Terry Prone: Epstein fallout exposes Starmer as the weak leader he has always been

Peter Mandelson with British prime minister Keir Starmer. Starmer made the mistake of a lifetime in appointing a values-free individual as Ambassador to the US.

Now, in the list of unintended consequences emerging from the millions of Epstein pages, one is about political strategy. Here’s how it works. British prime minister Keir Starmer hasn’t just made the mistake of a lifetime in appointing a values-free individual named Peter Mandelson ambassador to the US at a time of crisis, but, when Mandelson’s sketchy relationship with national responsibility became clear, has additionally made a dog’s breakfast of dealing with same.

Starmer’s enemies start making noises about taking him out as leader of the Labour Party. Now, those enemies should be silent and serpentine. Instead, they’re all over the place, particularly all over the media place.

However, the prime minister’s pals have anonymously put out spokespeople close to the top man to point out that if Angela Rayner, say, were to succeed in getting rid of Starmer, that wouldn’t be great. Because she’s not been the leader of a political party when it won a general election, she doesn’t have a mandate. 

Therefore Labour would have to have a general election, and since they’re now about as popular with the British electorate as Jeffrey Epstein, memorably described in this paper by Suzanne Harrington as a “dead nonce”, this mightn’t be the best move. It may be the first time that the unpopularity of a political party, much of it due to the actions of a dire prime minister, serves to protect that party and that prime minister from well-earned electoral destruction.

Some early supporters of Starmer believed that his refusal or inability to be specific about his vision for his nation before the last general election, were he to lead his party into power, was a wise move, affording him loads of room to establish his government, after which, those early supporters believed, he would make manifest the vision they were convinced he had, based on the values they believed he exemplified. Wrong on both counts. No vision. No values.

He had hardly got his feet under the prime ministerial desk before he and his wife offered, in miniature, a version of one aspect of the Epstein saga: Rich folk take freebies. Victoria Starmer bent the rules before and after 2024, accepting thousands from a donor. Her hubby, likewise: about a month after he went into 10 Downing Street, the Starmers got free Taylor Swift tickets. Of course, they meant to properly declare these freebies, never mind the PR downside to taking freebies and them hardly weeks into their government stint, but they never got around to it.

Shameless royals

The Starmers are in the ha’penny place compared to the now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Duchess of York, who, individually and severally, importuned Epstein for millions, sans shame, sans restraint. 

The lack of shame or restraint perhaps best illustrated by the duchess, who, when given business class transatlantic tickets by Epstein, free, gratis and for nothing, went right back to the gift horse, looked him in the mouth and told him it’d be much better if he upgraded her from Business to First Class and shifted her daughters from economy to Club class, which we assume is another moniker for Business Class. This woman wins the prize for First in Crass.

Even if we accept that the Starmers’ grifting was penny ante stuff compared to what we’ve been reading about in the past week, the fact is that it was squalid, unnecessary and runs a gilded coach and four through any claims Starmer might have to understand the lives lived by traditional Labour voters.

Instead, Starmer might have something in common with Peter Mandelson. He might also be “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.” People who give Mandelson seventy five thousand quid get to call him “Petey” so let’s go with that and send him an IOU which he’ll never notice in among the media requests to “tell his side of the story” about his fawning mendicant relationship with the villainous Epstein. 

Petey wrote stuff to Epstein about Petey’s husband, the disloyalty of which would make your skin crawl. But then, what he used to say openly about Donald Trump was pretty harsh, too. The Donald was a danger to the world, was how he put it.

Ignoring the evidence

Now, you might think that Mandelson’s frankness about Trump might have given his prime minister pause when it came to appointing him as ambassador to the US. But come on, Petey had walked back those comments, talking instead about the “fresh respect” he now had for the president’s “dynamism and energy.” So no worries there, right? You might also suspect that anybody with a big legal brain would look at Petey’s two previous firings for questionable financial dealing and think, “This guy’s word cannot be trusted.” But no, Starmer went right ahead with the appointment.

He set aside a career which had — decades earlier — led to Petey being called “the Prince of Darkness” and had led another prime minister — our own Bertie Ahern — to mistrust him and see him as a “tricky guy”. 

He set aside a career which had — decades earlier — led to Petey being called “the Prince of Darkness” and had led another prime minister — our own Bertie Ahern — to mistrust him and see him as a “tricky guy”.

He set all that aside to appoint him to a post which embodies Britishness in the US. Admittedly, he didn‘t know at the time that this personification of Britain was happy to leak state secrets to a man who used them to skew the relationship between the UK government and its banking system. But when the Epstein files showed Petey for what he was, the dimwit in Downing Street complained bitterly that Petey had lied to him. Imagine. Shock, horror. It’s like giving out that you couldn’t get a souffle in McDonalds. They do burgers. Petey does lies.

The Epstein files reveal fascinating characteristics shared by his email pals, starting with greed and lack of shame about begging which eventually, in some cases, actually led Epstein to complain about being relentlessly exploited. You’d be nearly sorry for him. Atop greed, there is the contempt and hatred for women, matched by contempt for mainstream media, expressed even by that pet of mainstream media, Naom Chomsky. Epstein didn’t do anything really, is the message, it’s just media.

No, it’s not. Aside from the truly awful trafficking of women and children, what Epstein did was corrupt every system he touched. He dealt in first names and favours, bribery and blackmail: the traditional tools allowing the bad guys to buy and sell the powerful who believe themselves to be good guys, be they bankers, politicians, medics or royalty. Add to those tools the unintended collaboration of men like Starmer, and the task of Epstein was easy.

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Starmer fooled the electorate from the start. Buying into Petey and whimpering about being lied to is more than sad. This prime minister, in his mishandling of Mandelson, has undoubtedly contributed to electoral fear, rage and cynicism.

Anyone who believed him to be a principled political strategist has to admit the reality. This is a bad leader who wouldn’t know a traditional Labour Party value if it bit him.