Deja-vu over Mandelson

This week has felt disturbingly familiar. As Boris Johnson’s days in power were coming to an end, the Chris Pincher scandal was the final straw - here’s how the Evening Standard reported it at the time -

“Boris Johnson was aware of concerns about the conduct of Chris Pincher when he made him deputy chief whip, Downing Street has confirmed.”

In the same story, the then Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer pulled no punches. This is what was written - 

“Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said the appointment of Chris Pincher as Tory deputy chief whip was another example of poor judgment by Boris Johnson. I have got no sympathy with a Prime Minister who repeatedly makes bad judgment calls,” he told Sky News. We have been living with a version of this story for month after month after month. Bad judgment by a man who puts himself above everything. I don’t have any sympathy for him.”

Just two and a half years later, Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson to be his US Ambassador. And this week, he told Parliament that he knew of Peter Mandelson’s ongoing links with Jeffrey Epstein when he made that appointment.

This shocking admission may have left the Prime Minister fatally damaged, just as the Chris Pincher scandal did for Boris Johnson. But how did we get here?

For Boris Johnson, the Chris Pincher scandal followed on the back of Partygate, Wallpapergate, the Owen Paterson lobbying affair and ignoring his own Ethics Advisor when Priti Patel broke the Ministerial Code. 

Keir Starmer relentlessly and deservedly hammered the then Prime Minister for every one of these scandals so damaging to trust in politics. He set out to make standards in public life a key dividing line between himself, and the previous government. His Labour Government would be different. 

Just 18 months on, that aim is in tatters. FIVE members of the government have had to resign over that time because of standards’ breaches. Freebiegate was an early scandal where several members of the Government, including the Prime Minister himself, were listed as having accepted expensive freebies, from concert tickets to eyeglasses. No significant changes in the rules have been made despite the scandal. 

In opposition, the Prime Minister spoke out strongly about MPs holding second jobs. In office, meaningful restrictions on second jobs have been kicked into the long grass. The Government’s new Ethics & Integrity Commission turned out to be a rebranded Committee on Standards in Public Life with limited powers. As yet we’ve seen little from them. 

We’ve seen more cronies and party donors appointed to the Lords, and even the limited reform (removing the remaining hereditary peers) the Government is attempting has stalled for months.

Which brings us to the Mandelson catastrophe. We don’t need to speculate how Opposition Leader Starmer would have responded to a Conservative Prime Minister doing a similar thing. It’s all there on Pincher.

Of course Starmer didn’t know about the other alleged crimes that Peter Mandelson has now been accused of. But he did know that Mandleson kept up his contacts with the world’s most famous and notorious paedophile and, despite this, Starmer brought him into the heart of his government. 

As Keir Starmer once said, “I have got no sympathy with a Prime Minister who repeatedly makes bad judgment calls.” So he can’t expect much sympathy now.

Whether he survives or goes, one thing is clear - we can’t go on like this. Ethics and standards matter. Trust in our politics hasn’t recovered despite a change of government. If anything, things are worse. 

The Prime Minister needs to take this seriously. Words won’t be enough, we have to see action. No more business as usual, no more reliance on the  ‘good chaps’ rule to keep politicians in line. The public needs to see that those in power play by the same rules as the rest of us. They need to see a hard reset in how our political system works.

They want to see commonsense restrictions on MPs having second jobs and pocketing freebies. When the Government’s Representation of the People Bill arrives this week, they will want to see the end of unlimited donations to political parties from the super-rich. They will want to see the restoration of an independent elections’ watchdog to ensure our elections are fair. 

They want politics and politicians to work for them again. It shouldn’t be too much to ask, but clearly this government hasn’t learned enough from watching the last government.

There is time to change this, but the work must start now.