Labour MPs already angry over claim Mandelson’s appointment was ‘worth the risk’
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If you want to know why so many Labour MPs are seething over the government’s response to the Mandelson saga, look no further than my mobile phone at 9.12am this Sunday.
At the top of the screen is a news notification about an interview with the family of a victim of the notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, saying his close friend Peter Mandelson should “never have been made” US ambassador.
Directly below that, a Sky News notification on the business secretary’s interview, explaining that the appointment of Lord Mandelson to the job was judged to be “worth the risk” at the time.
Peter Kyle went on to praise Lord Mandelson’s “outstanding” and “singular” talents and the benefits that he could bring to the US-UK relationship.
While perhaps surprisingly candid in nature about the decision-making process that goes on in government, this interview is unlikely to calm concerns within Labour.
Quite the opposite.
For many in the party, this is a wholly different debate to a simple cost-benefit calculation of potential political harm.
As one long-time party figure put it to my colleague Sam Coates: “I don’t care about Number Ten or what this means for Keir or any of that as much as I care that this culture of turning a blind eye to horrendous behaviour is endemic at the top of society and Peter Kyle has literally just come out and said it out loud.
“He was too talented and the special relationship too fraught for his misdeeds to matter enough. It’s just disgusting.”
There are two problems for Downing Street here.
The first is that you now have a government which – after being elected on the promise to restore high standards – appears to be admitting that previous indiscretions can be overlooked if the cause is important enough.
Package that up with other scandals that have resulted in departures – Louise Haigh, Tulip Siddiq, Angela Rayner – and you start to get a stink that becomes hard to shift.
The second is that it once again demonstrates an apparent lack of ability in government to see around corners and deal with political and policy crises, before they start knocking lumps out of the Prime Minister.
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Sir Keir Starmer is facing questions over the appointment and subsequent sacking of Lord Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US.
Remember, for many the cardinal sin here was not necessarily the original appointment of Mandelson (while eyebrows were raised at the time, there was nowhere near the scale of outrage we’ve had in the last week with many career diplomats even agreeing the with logic of the choice) but the fact that Sir Keir Starmer walked into PMQs and gave the ambassador his full-throated backing when it was becoming clear to many around Westminster that he simply wouldn’t be able to stay in post.
The explanation from Downing Street is essentially that a process was playing out, and you shouldn’t sack an ambassador based on a media enquiry alone.
But good process doesn’t always align with good politics.
Something this barrister-turned-politician may now be finding out the hard way.
