AFTER 14 years of chaos, incompetence, lies, law-breaking and corruption under the Conservatives, the country desperately needed a safe pair of hands.
I hoped that’s what we’d get with Sir Keir Starmer. It didn’t matter to me that he lacked charisma. I don’t need an entertainer as Prime Minister, just someone who has sound judgement.
Surely, a former Director of Public Prosecutions – one we were told had a mind for forensic detail – would give us that. Alas, it has proved not to be the case.
From the outset, when he walked into a scandal over accepting free designer goods, then failing to be clear enough on the narrative over winter fuel payments, followed by a series of U-turns on policy, his relatively brief tenure has smacked of being accident-prone.
And now we have the Peter Mandelson scandal placing the blackest cloud yet over his leadership.
Starmer has admitted that he was aware of Mandelson’s ongoing friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him British Ambassador to the United States.
Starmer, a former barrister, has put up the defence that Mandelson lied repeatedly about the depth of the relationship. Even so, who in their right mind wouldn’t have alarm bells going off if they knew of a friendship at any level with a notorious paedophile? You’d imagine, the bargepole wouldn’t come anywhere near.
It’s not even as if the former Hartlepool MP had a blemish-free track record. He’d already had to resign from Cabinet posts twice over his own flawed judgement, and now he faces a criminal investigation to go along with the toe-curling humiliation of email evidence exposing his sleazy relationship with Epstein.
Sir Keir Starmer is said to be extremely angry and has accused Mandelson of betraying the Labour Party and the country by leaking sensitive Government information to his pal.
The truth is that, in making such an ill-judged appointment, so has the Prime Minister. Instead of a safe pair of hands, we’re left with someone who’s let public trust slip through his fingers.
The Mandelson saga has turned into one of the biggest political scandals in a generation and there’s more to come, not least the possibility of Mandelson being prosecuted.
It is, therefore, very hard to see how Starmer can survive as PM.