyn. In 2017, Mandelson said he was working “every single day” to undermine or bring him down.
We are very lucky to have the Epstein files. They shed light on a deeply corrupt system of government that functions in the interests of criminal elites, who believe that they have no obligation to obey the laws that constrain ordinary voters.
Starmer’s Labour, Kemi Badenoch’s Tories, and the oligarch media are all part of the system. Eyes have been opened. Let us hope that the future belongs to those who can confront the billionaire class, which has taken control of democratic politics on both sides of the Atlantic.
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