Given Peter Mandelson’s rich heritage of being sacked from governments, Keir Starmer must have expected that his new ambassador to Washington would probably have to be dispatched at some point, rather than end his term gracefully.
He can’t have anticipated that it would have happened so soon, otherwise he would never have appointed him. That failure of judgement is just one of the many reasons that this departure – rather than the exit of Angela Rayner last week – is the most damaging yet to the Labour Government.
Starmer, after all, decided to defend Mandelson throughout Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday – though it was at this session that the diplomat’s fate looked sealed. Not only was Kemi Badenoch unusually adept and surgical in her questions, especially when it came to asking what Starmer knew about Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, but the Prime Minister clearly did not know how to answer.
square KITTY DONALDSON Mandelson might be gone - but Starmer's future is now in doubt
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He stuck to a prepared formulation of words about having full confidence in Mandelson’s role and the US-UK relationship being an important one. Such a lawyerly line might have worked coming from a spokesman at a briefing, but not in the bearpit of the House of Commons. Starmer couldn’t work out what else to say. He did not give the impression of being in charge, or at all sure of what he wanted to do.
Behind the scenes, not only were ministers and even loyal backbenchers refusing to repeat those lines in broadcasts, but others in Government were pushing vigorously for Mandelson to go.
He has made many enemies over his many years in and out of Labour governments, some of whom still hold sway in this administration. Starmer swung from believing that it would be too destabilising to sack an ambassador much liked by Trump just before the US President’s state visit next week, to seeing that Mandelson’s position could threaten to overshadow the entire event.
That state visit was supposed to be a way of cementing the strong relationship that Starmer has managed to build with Trump. The friendship had been oiled by Mandelson, someone who Trump personally liked very much, and who knew how to woo the capricious President.
In fact, it is one of the few things that has gone well for Starmer since coming into office: in contrast to his domestic travails, he clearly knows what role he wants to play on the world stage, and gained much credit for the way he dealt with the fallout from Trump’s Oval Office showdown with Volodymyr Zelensky.
Rayner’s resignation last week and the reshuffle that followed it didn’t tell us much that we didn’t know, or indeed address the glaringly obvious problems. Domestically, this Government doesn’t know what it is doing and is too content to abandon its half-baked reforms when backbenchers get upset. This sacking of Mandelson is far more destabilising.
It couldn’t be for a worse reason, either. The Epstein case is one of the few things that Trump feels vulnerable on personally, and where he is aware that his Maga base is deeply uncomfortable.
One of the reasons Mandelson could understand how to work Trump was that he had moved in similar circles of wealthy figures, both attracted like magpies by their lifestyles and – it seems – not sufficiently put off by other aspects of those lifestyles either.
To sack an ambassador who was in those circles will seem like a judgement from Starmer on the US President too, and risk offending him, weakening the carefully crafted relationship and undermining Starmer’s influence.
Some in Starmer’s party think that would be just as well: there should be more judgement from the Prime Minister towards Trump, they say, and he should stop fawning to the President in such an embarrassing way.
square IAN DUNT This Labour Government was supposed to be better. It isn't
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Of course, foreign policy doesn’t really work that way: you’re not going to change much if you only talk to the people you already agree with and tell the others you don’t like them, but The Labour Party contains a lot of people who’ve never thought through the implications of that sort of approach.
Had Starmer not flattered Trump enough to get a hearing, he would never have been able to protect key British industries such as car manufacturing from punitive tariffs, or play such a key role in helping Zelensky get a hearing with the US President again. He now has to work out how to tread his way through that difficult relationship without Mandelson and with an ultra-sensitive Trump.
The state visit is in fact a long time away in political terms: before then, Starmer has to answer potentially very damaging questions – not just about his overall judgement, but also the granular detail of what he knew about Mandelson’s communications with Epstein (and when he knew it).
And that’s the real problem for the Prime Minister: sacking people might end the questions about their own positions, but it only opens up more about his.
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of ‘The Spectator’ magazine.
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