PRESSURE mounted yesterday on Labour PM Sir Keir Starmer to quit now in the wake of his appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.
After the Mandelson-Epstein revelations, the former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has told friends she is ‘ready’ to launch a Labour leadership campaign.
YouGov is already conducting a poll on: ‘Should Keir Starmer remain as leader of the Labour Party?’.
Jonathan Hinder, the Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, said the PM’s decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as US ambassador was a ‘catastrophic error of political and moral judgement’.
Labour peer Baron Hutton of Furness told LBC that Starmer’s handling of the scandal ‘could well mark the end of the prime minister’s time in office’.
Meanwhile, senior government figures are preparing to hand over tranches of their electronic communications with Peter Mandelson ahead of the release of evidence about his appointment as US ambassador.
No 10’s former communications director has warned the disclosure of private messages could drag more public figures into the scandal.
The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament met on Thursday and in a letter to the prime minister, said it expected the documents to be put before MPs ‘very shortly’.
But the Metropolitan Police, which is investigating Lord Mandelson, has told the government not to release ‘certain documents’ that could undermine its criminal inquiry.
Lord Beamish, the chair of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), said he will demand ‘maximum transparency’ and the whole truth from the government when it hands over documents surrounding Mandelson’s appointment, including the vetting process.
Brian Leishman, Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, says Keir Starmer’s apology to Epstein’s victims yesterday was ‘nowhere near enough’.
He says the PM had shown ‘incredible misjudgement’ in appointing Mandelson. ‘It goes beyond saying sorry,’ he said.
Asked about Starmer’s future, Leishman said the situation is developing ‘hour by hour, day by day’. He added that ‘people who surround’ the PM also need to be looked at, including his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.
Pushed again on Starmer’s future, Leishman said the PM should live by his own words and ‘put country before party’.
Former Labour deputy leader Baroness Harriet Harman said of Starmer: ‘He’s got to stop blaming Mandelson and saying, “he lied to me”.
Because, actually, he should never have been considering him in the first place.
‘To say “he lied to me” makes it look weak and naive and gullible. So it’s just completely the wrong thing.
‘I think that it is very, very serious for Keir Starmer because it goes to the values of the government.’
Labour anger was yesterday increasingly focused on Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.
Several Labour MPs have called for government resignations, including York MP Rachael Maskell, Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne and Paula Barker.
