If Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer believed that sacking Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the United States would provide him with some political protection then he was badly mistaken.
Instead of dampening the fires that have engulfed his government, the sacking of Mandelson over his long-standing relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has only erupted this crisis, with Labour MPs openly saying Starmer’s days as PM are numbered.
Labour MP Richard Burgon said in a BBC interview: ‘I think it is inevitable that if May’s elections go as people predict, and as the opinion polls predict, then I think Starmer will be gone at that time.’
Opinion polls are predicting a disaster for Labour in May’s local elections. Starmer is reported to be attempting a fight-back to save his political skin.
But he won’t be helped by an interview on the BBC’s ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’ programme by his business secretary Peter Kyle.
Kyle, who continued with the discredited claim that Starmer didn’t know the full extent of Mandleson’s relationship with Epstein, said that his appointment as ambassador was seen as ‘worth the risk’ despite all the warnings.
‘Global politics had been turned upside down’ by Trump’s tariff war, and British capitalism desperately needed ‘outstanding, singular talents’ and Mandelson fitted the bill exactly.
He was just the person to crawl and suck up to President Trump – another once-close friend of Epstein and himself engulfed in accusations relating to this relationship.
How the mighty have fallen!
The once powerful British capitalist system is now reduced to the role of begging Trump not to increase the tariffs already imposed on the UK.
Capitalism internationally is gripped by a historic crisis from which the only way out for the ruling class of the most powerful US economy is to tear up the old post war consensus of free trade, and declare war on its enemies and former allies.
This is the crisis that confronts Starmer’s government, elected just 14 months ago with a massive majority by workers who’d had enough of savage Tory austerity cuts to keep British capitalism from bankruptcy.
Starmer won the support of the bosses and bankers on the back of his pledge to lead a business-friendly government that would put the interests of the country, that is British capitalism, before the interests of workers.
The cry now from Labour MPs is that Starmer lacks ‘political judgement’ or is controlled by the former Blairites he has surrounded himself with.
This completely ignores the fact that Starmer is being driven by the dictates of a capitalist system that is demanding the working class sacrifice their lives, and all the gains of the Welfare State, to cut public spending on welfare and the NHS to the bone.
Labour MPs are frantically casting around for a replacement for Starmer, someone who can ‘sell’ these savage cuts to the working class more effectively, while the ruling class are moving towards the creation of a National Government as the way to impose abject poverty and recession on the working class.
Meanwhile, the TUC have maintained silence with no criticism of Starmer. Indeed, their only intervention was to yesterday beg Labour not to ‘water down’ the proposed employment rights bill.
The TUC leadership are desperate to prop up this collapsing Labour government and to try to hold the working class back from bringing it down.
This support for Starmer’s government must be ended, and not just Starmer sacked but the Labour government must be brought down and replaced with a Workers’ Government.
TUC leaders who refuse to fight must be removed and replaced with a new leadership prepared to mobilise the strength of the working class in a general strike to bring down the Starmer regime and bring in a Workers Government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers, building a socialist planned economy.
Resolve the crisis of capitalism by going forward to the British Socialist Revolution. This is the way forward.
