Sir Keir Starmer was fighting for his political life last night after he broke cover to address accusations he ignored information about Lord Mandelson’s links with Jeffrey Epstein.
But even as he prepared to bolster his own weakened position with an interview with broadcasters the prime minister was rocked by yet another resignation of a key aide with Paul Ovenden quitting as head of strategy in a fresh scandal.
The prime minister was already facing an angry parliamentary Labour Party after two MPs openly suggested that he could be ousted while a senior minister told The Independent that he is “screwed”.
It came as two of the UK’s leading pollsters warned that Labour is facing even worse problems in public opinion with one suggesting the party “is yet to hit rock bottom”.
With the crisis over Lord Mandelson throwing serious questions on his judgement as prime minister, Sir Keir held a morning meeting with his junior ministers in Downing Street to “rally the troops”.
In the afternoon he came out to address the concerns which had been raised about the Lord Mandelson debacle and what he knew before appointing him as ambassador to the US and then standing by him at PMQs last Wednesday before ultimately sacking the Labour peer on Thursday.
He insisted that he would have “never appointed” Peter Mandelson “had I known then what I know now, in his first comments since sacking him over links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaking to broadcasters days after removing Lord Mandelson from post, the prime minister said the “nature and extent of the relationship” between the convicted paedophile and Lord Mandelson is “far different to what I’d understood to be the position at the point of appointment”.
Lord Mandelson was dramatically sacked on Thursday amid new revelations about his relationship with the billionaire paedophile – raising serious questions about the prime minister’s judgement.
Asked why he had been appointed in the first place, Sir Keir said: “Peter Mandelson, before he was appointed, went through a due diligence process. That’s the propriety and ethics team. He went through a process, and therefore I knew of his association with Epstein.
“But had I known then what I know now, I’d have never appointed him, because what emerged last week were emails, Bloomberg emails which showed that the nature and extent of the relationship that Peter Mandelson had with Epstein was far different to what I had understood to be the position when I appointed him.
“On top of that, what the email showed was he was not only questioning but wanting to challenge the conviction of Epstein at the time that for me, went and cut across the whole approach that I’ve taken on violence against women and girls for many years, and this Government’s approach.”
