Between Peter Mandelson's sinophilia and Chris Pincher's wandering hands, we've suffered sleaze for too long
Keir Starmer will ultimately leave Britain in an angrier and materially poorer position than when he found it
It takes a special kind of political crisis to make a right-winger agree with Diane Abbott.
As Keir Starmer faced MPs on Monday over his appointment of renowned sinophile and friend of Jeffrey Epstein Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, Abbott struck at the heart of the Prime Minister’s weakness. Portraying himself as feeling as hurt, betrayed and confused as the rest of the nation, Starmer insisted time and again that he believed due process had been followed. But as the Hackney MP pointed out, ‘ordinary people don’t really care about process and procedure, they want transparency and they want to know that they have confidence in the words of elected politicians’.
She’s absolutely right, and at one time Starmer seemed to think so too.
In the build up to the general election, Team Starmer were clear that they would clean up British political life. Boris Johnson’s cake, William Wragg’s Grindr honeytrap and Chris Pincher’s wandering hands: for 14 years, the public endured more than its fill of sleaze under the Tories.
In January 2024 – six months out from the election – Starmer delivered a speech in which he promised to ‘restore standards in public life with a total crackdown on cronyism’, adding that he came into politics ‘to serve’. It became clear as early as September that same year, with the Lord Alli ‘freebies’ scandal, that just as he had accused the Tories of, Starmer had entered politics all-too-willing to swerve responsibility and enjoy the perks of power.
The controversy involving Lord Alli has now been eclipsed by the Mandelson affair, and has only cemented the view of Starmer many had already begun to form. Since September last year, when the extent of Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was revealed with the release of the eponymous files, three high-profile sackings have taken place. Morgan McSweeney and Chris Wormald in February this year, and Olly Robbins last week. Oh, and this is without mentioning the Prime Minister’s desire to make Matthew Doyle, another friend of a convicted paedophile, an ambassador. No doubt he will find someone else to fire for that, too.
Whether he was overwhelmed by the dizzying responsibilities of power or duped the public with a clever exercise in dissimulation, the reputation he tried so hard to build as a forensic, honest politician lies in tatters. Fewer than a third of voters believe he should continue as Labour leader.
This liberal attitude to the truth and flagrant disregard for the public’s trust is mirrored across the Starmer government’s agenda. If you think back to 2024, it wasn’t just a cleanup of public life that was promised, but also a frank, pragmatic approach to fixing the economy.
In interviews before the general election, Starmer promised to remain ‘laser focused’ on economic growth and made it clear that he and Rachel Reeves would be friends to the business community, unlike the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.
With the exception of moderate growth over the last three months – now due to slump again over the energy price shock from the Iran war, worsened by this Government’s insistence on leaving our oil and natural gas in the ground – the economy has stalled and business confidence has plummeted. Yet if you ask Cabinet ministers, just as with the Mandelson scandal, this failure is everyone’s fault except theirs.
In her Mais Lecture last month, Reeves, in a masterclass in misdirection, pinned the blame for Britain’s economic woes on Brexit, arguing that leaving the European Union created the ‘profound uncertainty’ we now face. Just last week, Business Secretary Peter Kyle took aim at Donald Trump, attributing the war in Iran to Britain’s economic difficulties. Kyle claimed that Labour had ‘bust a gut to get growth into our economy’, but that this was being ‘stressed and challenged’ by events in the Middle East.
The buck-passing is intolerable, and just as unbelievable as the various official explanations given for Mandelson’s appointment. Yes, the Iran war has made things challenging, but growth has been so glacial primarily because of the Government’s new taxes on business, job-killing employment rights legislation and failure to build sufficient infrastructure.
Whether Starmer departs in the coming weeks or years, if he continues to shirk responsibility for lapses of political judgement and misleads the public as to why they’re not getting any richer, he will leave the country in an angrier, materially poorer state than when he found it. As public trust in politics continues to decline, the stronger the imperative to strengthen it becomes.
Regardless of which party or parties form the next government, empty rhetoric followed by political red herrings to distract from a failure to deliver will not cut it. From cracking down on cronyism to being candid about the supply-side reform and spending cuts necessary for long-term fiscal sustainability, whoever leads Britain into the next decade must be guided by one principle above all: honesty.
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