Sir Keir Starmer’s “respectability” has been “blown apart” over the Peter Mandelson scandal, John Oxley has said.
Speaking to GB News, the political commentator questioned the Prime Minister’s “purpose” as leader and for “how long he is going to stick around”.
Police have concluded their searches of two of Peter Mandelson’s homes in London and Wiltshire, as part of an investigation launched into the disgraced peer.
Mr Mandelson is under investigation after it emerged that he allegedly leaked secret Government documents and market sensitive information to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Metropolitan Police have said the case is “complex” and “more evidence must be examined”.
The pressure continues to mount on the Prime Minister to resign over the scandal, with Sir Keir polling at historic lows.
Discussing the scandal on GB News, Mr Oxley said: “The real problem is that the Starmer project was already looking empty.
“It was failing to deliver on policy, it was failing to deliver on public services, it wasn’t really delivering public concerns on immigration.
“And the one thing that kept the show on the road was this idea that he was bringing respectability back to politics, that he was a safe pair of hands after the Conservative scandals.”
He added: “And obviously the Peter Mandelson affair has just blown that apart completely. So there’s a real sense of what is the purpose of Keir Starmer as a Prime Minister if he’s not delivering on anything?”
John Oxley has said Keir Starmer’s respectability has been ‘blown out of the water’
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Questioning how long Sir Keir can remain in power, Mr Oxley argued: “And I think once that sense of authority goes both within your own party and in the wider world, and we see this in the polling, very, very low polling for Keir Starmer, there’s a real question of for how long are you going to stick around?
“There’s no real obvious second in command there to take over. The Labour process is actually very opaque, we don’t have this system like we have in the Conservative Party, where you’ve got a very clear process for how to get rid of a leader, it’s much more behind the scenes.
“And hanging over all of this is the by-election in Manchester and the May elections, where you don’t really want someone to come in, and the first thing they do is have a very bad set of election results. So that’ll be playing on people’s minds.”
Comparing the end of Sir Keir’s tenure to those of Boris Johnson, Mr Oxley said: “I think really in Labour there’s going to be this bit of an impasse. It’s going to be, I suspect, a bit like the dying days of the Boris Johnson Government.
Keir Starmer has apologised for appointing Peter Mandelson | GB NEWS
“Where you have this roll of problems until eventually, at some point, very suddenly and very quickly, it all gathers steam. And then within 48 hours, it’s all apparently over.”
As Dawn Neesom compared the Peter Mandelson scandal to that of the historic John Profumo affair, she argued that Mr Mandelson has a “very blotted book” unlike Mr Profumo.
Mr Oxley agreed: “And actually, one of the famous things for John Profumo in 1940, he stood up to Neville Chamberlain, who was told by the whips that his political career would be ruined. And he sort of said, I don’t care, it’s for the country.
“But Peter Mandelson, the whole thing is everyone knows he’s always been embroiled in scandals, that he likes hanging out with the rich and powerful, and that’s one of the baffling things about Starmer and the appointment.”
Mr Oxley told GB News that the Peter Mandelson ‘goes much more deeply’ than the surface allegations
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GB NEWS
He swiped: “There are undiscovered tribes in the Amazon who know Peter Mandelson likes sucking up to rich people, yet somehow the Labour Party didn’t seem to see that this was a problem. And now so much has come out and it goes so deeply.
“It’s not just a friendship with Epstein, it’s really being in the heart of Government under Gordon Brown and plying his trade against the interests of the country, and that’s a huge allegation.”
Offering her take on the controversy, GB News Political Correspondent Olivia Utley concluded: “Nothing will happen until everything happens all at once, exactly like we saw with Boris Johnson.
“And I think there’s definitely some truth in the idea that even those who are most skeptical of Keir Starmer’s premiership don’t like the idea of replacing him before the May elections, because then you have someone coming in who is then tarnished immediately by what is probably quite clearly going to be a very bad set of local election results for Labour.
“This whole scandal is so ironic, really, because I think Keir Starmer genuinely wanted to clean up politics.
“He doesn’t like all this dirty, underhand dealing, he doesn’t like the Mandelson way of doing politics at heart. He is a technocrat and a bureaucrat. He’s someone who loves a bit of process.
“He delegated the really important job of choosing who becomes US Ambassador to Morgan McSweeney, and Morgan McSweeney chose Peter Mandelson.
“And that’s why Keir Starmer is so angry with Mandelson, with McSweeney. But most importantly and most obviously with himself.”