As one former Labour prime minister famously said, “a week is a long time in politics”.
That is particularly true for one Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, who until Friday was the chief executive of the lobbying firm Global Counsel, which he co-founded with Peter Mandelson.
Mr Wegg-Prosser has been a close associate of the former Labour peer for decades, served as one of his key advisers and even became the director of Downing Street’s strategic communications unit under Tony Blair.
At the start of the week however, as Westminster reeled from the revelation that Lord Mandelson had allegedly shared sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a cabinet minister, Mr Wegg-Prosser was at a drinks reception at the Foreign Office.
He was there as part of an event celebrating the UK’s relationship with the US, which Foreign Office sources insist was organised by an outside group who used one of its grand, impressive rooms.
But emails released as part of the Epstein files reveal the true extent of the billionaire paedophile’s involvement in the setting up of the lobbying firm, and on Friday Mr Wegg-Prosser announced his decision to stand down, having concluded his association with Lord Mandelson was doing the business harm.
He has insisted he has not done anything wrong. But the fact that on Monday, one of Lord Mandelson’s close political allies had been at the heart of Whitehall demonstrates, as Keir Starmer has found out to his cost, just how pervasive Mandelson’s influence has been for decades on the Labour Party, the government and British politics.
There is a clamour among some Labour MPs for Mandelson’s actions, and the government’s handling of this week’s fallout, to prove terminal for the Labour leader.
One Labour MP told The Independent: “It is over”. The only questions now, they said, were “when, how and how painful”.
There was also intense scepticism about the idea that potentially sacrificing his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who has been close to Lord Mandelson and the PM, would be enough to save Sir Keir.
“It’s like throwing a twig in a raging river and hoping it becomes a dam,” another MP said, while a minister told The Independent that Mr McSweeney had to go, but actually he should have gone “months ago”.
After the PM was forced into a U-turn on releasing all the vetting documents on Mandelson on Wednesday, many Labour MPs repeated the same two words about his prospects of holding on to power as they drowned their sorrows in parliament’s Strangers Bar: “It’s over.”
There was also anger at the way the government had tried to manage a vote on releasing government documents about Mandelson into the public domain. No 10 agreed to Tory demands for publication, but wanted a carve-out for “national security” concerns. Labour MPs, led by Angela Rayner, feared this smacked of a cover-up and forced Downing Street into a climbdown.
To make matters worse, there was widespread incredulity on Wednesday night when MPs got wind of news that the prime minister was planning to make a speech on Thursday, hours after his humiliating climbdown, casting himself as the “defender of a decent and tolerant Britain”. The speech was designed to take on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in a crunch Westminster by-election, by highlighting the government’s “Pride in Place” scheme for local areas. But MPs expressed shock at the move.
“I can’t believe it,” one said. “Who told him this was a good idea? It’s something that made sense last Friday. But when you have all of this happening, why did no one say ‘we should pull this’?”
There is now a mix of anger and fear in the party about the impact the scandal could have on Labour’s electoral hopes in the by-election – and beyond. There are concerns that the government has got itself into a drip-drip of documents on Mandelson that will overshadow this month’s vote and also elections to English councils and the Scottish and Welsh parliaments in May.
While Labour had always faced a tough fight in the Gorton and Denton by-election, there had been hopes it was a chance to show, before May’s wider elections, that Reform’s momentum could be stopped in its tracks.
But, one Labour MP said: “Farage could not have written this. It allows him to paint politicians as all ‘at it’, part of some kind of elite, helping each other out instead of voters. It is an absolute disaster for a seat where everyone is watching us and the pressure is on to prove that Reform can be stopped.”
One government insider said they had hoped they could win the by-election before the latest revelations. “But those hopes have plummeted every day since”.
The anger over Mandelson cannot be underestimated.
One Labour MP said: “Everyone is furious. The financial crash was the worst crisis since World War Two and he was shilling for the ones that caused it.”
Another said: “When Alistair Darling was in the Treasury he always felt he was fighting Gordon Brown. Now it turns out he was not fighting Downing Street, he was fighting Wall Street”.
The Mandelson scandal – and the row it provoked – also overshadowed the final vote in the Commons to scrap the Tories’ hugely controversial two-child benefit cap, a move insiders had hoped would help the party win in Gorton and Denton.
And so, once again, Labour is struggling to get across its message, having been blown off course by other events.
At the same time, an extraordinary poll this week showed 95 per cent of Brits had heard of the Mandelson scandal.
Since the start of the new year, Sir Keir has been desperately trying to achieve “cut through” with the public. The bad news for him and his government is that, on the Mandelson issue at least, they have achieved it.
But instead of it being on the government’s help with the cost of living, it is on a scandal about the man who helped install one Labour prime minister and it looks now as if he will cost another his job.
What happens next is unclear, however. There is speculation Sir Keir could hold a wide-ranging reshuffle to try to shore up his position, but there is fury in the ranks at the idea. “I don’t want to be moved,” one minister said, “I’m good at my job.”
Leadership contenders Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner are being urged by MPs to make a move.
Mr Streeting’s own connections with Mandelson though have left him damaged as well. His decision to start removing pictures online with the two of them has only emphasised the close connection between the two.
One MP said: “Wes is definitely tarnished by association. He was always part of that Mandelson/ McSweeney club.”
Another MP noted that the future of the party currently hangs on the actions of “those who are plotting and planning”.
But there is a growing feeling that a coup will be launched once HMRC has issued its report into Ms Rayner’s tax affairs and failing to pay £40,000 of stamp duty, an issue which caused her resignation as deputy PM last year while she claimed it was a mistake.
A supporter of Ms Rayner said: “Angela has the numbers [to launch a leadership bid]. There are 80 MPs who would back her. But she cannot realistically do this with this tax issue hanging over her head.”
There are fears, however, about descending into the chaos that engulfed the Tories in recent years when they changed leaders.
One former minister, previously loyal to Sir Keir, told The Independent he had to go, but the process had to handled carefully, as Labour had promised the country stability when they were elected in 2024, after years of Conservative psychodrama. Stability of government, they added, not prime minister.
