British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday sought to assuage public criticism of his December 2024 decision to make Peter Mandelson his US ambassador, given the Labour politician’s already-known ties to deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Starmer apologized to Epstein’s victims and said that he was “lied to” when vetting Mandelson before the appointment.
He said he not only understood, but also shared the “anger and frustration” of politicians, including allies within the Labour Party, and the public.
Mandelson was fired as US Ambassador last September as more damning evidence of the depth of his ties to Epstein began to come to light, but the most recently-released files have painted a clearer picture still, with the veteran politican now facing a police investigation.
What did Starmer say about Mandelson on Thursday?
“It had been publicly known for some time that Mandelson knew Epstein, but none of us knew the depth and the darkness of that relationship,” Starmer said at an event in southern England.
Among other things, emails released by the US Justice Department appeared to show that in 2009, Mandelson sent the financier a government memo about possible UK asset sales and tax changes. In 2010, the 72-year-old, who is also a former European Comissioner for trade, apparently gave Epstein advance notification of a European Union €500 billion bailout package plan at the height of the bloc’s debt crisis.
Starmer asserted that Mandelson also sought to underplay and misrepresent the extent of his relationship with Epstein.
“I was lied to, lied to; deceit,” he said. “I understand the anger and frustration among Labour MPs [members of parliament] about what has happened … I actually share that anger and frustration, it was palpable yesterday. I’m not surprised.”
With “yesterday,” Starmer was referring to a particularly torrid hour in the House of Commons on Wednesday during the PM’s weekly question-and-answer session, when it wasn’t just opposition politicians giving him a hard time.
Addressing Epstein victims, the prime minister said: “I’m sorry. Sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you, sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointing him.”
Starmer says hands partly tied amid police probe
He said that he wanted to release the security vetting advice he had been given when selecting Mandelson, a man who’d twice been forced to resign in disgrace from prominent government positions in the past. However, he said he needed to keep to a request from police not to do anything that could prejudice their investigation.
“However frustrating from my personal point of view that is — and it is — I will not take any step, however politically tempting, however popular, that risks justice for victims,” Starmer, who Britain’s top public prosecutor before moving into politics, said.
The 72-year-old is not accused of any sexual offenses and says he never witnessed any such wrongdoing.
The leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, on Thursday called Starmer’s position “untenable” and urged Labour MPs to support opposition calls for a no-confidence vote against the prime minister in the House of Commons. She said it was “a question of when, not if, he goes.”
However, Labour has a very large majority in the House of Commons — 404 of 650 seats — so Starmer’s position would only be under threat in that theater amid a major rebellion in his own party’s ranks.
