This Won’t Be Popular: Starmer Got It Wrong - But That Doesn’t Mean He Should Go

Starmer’s Mandelson decision was a spectacular lapse of judgement - and still not a case for detonating the Prime Minister.

Photo by Gina Bertoldi on Unsplash

This week was the first time since I embarked on my Bearly Politics mission over three years ago that I genuinely struggled to write something. It was not only down to the fact that I have been busier than a blue arsed fly running around closing off one job while getting ready for another, but because I have been genuinely conflicted about the main political issue that the country was facing.

Generally speaking in the past, I would choose a side, bolster my defences, and fire something out, regardless of the consequences – but this time it was genuinely different. The situation at the start of the week where it looked for a second like we would have yet another PM stand down had me frozen in place. Full deer in headlights mode.

I have now snapped out of this, and I have some serious thoughts – many of which may not, in fact, be particularly popular.

Before I get to those though, I do think it’s worth setting the context of exactly why Keir Starmer was so well and thoroughly in the firing line - the long and short of it being the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s Ambassador to the United States.

Keir Starmer has now confirmed that he did indeed know about Mandelson’s previous relationship with the prolific sexual predator and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein - and that that relationship had continued after he was found guilty of sex with children. Following from the latest release of another batch of millions of files towards the end of January, it has turned out that Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was not only continued, but was far deeper and hand-in-glove than was previously known and, indeed, assured.

By Sunday, Morgan McSweeney had fallen on his own sword, and the political temperature in Westminster went stratospheric and the word “confidence” was being used far more frequently than is strictly normal.

Underneath the broadcast theatrics, rolling commentary and general sense of panic though, there is a simple fact pattern that happened.

Keir Starmer knew there was reputational risk attached to the hiring of Peter Mandelson as ambassador. He made the call anyway - and then the risk materialised when the Epstein can of worms was jerked open even further.

This is neither invented nor concocted - it truly is a judgement call that Keir Starmer got very, very wrong.

Now, before I get too much further into this piece, it’s probably worth putting my cards on the table for everyone to understand where I’m coming from.

I am not a Labour loyalist. Very far from it. I have been pretty open in this publication that I will not be voting for them in upcoming elections while they maintain their current forms. It doesn’t come from a deep-seated need for instability, or because I somehow want Reform UK to win as some people have very wrongly attributed - it comes from their overt vilification of migrants, their mishandling of welfare reform and how they’ve managed to marginalise even further the trans community. They have crossed lines that I cannot comfortably accept.

The context for this is important in this case as I’m not writing as someone with a desperate need to defend “my team” - I have no team jersey to protect here, and if anything, I have been increasingly annoyed by this government on several fronts, even while acknowledging that they have also done positive things. And they have done some good things - breakfast clubs, taxing private schooling, worker’s rights reforms, improving renter’s rights, these are all serious, redistributive and structurally meaningful. I am, surprisingly, able to hold that alongside the deep disagreement I have on other issues. I’m finding as I’m getting older that politics can be inconvenient like that.

So when the crisis exploded on Sunday evening, I didn’t feel a tribal instinct to close ranks, nor did I feel the gleeful instinct to light a match for the bonfire. I just felt… stuck between what felt like two immovable sides.

The first of which was the side calling for Keir Starmer’s immediate resignation - an argument that is not necessarily absurd, especially if you believe, like all of us do, that standards matter. That appointing someone with a known association with one of the most prolific paedophiles after he was previously incarcerated, regardless of how lightly, is a colossal lapse in judgement.

Yes, McSweeney advised him, and by the sounds of things, advised him very heavily, but the point remains - advisers advise, Prime Ministers decide. McSweeney’s resignation does not absolve Starmer of this misstep.

The other side I was stuck between was saying rather loudly and firmly that “there was nothing to see here.” That this was all media hysteria. That the BBC had, yet again, inhaled far too much Westminster oxygen and that all of this was meant to distract, destabilise and give Nigel Farage the keys to Number 10.

I have spent going on three years now pointing out the flaws in the UK Media System - it is far too white, far too male, far too straight and definitely far, far too excitable. It has an ability to compress nuance into narrative arcs that can sometimes look suspiciously like Netflix trailers, and we saw Chris Mason this week looking much like he was actively sprinting from spot to spot to breathlessly report the end of days for the PM.

But, unfortunately, the tone of the coverage does not invalidate the substance of scrutiny, and none of us get to wave away a real judgement failure because Lewis Goodall’s voice went up half an octave on the Monday evening episode of The News Agents.

We have to be honest with ourselves here that if we’re serious about accountability, we can’t let it be contingent on whether or not the media environment irritates us.

All of this leads me to finding myself on Monday in a genuinely uncomfortable position - watching parts of the nominal left default to a manoeuvre that we saw significantly around the time that Boris Johnson was booted out of office. “It’s all a concoction” is a term that was thrown around significantly by the right when the Pincher scandal broke. We simply cannot just borrow the language of denial from people like Sophie Corcoran because it is politically expedient at that time.

While this was happening, I was also watching a very large contingent of people calling online for the Prime Minister to go, as though the removal was the only solution to the situation we found ourselves in.

My problem with the calls for resignation is that a decision like that isn’t just limited to moral fallout, but serious structural instability. It is a major systemic shock, and we simply cannot see removing a sitting Prime Minister mid-term as a tidy gesture of principle. We learned this, multiple times, under the previous Conservative governments. It almost always destabilises markets, triggers extended leadership contests and hands a bright turquoise megaphone to the actors who thrive most in chaos.

At the same time, this whole situation should not just be absorbed as “just one of those things.”

So where do we go from here? What does actual accountability look like if it’s not immediate resignation?

It starts, to my mind at least, with transparency - which includes the full publication of the vetting process. We need to know exactly what was known, what was assessed, which warnings were raised, who exactly signed it off. We need detail in this case, even if it is excruciatingly uncomfortable.

In addition to the above, there needs to be a clear admission - not “with hindsight” and none of the “lessons will be learned” guff that has become so ever-present in modern political life. There needs to be a straightforward acknowledgement that judgement in this case was disastrously flawed.

Additionally, there does also need to be political consequence - authority being reassessed and recalibrated. Starmer’s future decisions will need to be subject to far more scrutiny, both internally and externally, and there needs to be an acknowledgement by the PLP that they have wasted political capital on this whole situation.

Ultimately, Starmer has, very rightly, this week found himself in the proverbial shithouse. And he deserves to be there.

Because accountability that matters isn’t about theatre or tribal satisfaction. It’s about establishing that serious misjudgement carries real weight, even - or perhaps especially - when the person who made it has also done genuinely good things. That’s the uncomfortable truth we all need to deal with to an extent: you can expand breakfast clubs and still get catastrophically wrong the vetting of a US ambassador.

Both things are true.

Both things are relevant.

This is what real politics looks like when we’re serious about standards. Not the performative outrage, not the defensive circling, not the pretence that nothing happened. Just the hard work of holding people accountable while the machinery of government keeps turning. Starmer needs to prove he understands that distinction.

Because if he doesn’t, then the shithouse is exactly where he belongs.

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