When Petie Met Jeffy: Starmer’s First Big Mistake

  

STARMER GRILLS MANDELSON… Peer “shaken and ashen” after three-hour quiz on Epstein links…

The event to fit these sensational headlines has not yet occurred. After the Financial Times revealed that these links were longer and deeper than previously reported, and included his entire period as our de facto Deputy Prime Minister, a Starmer spokesman said that it would not affect Mandelson’s role as an adviser to the Labour leadership. It was a fine audition for the South Park police force.

This is Starmer’s first serious mistake, and he is lucky that the Tories continue to govern so badly. It throws doubt on his fairness and his values and his commitment to high standards in government and public life. It even throws doubt on his basic common sense.

Recently, at Starmer’s behest, Jamie Driscoll, the Mayor of North Tyne, had his political career terminated over one meeting with Ken Loach. Whatever one thinks of Loach’s political views, especially on anti-semitism within the Labour party, it is a strange set of values to rate one meeting with him a sackable offence and give a free pass to a ten-year association with Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson’s own response (also through a spokesman) to the Financial Times story was to deny any professional or business relationship with Epstein. This invites the question of what he did see in Epstein for all those years. Does Starmer have no curiosity about this? Mandelson’s spokesman presents him as a passive victim of Epstein’s relentless social aggrandizement. Was he really powerless to resist Epstein’s importunities to answer his emails and phone calls, stay in his houses, and attend his birthday party (in a place of honour very close to the cake and the candles)? Does Starmer believe this? Mandelson has yet to express any apology to Epstein’s victims and those of his other long-standing friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, the failing which destroyed the reputation of still another friend, Prince Andrew, after his calamitous interview with Emily Maitlis. Is Starmer satisfied with this?

The disturbing feature of Starmer’s response is not his failure to condemn Mandelson but his failure to see any reason for inquiry about him.

There are other issues on which Starmer has been profoundly uncurious.

Mandelson has never declared on the House of Lords Register of Interests a single client of his shadowy consultancy Global Counsel, although he is enriched by them all and under a professional obligation to each one. Starmer appears content with this state of affairs, although the clients are known, from the firm’s own account, to include foreign governments. But he should know the outside interests of everyone who is advising him and his Shadow Cabinet. He should demand a list of all their paying clients, present and past. All the present ones may be seeking influence over the incoming Labour government. All the past ones are revealing of the values and standards of the adviser, especially if they were Russian or mainland Chinese.

Starmer should elicit a full and reliable history of Mandelson’s long relationships with the Putin régime and the Communist Chinese régimes, which are studded with services to both.

He might take special interest in Mandelson’s well-paid service to the Russian Sistema Group, which continued after the first invasion of Ukraine. Sistema included two defence contractors. Assuming that Mandelson added any value to the Group, he helped to arm Vladimir Putin.

He should ask Mandelson whether he has actually condemned Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine and his conduct of the war: this is not apparent from a diligent online search. He should listen to Mandelson talking about the war to Andrew Marr, two months after it began. He was almost complimentary about Putin, although he talked mainly about himself.

On China, he should read two pieces by Mandelson which remain on Global Counsel’s website although five years old. One expresses pride in a delightful tea party with Xi Jinping. The other recommends that Britain abet mainland China’s global economic ambitions (become a jackal to the Chinese tiger). Starmer should ask whether these are still Mandelson’s views.

He should discover whether Mandelson has ever had any motive, on his own account or through Global Counsel, to suppress criticism of Putin or Xi Jinping. Again, it is very hard to find any from him, on any topic, from an online search, particularly on fundamental human rights. Indeed since Mandelson left office in 2010, it is hard to find any words or activity by him in support of such rights in any country. Starmer should explore his record, or non-record. Having rightly banned the Shadow Cabinet from visiting Qatar during the World Cup, Starmer might be especially interested in his relationship with the Qatari government. Global Counsel set up an office there and Mandelson went to open it with a Qatari minister. Is that government an actual client of Global Counsel (it appears to be its landlord)?

Starmer should not look away from all these questions. He should inquire into them urgently out of prudence, because on past history stories about Mandelson generally get worse rather than better, just as certain cheeses grow more rancid as they age. More important, he should show that all these issues actually matter to him.

In his leadership so far, Starmer has been ruthless and relentless towards anyone who in his view damages the reputation of his party and threatens its electoral appeal. He should apply this policy equally to Mandelson as to the Corbynites and other Left-wingers who have been victims. It would strengthen his standing among voters in general. There is no evidence that Mandelson is popular and plenty that he is not. He is a very conceited person with a great deal to be modest about.  He has not won an election of any kind since 2001 (as the Labour candidate for what was then a safe Labour seat). His record as a national campaign strategist is Played 4 Won 1 Lost 3, which usually earns a football manager a fatal vote of confidence from his board.

When Winston Churchill returned to the Admiralty at the outbreak of the Second World War, our ships signalled each other: Winston is back. Starmer should imagine who would rejoice if he restored Mandelson to government, as young midshipmen manipulators at their spinnakers, barely able to shave the truth, text each other to say Mandy is back.

Starmer’s biggest enemies are not the Conservatives or even the Corbynites but the growing group of voters who have come to despise politicians as a class, the ones who tell pollsters – and more importantly, each other – that politicians are all the same… only in it for themselves… always telling lies… They punish the ones in charge at any particular time, unless they can be persuaded that the replacements would be even worse. They believe that whoever is in government, they will be ruled by the same self-satisfied self-rewarding governing clique which never takes any responsibility for error and failure. These voters may give Starmer a big majority but certainly not a long honeymoon. After a few months in office, he and his ministers could well be as despised and ignored as the present Tory government.

If Starmer wants to avoid such perceptions about himself and his team, he would  keep Mandelson out of sight. A long inquiry into him could achieve this until the election. It would need to be a long inquiry because no one ever got poor by doubting Mandelson’s bare word on any subject and demanding corroboration. When Mandelson says “Nice day, today” wise heads look out of the window. Of course, Mandelson may refuse to co-operate with any inquiry and flounce out of Starmer’s circle (he is one of nature’s flouncers) but that delivers the same helpful result to Starmer of decoupling their reputations.

It is certainly a better strategy for Starmer than shielding Mandelson and waiting for the next scene in the movie “When Petie Met Jeffy.”