Latika M Bourke: Bombshell files reveal UK PM ignored warnings about Peter Mandelson’s links to Epstein

Keir Starmer knew.

The UK Prime Minister was explicitly warned about Peter Mandelson’s connection to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the former Labour peer’s links to China and promotion of CCP lies.

Files released on Thursday have exposed Keir Starmer as the inept, toadying, charlatan that he is. Despite being told by his own national security adviser and foreign office civil servant chief Philip Barron that Mr Mandelson’s connections to Epstein and the CCP made him a reputational risk, Mr Starmer ignored them and went ahead anyway.

Two Tony Blair proteges were the chief protagonists, the disgraced former No. 10 spin doctor Matthew Doyle and the PM’s campaign strategist Morgan McSweeney, who prevailed in a power struggle to become Sir Keir’s chief of staff in office.

The Mandelson files expose the hollowness of UK Labour’s election pitch.

Mr McSweeney promoted Mr Starmer as a candidate who would deliver “change.” But all both delivered were yesterday’s style of politics, favour, factionalism and fecklessness.

The 130 pages of briefs, memos, emails and officials’ minutes of meetings that were released on Wednesday betrayed Mr Starmer’s wilful ineptitude or worse, calculated deceit.

The Prime Minister was explicitly told that Mr Mandelson carried reputational risk. Why he needed official advice to tell him the office is mind-boggling.

Mr Mandelson, now sacked, has been questioned by British police in relation to sending Epstein confidential government information when he was a minister in the former Blair-Brown governments. But he was sacked twice from Government in scandal. Yet, he was pushed by Mr Doyle and Mr McSweeney to Mr Starmer, as the star candidate to become the UK’s Ambassador in Washington.

The files also show the misgivings of the PM’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell, who felt the appointment was “weirdly rushed.”

Mandelson was given briefings above his security clearance and then demanded a payout worth around half a million pounds when he was sacked over revelations contained in the Epstein Files.

Sir Keir had always maintained that Mr Mandelson did not tell him the full extent of his relationship with Mr Epstein.

But there was only one metric Mr Starmer needed to satisfy himself of — did Mr Mandelson maintain his friendship with a paedophile after his conviction and release from jail in 2008?

The answer was yes and this was provided to him in his briefing. Further, The Nightly asked No.10 about Mr Mandelson’s dealings with China, and the outright falsehood that he had never had any business dealings in China in the days prior to his appointment being confirmed.

Yet the files show Mr Mandelson’s Global Counsel firm had high-profile Chinese clients, including TikTok and fast fashion retailer Shein.

Yet still, Sir Keir, a former director of Public Prosecutions, ignored the warning sirens and went ahead with the appointment. He later claimed that Mr Mandelson had concealed from him the extent of his friendship with Epstein.

“These papers … are absolutely damming of the Prime Minister. Starmer has not told the truth and cannot be trusted,” Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch said.

Mr Starmer is out of excuses. He either read the briefings provided to him by Mr Powell and Mr Barton and chose to ignore and override them. Or he did not. Neither is a good excuse and both are enough to disqualify him from office.

The files do not shed any light on Mr Starmer’s own views or reasons for pursuing Mandelson’s appointment. Those remain, quite literally, a blank page. And this is Mr Starmer’s fault.

He has always been void of purpose, blank on his objectives, an empty suit that Labor donors had purchased for him.

He and Mr McSweeney said they had reclaimed the UK Labour party from the Corbynistas.

But as Richard Burgon, a Labour MP and ally of the former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn told the House of Commons Mandelson’s appointment despite his “descipable character, greed and avarice,” went ahead because of politics.

“It suited the interests of a tiny faction of the Labour party,” Mr Burgon said.

Mr Starmer can longer say he has rescued the party from socialist fanatics for as long as he vindicates them.

He has not delivered the change that he promised and that he claims to have a mandate to deliver and is therefore the reason he should stay in No. 10.

He represents more of the same old crony politics that has led to a surge in support for the lolly options of the Greens on the far left and Reform on the far right.

Mr Starmer used to seek refuge in being politically vacant. But he has been exposed as willing to compromise national security, Britain’s dignity and his own premiership to bestow political favour on an egg that had rotted long ago.