Foreign minister Stephen Doughty had barely got back to his seat after dramatically announcing the sacking of Lord Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the US over his ties to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and my WhatsApp inbox was filling up with messages mostly asking variations on one question:
“Why does Keir Starmer have such appalling judgment in making his key appointments?”
While the now disgraced Labour peer is off into the wilderness (not for the first time in a long career), the chaos he has left behind is enveloping the prime minister.
After all, this is the second big resignation in about a week, at a time when Sir Keir’s umpteenth reset in the shape of a major reshuffle was meant to relaunch his government.
Only last Friday, he lost his deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner – who he appointed as housing secretary – because she had failed to pay £40,000 in stamp duty on her second home.
Now, a mere seven days later, he has lost the man he had tasked to look after the most important relationship in Britain’s foreign policy – the ambassador who has to charm and deal with Donald Trump in the White House – over alleged what Downing Street is insisting is “new information” over his relationship with Epstein.
Both went after he had already wasted political capital attempting to defend them at Prime Minister’s Questions, the two Wednesdays before.
And, unfortunately for a prime minister, whose government is one of the least popular in history and is currently trailing Nigel Farage’s Reform UK by 10 points in the polls, these were not two isolated examples.
As they say, once is unfortunate, twice coincidental, but thrice a pattern. Actually, in Sir Keir’s case, it is now five times.
He has also lost a minister for homelessness, Rushanara Ali, after she made her tenants homeless. Anti-corruption minister, Tulip Siddiq, who is being investigated for corruption through her family’s now-ended autocratic regime in Bangladesh. Not to mention losing a transport secretary, Louise Haigh, over revelations she was prosecuted and found guilty of falsely claiming a mobile phone was stolen from her.
This does not include the sacking of a string of officials he appointed out of friendship and loyalty, including former chief of staff Sue Gray, and ex-director of communications Matthew Doyle.
The trouble is that in most of these cases, the excuse of “new information” does not hold water.
Starmer was close to Siddiq and well aware of her family’s activities in Bangladesh and her close support for them. He knew about Haigh pleading guilty, but appeared not to ask any more questions.
And in Mandelson’s case, the close and nauseating link with the disgraced financier was the talk of both London and Washington when Sir Keir and his team were desperately trying to persuade President Trump not to reject his credentials in January.
Nobody really needed a crystal ball to know that this scandal was at some point going to blow up with or without the publication of the Epstein papers.
It is also not exactly as if Mandelson – known to friends and foes as ‘the Prince of Darkness’ – is a stranger to scandal. He previously had to resign twice from the government over different financial allegations.
But still, Sir Keir doggedly pursued his chosen nomination as the UK’s ambassador to the US and got his way. Now he is paying a heavy political price.
One of the issues here is what critics have described as the “fetishisation” of Tony Blair-era figures by Starmer’s right-hand man, chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. They somehow believe that people like Mandelson have almost supernatural powers in getting things done.
In fairness, he was successful in his short stint as ambassador, not least in getting a UK-US trade deal agreed before anyone else to avoid (most) of President Trump’s tariffs.
But it is likely an alternative could have been found that would not have resulted in such political damage.
For this sacking to have been necessary just days before Mr Trump’s state visit to the UK is painful.
But much worse, this is a prime minister who Labour MPs are openly discussing removing if he has another bad set of elections in May.
He cannot keep making bad judgment calls on people in key positions, or his political troubles will only get worse.
