Starmer facing fresh questions over Mandelson emails to Epstein
Last night the Conservatives released the text of an open letter sent to Keir Starmer from Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, with five questions about the Peter Mandelson emails to Jeffrey Epstein. Here are those five questions.
1. On Monday, Bloomberg contacted Peter Mandelson with excerpts from the Mandelson/Epstein Files. These were then sent to the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office and Downing Street. Were you aware before Prime Ministers Questions at midday on Wednesday, 10 September of the existence of the emails? Had you been briefed on their contents?
2. On Wednesday at 0809, in an interview with Harry Cole, Mandelson admitted that there was ‘a lot of traffic, correspondence changes between us [Mandelson and Epstein] absolutely. And we know those are going to surface’. You then told the House of Commons you had ‘confidence’ in Mandelson and ‘full due process’ was followed. Did you ask your staff at any point prior to appearing in the House of Commons for what more information might surface? Did you receive a briefing ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions regarding Mandelson and Epstein, and covering the Bloomberg emails?
3. Ministers have claimed new information came to light. What information did you find out as a result of reading the Bloomberg emails that you did not already know, and which was not already in the original vetting document?
4. It is understood that your chief of staff was in touch with Mandelson on Tuesday, whilst the permanent secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth was awaiting a response to official inquiries. When did your chief of staff speak with Mandelson this week and what did he discuss with him?
5. Will you appear before the House of Commons, including any committee? Will you direct your chief of staff and other officials including the cabinet secretary and the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office to give evidence? And will you publish all Mandelson/Epstein files held by the government, including details of vetting conducted by the Cabinet Office and your chief of staff, so there can be full transparency on this crucial matter?
Key events
Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, has dismissed the significance of Richard Burgon predicting that Keir Starmer might be gone within months. (See 9.37am). Asked about the comment in an interview with BBC Breakfast, Smith said;
Richard Burgon has never supported this prime minister. He actually had the whip removed from him for a period of time because of his failure to support the Government, so the fact that he now thinks the prime minister should go is not actually new news.
Asked if she thought Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham would do a better job as leader, she replied: “No. I think the prime minister is doing a good job.”
Mandelson should lose Labour whip in Lords if it is shown he was not ‘frank’ about Epstein relationship in vetting, MP says
Some of those briefing on behalf of No 10 have suggested that Peter Mandelson misled officials about the extent of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein before his appointment as ambassador to the US, although ministers have not said that explicitly. On Westminster Hour last night Helen Hayes, the Labour chair of the Commons education committee, said that if it shown that Mandelson was not “frank”, he should lose the Labour whip in the Lords.
She said:
I felt really devastated about Peter Mandelson. I spend a lot of my time as chair of the education select committee thinking about children, about safeguarding, about questions of abuse and how we support victims. I think there was a failure to centre the victims of Jeffery Epstein within that judgement [appointing Mandelson as ambassador] …
I share the view that he shouldn’t have been appointed, I share concerns about what was known.
I think there is a question about how frank he was in the original vetting process. If he was not frank about that association, then that should be dealt with and his ability to speak as a Labour peer should be taken away from him.
UK and US line up string of deals to build modular nuclear reactors in Britain
Labour’s plans for a massive expansion of nuclear power have been given a boost with a string of transatlantic deals for new modular reactors announced before Donald Trump’s visit, Gwyn Topham reports.
Smith sidesteps question about whether Mandelson should lose Labour whip in House of Lords
The publication of the Mandelson/Epstein emails has led to calls for Peter Mandelson to lose the Labour whip in the House of Lords.
In her Today programme interview, asked if Mandelson should lose the whip, Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, replied:
I think what Peter Mandelson said was disgusting. I am angry about it.
Peter Mandelson is currently on a leave of absence from the House of Lords and therefore doesn’t have the Labour whip. What happens in the future will be up to the whip.
Starmer did not see ‘detail’ of Mandelson’s emails to Epstein until after PMQs, skills minister Jacqui Smith says
Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, was the voice of the government on TV and radio this morning. Asked about the Tory questions for Keir Starmer about the Peter Mandelson emails, Smith said Starmer did not personally see the relevant emails until Wednesday afternoon.
She told the Today programme:
What happened on Tuesday was that media sources came forward to the Foreign Office with extracts from the emails. The Foreign Office asked questions of Peter Mandelson.
It was on Wednesday, and in fact not until after prime minister’s questions, that No 10 and the prime minister saw the detail of those emails – as I’ve just outlined the particularly egregious things that were said and exposed in those emails.
And when Keir Starmer saw those, he took action to remove Peter Mandelson as our ambassador.
When it was put to Smith that No 10 reportedly knew at the start of last week that those emails showed that Mandelson had suggested Epstein’s first conviction was wrong and should be challenged, Smith repeated her point that, although the Foreign Office was aware of the emails on Tuesday, Starmer himself did not see the details until Wednesday afternoon.
In an interview with LBC, Nick Ferrari told Smith that, before the election, Keir Starmer was asked by the Financial Times what he felt about Mandelson saying in Epstein’s house after Epstein’s first conviction. Smith replied:
We did know, of course, about Lord Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It was a relationship that Lord Mandelson had been clear that he regretted and that he’d apologised about.
What we didn’t know was the depth of that relationship, the nature of it, the fact that he was trying to coach Jeffrey Epstein to avoid the consequences of his actions, the impact that that understandably, therefore, had on the victims of Epstein’s terrible crimes.
And as soon as that became clear to the prime minister, he asked that he removed Peter Mandelson as our ambassador.
Starmer facing fresh questions over Mandelson emails to Epstein
Last night the Conservatives released the text of an open letter sent to Keir Starmer from Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, with five questions about the Peter Mandelson emails to Jeffrey Epstein. Here are those five questions.
1. On Monday, Bloomberg contacted Peter Mandelson with excerpts from the Mandelson/Epstein Files. These were then sent to the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office and Downing Street. Were you aware before Prime Ministers Questions at midday on Wednesday, 10 September of the existence of the emails? Had you been briefed on their contents?
2. On Wednesday at 0809, in an interview with Harry Cole, Mandelson admitted that there was ‘a lot of traffic, correspondence changes between us [Mandelson and Epstein] absolutely. And we know those are going to surface’. You then told the House of Commons you had ‘confidence’ in Mandelson and ‘full due process’ was followed. Did you ask your staff at any point prior to appearing in the House of Commons for what more information might surface? Did you receive a briefing ahead of Prime Minister’s Questions regarding Mandelson and Epstein, and covering the Bloomberg emails?
3. Ministers have claimed new information came to light. What information did you find out as a result of reading the Bloomberg emails that you did not already know, and which was not already in the original vetting document?
4. It is understood that your chief of staff was in touch with Mandelson on Tuesday, whilst the permanent secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth was awaiting a response to official inquiries. When did your chief of staff speak with Mandelson this week and what did he discuss with him?
5. Will you appear before the House of Commons, including any committee? Will you direct your chief of staff and other officials including the cabinet secretary and the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office to give evidence? And will you publish all Mandelson/Epstein files held by the government, including details of vetting conducted by the Cabinet Office and your chief of staff, so there can be full transparency on this crucial matter?
Starmer urged to condemn Elon Musk’s ‘fight back or die’ speech to London rally as Labour MPs question his leadership
Good morning. All governments face crises; something goes wrong, often someone gets sacked, and then they move on. Very occasionally, there is a proper leadership challenge, normally culminating in a vote. But there is also something in between, the permacrisis, where ongoing criticism of the leadership drowns out most other party/government activity, with no resolution. The Theresa May and Boris Johnson premiership were in permacrisis for months or years. After the last week, Keir Starmer is close to being stuck in this version of political purgatory too.
There are various strands to the Labour turmoil story, and I will unpack them as the day goes on, but here is a quick summary based on the state of play this morning.
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Starmer is under intense pressure to explain what he knew ahead of PMQs last week about the emails from Peter Mandelson in which Mandelson strongly backed Jeffrey Epstein at the time of his first child sex offence conviction. The Tories have demanded an explanation in response to reports that officials did know full details before PMQs, even though Starmer subsequently justified defending Mandelson on Wednesday before sacking him on Thursday on the grounds that new information (ie, the full details of the emails) only came to light on Wednesday night. This claim has made the Mail splash.
This morning Kemi Badenoch posted this on social media.
If the PM really believes in accountability, he would stop hiding, face Parliament, publish the Mandelson/Epstein files and tell the truth about what he and his Chief of Staff knew and when.
It’s time to deliver the “transparency revolution” he promised. No more excuses.
The Mandelson/Epstein affair is a self-contained crisis. But, coming so soon after the resignation of Angela Rayner, and coming after a summer when No 10 was decisively beaten in the media attention air war by Nigel Farage and Reform UK, it has tipped the parliamentary Labour party into a panic about the Starmer leadership. That led to this on the Today programme this morning.
Lots of MPs are looking to the elections next May, the opinion polls suggest it’s going to be a complete disaster unfortunately. I think it’s inevitable that if May’s elections go as people predict, and the opinion polls predict, then I think Starmer will be gone at that time.
It feels like we are years and years into an unpopular government, rather than a year into a government that’s just got rid of the Conservatives. We’re losing votes to the left, we’re going to be losing seats to the right.
We face a real threat for the first time in our country’s history of what I would consider to be a far-right extremist government – it’s the prime minister’s duty to stop that happening. You can only do that by delivering for people who want real change, and if you can’t do that, then of course, there’s going to have to be change at the very top.
Burgon is one of the few Corbynites left in the PLP, and he is not representative. But, as Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot reported in a very thorough long-read at the weekend, serious conversations are now happening in the parliamentary party about how Starmer could be replaced.
But there is some evidence that Starmer is fighting back. Yesterday, showing a bit more willingness to take on the far-right over flags than we saw over the summer, Starmer condemned the use of the St George’s flag by the far-right, anti-immigration protesters who attacked the police in London on Saturday.
Starmer is now being urged to go further.
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Starmer is being urged to condemn Elon Musk for his “fight back or die” speech to the far-right rally in London. The Lib Dem leader Ed Davey has issued this challenge to the PM in an open letter published on social media.
In January, when Musk was using posts on his social media platform X to accuse Starmer on an almost hourly basis of being “complicit in the rape of Britain” (because of grooming gangs), Starmer just ignored the billionaire, far-right provocateur. But at that point Musk was friends with Donald Trump, and a key figure in his administration. Now that Musk has fallen out with the president, Starmer may feel more comfortable denouncing him. We should be hearing from him later today, but this morning a minister has criticised Musk.
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Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, has condemned Musk for his speech to the far-right rally in London on Saturday. Musk told the crowd that “violence is coming” and that “you either fight back or you die”. Asked if she condemned those words, Smith told the Today programme:
Absolutely I do. Those words were wrong and they were dangerous.
We’re a country that believes in the right to protest and the right to free speech, but we’re also a country that recognises and celebrates our diversity. That’s what our flag is actually about.
We will not have on our streets people being intimidated on the basis of their race or their background.
Smith was referrring to the fact that the union jack is a composite flag, made up of flags from three nations, thereby celebrating union, and the multi-national character of the UK.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in Hampshire.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference, where the party says there will be “a major announcement”.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: Shabana Mahmood takes questions in the Commons for the first time in her new role as home secretary,
Afternoon: Keir Starmer is expected to record a pooled broadcast interview.
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