Labour’s leaders are, for the most part, circling the wagons around Starmer. But some are starting to break ranks.
There seems to be no end to the number of wealthy and influential Americans who were cavalier about associating with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Still, despite the high-profile Republican and Democratic politicians ensnared by Epstein’s dead-man’s switch, the American political scene is downright placid when compared with how Epstein’s documents have roiled politics in the U.K.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, “resigned under pressure” on Sunday. After all, it was his decision to recommend the appointment of Peter Mandelson to lead the British diplomatic mission in the United States, and that decision was “wrong.” Mandelson “has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself,” McSweeney continued.
McSweeney’s fellow Labourites have been demanding his scalp for days following the release of documents that implicate Mandelson in a scheme to provide Epstein with “market-sensitive information” when Mandelson served as business secretary in Gordon Brown’s Labour government during the financial crisis.
The crisis engulfing Starmer’s government is getting closer and closer to the prime minister, according to reporting from the Financial Times:
Starmer believes some of the exchanges relating to Mandelson’s vetting for the US job will support his claim that the former ambassador “lied” about his relationship with Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
But other messages sent between Mandelson and Starmer’s team could be much more problematic. Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s under-fire chief of staff, supported Mandelson for the job and was in close communication with him during his time in the US capital last year.
Labour’s leaders are, for the most part, circling the wagons around Starmer. But some are starting to break ranks.
“It’s about the whole political culture Keir Starmer has ushered into his administration, which makes proximity to wealth and power the project,” said one Labour MP. “If he doesn’t own the error he has made and recognize the problem in front of him and articulate it and tell us how he is going to deal with it,” another warned, “then I am afraid it is coming to end — if not today then certainly in the weeks and months ahead.”