What an extraordinary day today has been in British politics.
The Mandelson scandal still continues. The shockwaves, the ripples carry on. More people leave Downing Street, more people resign.
But the question still remains – why did the Prime Minister not know, when actually Peter Mandelson said exactly what he was like, exactly who he is and exactly how he can’t be relied on in his own memoirs.
Perhaps this restless soul should have made an apology for that, because the energy given off by Epstein has been catastrophic for anybody who’s been at the receiving end of it, and an awful lot of that energy seemed to be tied up with his cash.
It’s little surprise if that’s what Mandelson was like, and the Prime Minister knew it and did nothing about it, that today one of the big cheeses of Labour comes out and calls for him to go, because this man is facing immediate elections.
And if you’ve got an electorate hot on your tail, of course you don’t want to be carrying the burden that Starmer has become to his party.
This is what Anas Sarwar had to say earlier today: “It isn’t easy and it’s not without pain, as I have a genuine friendship with Keir Starmer. But my first priority and my first loyalty is to my country, Scotland.
“That is why the distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street has to change. It is so obvious that we desperately need change in Scotland.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg weighs on the political chaos that took place today
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GB NEWS
Well, there’s a wonderful quotation from Canning about saving us from the candid friend. I’m not sure Sarwar and Starmer’s friendship is that deep, but there we go, Sarwar thinks it is. But he had to say this because he is facing the electorate in not many weeks.
In early May, a really important election for the Scottish Parliament, and Starmer has been all over the place. It’s much the same as when he said about Jeremy Corbyn that Jeremy Corbyn was his great friend, and then a little bit later, that Jeremy Corbyn had never been a friend of his.
So we can have a look at what he said about Peter Mandelson, how much he liked him and then how much he didn’t.
Keir Starmer said: “The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for his association with him. He’s right to do so. I have confidence in him throughout the process and beyond the process. He lied. He lied. And he lied again to my team.”
He’s got confidence in a man who lied and lied and lied. This is absolutely brilliant, but it shows a fundamental lack of judgment, doesn’t it, that most of us have some sense of when people are lying, and though we can get it wrong on occasions, if somebody lies to you once, you don’t believe them again.
Yet everyone knows that Peter Mandelson’s whole career was built on lies. What he did was debauch British politics through a means of spin, that is one of the reasons nobody trusts any of our politicians anymore.
He has been a canker in British political life for the best part of four decades. So Starmer should have known, but he had no judgment. Mind you, he never seems to have judgement, because the one thing you don’t want to hear is that Keir Starmer has confidence in you, because the moment he says it, you’re basically heading towards the guillotine.
Not in this modern age a physical guillotine, but one that gets you out of your job because he had confidence in Mandelson. Then, of course, he had confidence in Mr. McSweeney.
This is really important because ultimately the boss has to make the final choice. And that’s where he has failed again and again, taking responsibility for the choices that he made.
I’ve always been very struck by a book called Icon Basilica, which was written in the voice of Charles the First as Charles the First was going to the scaffold, and Charles the first said that he thought this was his punishment for letting his close adviser, Thomas Wentworth, go to the scaffold first. Leaders who dropped their closest advisers never come out of it.
Well, it always means that the end is near, and that they will leave without credit or honour because of their failure to be loyal to those who are around them. But Starmer has no judgment, and there’s one more point that it’s worth making.
Peter Mandelson is not the only person who’s been involved in sleaze scandals, though Mandelson’s is far worse, who Starmer decided to rehabilitate. I was listening to the wireless this morning and I heard the dulcet tones of Jacqui Smith, Baroness Smith of Morvern, famous for the best quality water.
And Baroness Smith, you will remember, resigned in 2009 as Home Secretary because she was found to have misdeclared her expenses by the standards Commissioner of the House of Commons. Starmer, who came into office saying he was the most honest man you’d ever met, whiter than white, a former prosecutor, a son of a toolmaker, he was the angelic chorus in person, turned out to have promoted people who had sleaze as a background.
And that’s before I get into the convicted fraudster who he made Secretary of State for Transport and the other errors of judgement that he has made.
The suits, the dresses, all of it. You can’t trust Keir Starmer. The Labour Party is coming to that conclusion. They may have supported him tonight, but tonight it sounds like Theresa May, the last gasp of a Government in desperate trouble.