Lord Mandelson: The Albatross Around Sir Keir’s Neck

“I am sorry, sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you,” the British prime minister lamented Thursday to the British public and to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

Britain is in the midst of what has been called the biggest scandal in British politics for over a century, and its leader, who is heavily implicated along with his top allies, is trying to cling on to power.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer apologized to the British public this week. It seems his former ambassador to the U.S., Lord Mandelson, had a “relationship” with Jeffrey Epstein and that he was aware of it at the time he appointed him to high office.

Sensing the possibility of his party breaking ranks with him, the prime minister has issued a veiled threat to his political faction in the Labour Party to stand behind him or risk a Nigel Farage government. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 333: Commie Trouble Continues: Peter Mandelson, The UK, UN, Cuba, And The Grammys)

The walls are closing in on Sir Keir Starmer, who attempted to show contrition in a speech on Thursday morning, where the usually compliant British legacy media breached decorum to actually heckle the prime minister. Starmer’s planned remarks on his vision of a multicultural Britain were pushed aside. Attention became focused on his now teetering relationship with the media, his party, and the British electorate. (RELATED: Some Dare Call It Treason)

Following the astonishing admission in Parliament on Wednesday that he had known that Labour grandee Peter Mandelson had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when he decided to appoint ‘Petey’ (as he is known in Parliament) to the prestigious ambassadorship to Washington, Starmer on Thursday attempted to portray himself as a victim in the affair. The prime minister claimed that he had innocently accepted the reassurances of the veteran political operative (known in Britain as “the prince of darkness”) that he had no inappropriate contact with Epstein. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: A Glorious Revolution Across the Pond?)

The Security Services also came in for criticism from Starmer, as he tried to cover his own gullibility for trusting the repeatedly scandal-hit Mandelson by noting they, too, had failed to know the truth about Mandelson by allowing him to pass vetting prior to appointment.

Starmer fired Mandelson, 72, in September after emails were published showing that he maintained a friendship with Epstein after the late financier’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses involving a minor.

Documents published last week by the U.S. Justice Department contain new revelations, including papers suggesting Mandelson shared sensitive government information with Epstein after the 2008 global financial crisis, and records of payments totaling $75,000 in 2003 and 2004 from Epstein to accounts linked to Mandelson or his husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva.

Trying to position himself as a victim and on the side of public outrage rather than the focus of it, Starmer repeatedly told his audience he shared “the anger and frustration” and stated that he is “sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies.”

The prime minister said: “I regret making the decision to have appointed him in the first place. Had I known at the time what I know now, or I knew in September, I’d have never done it.”

Starmer also moved to mitigate the scandal, widely discussed in British media this week as the worst in U.K. politics since the Profumo Affair, which was insufficiently “resolved” with resignations and suicide in 1963 under Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan. When asked about his future as prime minister, Starmer retorted, “We’re moving forward as a country.”

The former ambassador is under investigation by the Metropolitan Police over the emails, which were released as part of a tranche of documents by the US Department of Justice six days ago.

But even as Starmer was speaking, the murmur of leadership talk in London gained momentum. The Guardian, Britain’s left-wing newspaper (and certainly the media source closest to Labour Party members), continued to receive calls from party insiders for Starmer’s exit.

Starmer, it seems, has to make a choice between holding onto power or clinging on to his all-powerful chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who, it is claimed, pushed his ally Mandelson towards the ambassadorial job.

“Keir Starmer is fighting for his political life amid the deepest crisis to engulf his premiership,” Mujtaba Rahman, managing director of political consultant firm Europe at Eurasia Group, said in a note Thursday.

While disgruntled Labour members of parliament had planned to delay any move against Starmer until after a local special election on Feb. 26 and the wider regional elections on May 7, Rahman added, “it is no longer certain he can hold on that long.”

“Although Starmer might survive in the short term, the Mandelson affair has inflicted irreparable damage to him…” Rahman noted.

Others quickly rejected Starmer’s bid to portray himself as a remorseful victim of Mandelson, including Nigel Farage, head of the UK Reform Party and the chief nemesis of the prime minister. Underlining the magnitude of the scandal, he said during a press conference on Thursday:

Yesterday the Prime Minister admitted, because he had to, that despite the fact he’d known that Mandelson had continued his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, even after he’d been sent to prison for underage prostitution, despite the fact the Prime Minister knew that he still appointed Mandelson to be our ambassador in Washington. But don’t think this scandal is just another scandal. It isn’t just some sort of Partygate but a bit bigger.

This involves sex, it involves money, it involves the royal family. It involves the leaking of market sensitive, confidential information. I suspect it’s pretty close, in many ways, to breaching the Official Secrets Act…

Mr. Farage went on to joke that he hopes Starmer himself stays in power, for now, implying that his unpopularity benefits Farage’s own position in the polls.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch responded to the Starmer debacle, saying: “What he should apologize for is ignoring security advice and vetting that showed him Mandelson should never have been appointed in the first place.”

I’m afraid the media, his own party, and the British electorate all sense “blood in the water” in the premiership of Sir Keir Starmer.

The problem is, Mr. Prime Minister, sometimes…  “Sorry” doesn’t get it done.

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