Traditional Labour supporters will ask why it was okay to make Peter Mandelson US ambassador but Andy Burnham was blocked from standing as a local MP
The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson US Ambassador rests with Sir Keir Starmer (Image: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)
The explosion of the Mandelson-Epstein scandal is a disaster for Sir Keir Starmer as he fights to prevent an election catastrophe that could force him from Downing Street.
If voters in Labour’s traditional heartlands conclude that a party launched to champion working people is now a bastion of an incestuous and self-serving elite they will flock to Reform UK and the Greens.
This is a party in which the Prime Minister makes the former friend of a convicted sex offender the ambassador to the United States but whose governing body blocks Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham from standing as a local MP. The values and judgement of Labour’s high command looks scrambled. This is the definition of a brand disaster.
Nigel Farage could not ask for better conditions in which to challenge Labour in a swathe of upcoming elections.
Labour MPs will panic if the party loses this month’s Gorton and Denton by-election. If more councils tumble to Reform in the May elections they will fear this is a foretaste of what awaits in the Westminster contest.
And if the party loses control of the Welsh Government for the first time and the London mayoralty in 2028 then there will be real dread that Labour is going the way of the once-mighty Liberal party, stumbling towards extinction.
Zack Polanski’s Green Party has the chance to make major inroads (Image: Facundo Arrizabalaga)
Each new disclosure about the influence of Peter Mandelson on Number 10, cabinet ministers and advisers will force voters to ask: Who runs this country?
As new emails and texts surface, ordinary Labour members who trudge to conference each year to vote on resolutions will ask why a pal of a disgraced financier had the ear of decision-makers. Many of them may decide they would be better off lending their energy to another party while others want to wrest back control of Labour and oust its elite.
Pressure will grow for leaders who are not London-resident graduates of the most exclusive universities and prestigious think tanks.
Leading unions are under Left-wing control and their general secretaries will have no inclination to defer to Sir Keir when his authority and judgement are in tatters.
Labour’s National Executive Committee blocked Andy Burnham from standing in Gorton and Denton (Image: PA)
The situation would be different if Labour was riding high in the polls and not defined by u-turns but Reform enjoys a double-digit lead.
Sir Keir wanted to head into 2026 by making it clear to the country that the cost of living is his Government’s top priority. Instead, he is locked in a desperate damage limitation exercise.
There is no prospect of the scandal diminishing while the disclosures continue. A clean run up to the May elections is now impossible.
Sir Keir may be reminded of Sir John Major as the clock ticked down towards the 1997 election and every effort to win back the public’s trust was derailed by new sleaze allegations.
The Government is in a dire mess. And it is a mess, in large part, of his own making.
