Sir Keir Starmer has been branded “naive” and someone who can “no longer be trusted” amid the growing Peter Mandelson scandal.
Speaking to GB News, Reform UK’s London Mayoral Candidate Laila Cunningham declared the Prime Minister has “no integrity”, questioning “where his priorities lie” as Britain’s leader.
The former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has slammed Sir Keir for being “too slow” to address the Lord Mandelson scandal, demanding that Labour must “clean up or pay a heavy price”.
The intervention comes as the disgraced Peer was placed under police investigation for his links to the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Asked by host Nana Akua whether it is the “end of the road” for the Prime Minister, Ms Cunningham told GB News: “He’s probably playing ‘should I stay or should I go now, if I stay there will be trouble’…
“The problem with the Labour Party is that right now they’re floating Angela Rayner, who resigned because of a scandal, so you’re having a leader who’s going to resign because of a scandal to implement another leader that’s resigned because of a scandal? It’s not really a personnel issue, is it? It’s integrity. And they just don’t have any integrity.”
She argued: “I don’t know about you, but if any of my friends tell me my best friend is one of the most prolific paedophiles in the world, and he runs a sex trafficking ring, I would not be friends with that person anymore. I would not respect them, and I would definitely not think they are the right person to be our ambassador in the USA. So it’s not a vetting issue, it’s a judgment issue.
“And you’ve got to ask yourself, obviously, it was a horrific judgment. The fact that Keir Starmer said, ‘oh he tricked me’. Well then, you should have known better, frankly, if you’re that naive – the guy’s called ‘scandalous Mandelson’ and ‘prince of darkness’.”
Laila Cunningham has hit out at ‘naive’ Keir Starmer over the Peter Mandelson scandal
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GB NEWS / PA
Questioning whether they may have been someone “behind the scenes” telling Sir Keir to appoint Mandelson despite the security risks, Ms Cunningham suggested: “But also, is he answering to someone?
“Did someone tell him to appoint Mandelson? And then you have to question, he overlooked national security issues, because I think there was a security warning and he appointed him anyway.
“So where do his priorities lie, do they lie with the country? No, obviously not. And if they don’t, they lie with a party or some invisible person who’s telling him what to do. And that for me is a fundamental problem as to why he has to go. He is no longer trusted to keep the country safe or to run the country.”
In agreement with Ms Cunningham, Leader of the Climate Party Ed Gemmell told GB News: “He’s a dead duck Prime Minister now, isn’t he? We’ve had so many U-turns, he’s completely undermined his premiership. I think it’s over in terms of effect, but I think he’ll hang on and I think he’ll hang on until May 8 and then he’ll resign.
Keir Starmer has apologised for appointing Peter Mandelson | GB NEWS
“That’s why we’ve got the elections just before that. They’re going to get hammered in the elections across the board, that’s going to happen, even if they brought in a superstar and we can’t find a superstar, but there is no superstar in the wings. But even if there was, you wouldn’t bring them in now.”
He added: “So if I was the chair of the Labour Party, I’d be having a word – come on, let’s have a word in private, you’re gone. On the day after the election, you’re going to take the fall for the election and for everything else all at the same time, and then we’re going to bring in Mr or Mrs X, big guns, whoever it is, and that would be my strategy. So I think he’s gone tomorrow.”
Arguing that the “credibility” of Sir Keir was eroded “six to 12 months ago”, Mr Gemmell told GB News: “To be honest, he was gone in terms of credibility six or 12 months ago, it didn’t take very long from when he became Prime Minister.
“You have the issue of who’s standing behind him, you alluded to it being Morgan McSweeney, who’s advising him. Is it time for him to be cleaned out as well at the same time? Could well be they were both involved in this decision in some way, clearly a terrible decision.
Mr Gemmell told GB News that Keir Starmer could be gone ‘tomorrow’
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GB NEWS
“How do you take a person who has an appalling reputation and make them your PR director or whatever it is? It’s obviously a completely ridiculous thing to be doing.”
Offering a “political strategy” for the Labour Government going forward amid the scandal, Mr Gemmell concluded: “Just looking at political strategy, if what they could do now is release their urban mayors, who at the moment aren’t embroiled in all of the rubbish that some of the MPs in Parliament are.
“So if they could go to the NEC, change the rules, allow the mayors to stand, maybe bring it in at conference next year.
“And if I was the Labour Party, this is not my politics, but I’m only looking at strategy for them, if they then brought in a hard left and they swung to the left to it to eclipse the Green Party, you could see the Labour Party doing rather better in the future than they are now, because at the moment they’re absolutely marooned.”