The state visit, which begins tomorrow, is minutely planned to ensure a safe setting in Home Park, Windsor, far de-risking a sensitive guest being exposed to civilian displeasure in London or meeting Maga-critical MPs.
The risk to Keir Starmer, who needs to keep a brave face on the visit as a host, is that he is welcoming to Chequers an unpredictable house guest who can easily depart from the script of constructive courtesies and “go off on one,” as one witness to his last off-script press conference monologue in Scotland puts it.
That is a further blow to the Prime Minister’s battered authority after a series of unfortunate events, ranging from the departure of his deputy PM Angela Rayner over a stamp duty scandal and an emergency reshuffle.
What started as (yet another) embarrassing personnel issue has accelerated over the weekend into a political poly-crisis which is now piling pressure onto Starmer over his judgement, conduct and communications style.
With the deputy leadership candidate Lucy Powell – another figure who feels sore not to have been promoted by Starmer and now ousted as leader of the Commons – calling for a personnel and direction reset in Number 10, Mandelson has become a symbol for everything internal critics see as wrong with Starmer’s stewardship.
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Starmer is attracting a reputation for first backing then dropping colleagues, which creates a low loyalty environment in much of the Cabinet. As one who kept their job in the reshuffle reflected, there’s a small band of relieved “I’m still here” people. This also means that there are a lot of others, from the former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh to Angela Rayner and Lucy Powell, who have little reason to remain faithful.
The other pot boiling in the who-missed-what controversy over Mandelson’s vetting process is whether, as Number 10 now claims and Mandelson denies, he withheld information on his relationship with Epstein which meant that the PM lacked a complete picture.
But having reported on the Mandelson appointment, and the determination of Number 10 to push it through despite squeamishness in the security services about business links with China, which was more on their radar than Epstein entanglements, it was also evident that the post-appointment vetting in the Foreign Office undergone before new postings are confirmed was, as one senior insider says, “conducted in an atmosphere of ‘fait accompli’”.
At the same time, payouts when senior figures leave office under a cloud are inevitably contentious. No one yet knows how the ousted ambassador will handle this, but the process of removing him was certainly fast and furious.
Mandelson, according to allies, strongly disputes the portrayal of his guilt-by-association which No 10 accepted as beyond doubt. That, given the queasy nature of the supportive notes to Epstein, might be self-indulgent. But it also indicates that one of the major architects of the modern Labour project believes himself wronged. And anyone who knows him also knows that this is not a recipe for going quietly.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at POLITICO and host of the Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast
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