In his bestselling and influential turn-of-the-millennium book The Tipping Point, journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell explores what it is that makes “ideas and products and messages and behaviours spread like viruses do”. He identifies that particular phenomenon as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point”.
Rarely has Gladwell’s thesis been more applicable to political life than it is today. With the latest revelations around the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that our Prime Minister is approaching his own tipping point.
Sir Keir Starmer came to power on a ticket of competence. He represented a break with the chaotic, seat-of-your-pants style of government of the previous decade, his lawyerly manner and careful approach offering the promise of a safe pair of hands, at the least.
Yet here we are, with the very thing that was his stock in trade – due diligence – shot to pieces, sacrificed on the altar of an ambassadorial appointment that, according to his trusted foreign policy adviser Jonathan Powell, was “weirdly rushed”.
It is clear to all of us now, following the release of papers relating to Mandelson’s taking up of the post in Washington, that Starmer was guilty of a gross error of judgement. He admitted as much on Thursday. “It was me that made a mistake,” Starmer told reporters, “and it’s me that makes the apology to the victims of Epstein.” Most disastrously, he chose to listen to his former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, an inveterate supporter of Mandelson, rather than Powell.
McSweeney told Starmer that “issues had been resolved” regarding the appointment, but Powell, who had experienced the full panoply of Mandelsonian mis-steps when he was Tony Blair’s chief of staff, made his feelings clear with strident objections, expressed privately in meetings with the Prime Minister: one senior official told The Times Powell felt Mandelson was “always a disaster and we always end up firing him”.
Powell is a widely respected figure in Downing Street, and the fact that he was overruled in favour of McSweeney (who resigned over the scandal in early February) was an egregious mistake by Starmer.
Powell has been National Security Adviser since late 2024, his remit to act as counsel on foreign policy, defence, and intelligence, as well as acting a key international negotiator. There would be no one better positioned to advise on the wisdom of appointing Mandelson, given both his experience and his responsibilities. It will be of little comfort to Powell, a Labour loyalist, that he can emerge from this episode with his reputation intact.
There were others too. The outgoing US ambassador, Dame Karen Pierce, reportedly raised her concerns about Mandelson’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein more than once, while the Cabinet Office produced a two-page report which highlighted the internal J P Morgan investigation that found Mandelson retained a “particularly close relationship” with Epstein after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences in 2008. There were, it appears, more red flags than at the National Day Parade in Beijing.
So what of Starmer’s due diligence? He said back in February that “none of us knew the depths and the darkness of that relationship [between Mandelson and Epstein]” but that defence is not credible now. Many people in government knew, or at least suspected. And it’s simply not good enough for Starmer to say that Mandelson lied to him when he was asked specific questions about Epstein.
The responsibility fell on the Prime Minister to interrogate those responses, and to listen to the cacophony of serious voices around him. And, knowing what we do, how ill-considered does Starmer’s assessment of Mandelson’s qualities sound now? This is what the PM said of him six months before he was sacked: “He’s a true one-off, a pioneer in business, in politics. Many people love him. Others love to hate him. But to us, he’s just… Peter.”
That, it seems to me, was the tone of Starmer’s rebuttal to critics of Mandelson’s record in government. The £373,000 loan he took from someone his department was investigating? The rushing through of passports for Labour donors? Oh, that’s just Peter being Peter. Anyway, the Hinduja inquiry cleared him. He’s a one-off. A pioneer in business and politics. A person we love to hate.
And who does that remind you of? Someone in Washington who may have had a role in this murky saga. You cannot help wondering how important Donald Trump was in making sure Mandelson got the job, and how influenced by him Starmer was. Was his judgement skewed by the requirement to please Trump? Was this appointment made, not despite Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein, but because of it?
There is not a bit of all this that isn’t bad news for our Prime Minister. The last vestige of trust in Starmer is disappearing in the cloud of misjudgement and misadventure. In politics there are scandals that lacerate reputations, scandals that cause embarrassment, and then there are scandals that slowly, inexorably drain the credibility from a leader until their authority collapses completely. This may prove to be exactly that moment for Starmer.
Mandelson may be cleared of wrongdoing (and he maintains his innocence), but that will be too late for the Prime Minister. More details around this disastrous episode are likely to emerge, and, with each revelation, Starmer’s reputation is further tarnished, and he is nudged closer to the precipice. It is now principally a question of when – and not whether – he will be tipped over the edge.
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