Labour's hypocrisy and indifference to female victims

To me, it's not any political party that astonished me about Epstein.

It's the media seeming to focus on what Epstein files have done to the careers of powerful men. Instead of giving equal focus to the emotional pain suffered by the young women.

All the press talking about how this might bring Starmer down, but very little about what affect the whole thing has on the (then) young girls. And why influential men think they can use young women in this way.

On Times Radio, Thangam Debonnaire is wheeled out to vouch for the PM's incredibly high ethical standards, and say how terrible it is for Epstein's victims that this psychodrama about Mandelson has to play out.

I don't want to be nasty about Thangam, but she'd have done well in the SWP.

Agree. It's going to be disappointing, isn't it?

Starmer is no friend to women. I've absolutely despised the man since the Southport massacre of children and his reaction to it. This and his lack of interest in the child rape gangs in Rotherham

100% Agree.

Agreed @MrsOvertonsWindow Starmer has been one of the greatest disappointments of my life.

This ^

Starmer is no friend to women. I've absolutely despised the man since the Southport massacre of children and his reaction to it. This and his lack of interest in the child rape gangs in Rotherham.

Looking the other way at Peter Mandleson's friendship with the worst paedo on the planet is no surprise to me.

It astounds me that women on here are still sticking up for Starmer. Just wait a few weeks till we see emails and WhatsApp's showing us just how virtue signalling Starmer knew exactly what sleaze bag Mandelson was about and how he did nothing.

Starmer will go. The fact that he is still trying to cling on to power says all you need to know about him. He is, and has always been deluded by his own grandeur. He is a champagne socialist, trying to put the world to rights in his 2 million pound London pad and despite being the son of a toolmaker, doesn't have a clue about what real life is actually about in the UK. He is a fraud.

This.

The sheer amount of hypocrisy is astonishing. Tens of thousands of British women abused horrifically by rape gangs, and nothing.

The Supreme Court ruling upholding women's sex based rights, being ignored.

I keep hearing commentators saying Starmer is a “decent” man and I think he really believes his own PR. Wasn’t it Sue Gray who described No 10 as a boys’ club?

Labour campaigned on the basis of being a less corrupt, more honest and ethical government than the shambles the Tories offered.
Yet from the freebies revelations at the outset, they're proving to be just as corrupt as the last lot. They self identify as ethical and responsible while ignoring rape gangs, paedophile associations, child safeguarding and women's rights.

I was sceptical about labour given the extreme levels of misogyny that run through the party unchallenged but I genuinely thought that Starmer would be a sober and responsible PM. A good man.

Instead he's proved to be completely disinterested in the abuse of girls and women which the Mandelson debacle clearly evidences.

Geoffrey Epstein called the girls he trafficked ‘goyim’ i.e non-Jews used disparagingly and he only trafficked white girls, this has echoes of the grooming gangs who called the girls they abused as ‘kaffir’.

So much this - it is the enormous elephant in the room. The racial element - if the girls were not white - would be writ large.

This should not be an ignored element of both the grooming gangs and Epstein.

Thanks, everyone, all your explanations and insights are really helpful.

Not like the Tories then who ......... wait a minute.

I would like to see how many MPs now pushing for Starmer to go on the back of the Mandleson/Epstein issue are also pushing for action on the men who systematically raped and abused vulnerable children in the Northern Mill towns (and elsewhere in UK) for decades.

So Starmer was prepared to appoint Mandelson despite his being adjacent to sexual abuse of women and girls; he was prepared to allow Russel-Moyle to get away with some outrageous threatening behaviour towards women in the HoC; the way he treated Rosie Duffield; his assertion that some women have a penis; his permission for Phillipson to delay and delay the EHRC guidelines following the Supreme Court decision; his willingness to allow children to be given puberty blockers without any evidence that it will be beneficial for them……

Why does anyone imagine that this man puts any value on the safety of women and children?

Agree - I am getting so depressed by columns on this claiming that the ‘real issue’ here is the failure of capitalist liberalism. No, the real issue is that so many of the men at the top of this hierarchy see half the world’s population as subhuman. What they did to those women and girls - there are no words - and their vile worldview filters down into every aspect of our lives.

I think Starmer can be too reliant on the rules. He convinced himself that putting Mandelson in position is not illegal, therefore can be justified. And then balanced the chance of anything backfiring with a better US/UK relationship.

Which is a bold calculation given what prince andrew was experiencing at the exact time of this appointment.

I also think he didnt think this would ever turn against him in parliament. The worse thing would be the right wing press, that could be managed.

I think Starmer can compartmentalise. He can be both outraged about abuse, saying its his top priority to stop it, and also take risks with this appointment because trade is his top priority and will do anything to get the deal.

That probably translates as had dirt on a lot of people involved and thus had some leverage.

He is a very intelligent man, he was Kinnock's press secretary, the term spin doctor was coined to describe him, which says it all. From the very beginning he was a sly, manipulative liar, it was his intelligence that allowed him to created New Labour so they became electable, he used all of the methods above to spin Labour and Blair into a position of power, which he then used to his own advantage. Brown wasn't particularly a fan of his because Mandelson thought Blair made a better face for New Labour, and pushed for Blair to be elected leader of the party not Brown. That didn't stop Brown bringing Mandelson back in from the cold when he was PM though, because thanks to Mandelson's success in selling himself as indispensable, Brown was convinced no one could do what Mandelson could do.

He is considered to be a consummate politician.
I don't know whether he is or not, but that is his reputation. And that, it appears, was the thing that mattered...

There's an interesting account in Andrew Lownie's book about the Yorks detailing how ex-Prince Andrew got that cushy trade envoy job.

It makes sense to have a senior royal in that job, to lend some tone and impress foreign officials. The Duke of Kent did it for many years, in a discreet and low-key way.

But the DoK was getting on in years and wanted to retire, and since Andy was coming to the end of his Navy career, with the Admiralty running out of bogus jobs to appoint him to, he was suggested as a candidate.

Charles' response to that was (I'm paraphrasing here) "fuck no, this is a sensitive diplomatic job and there's no way Andy can be trusted not to disgrace himself." But Charles did not win out, because Andy had someone more powerful pushing for Andy's appointment. Yes, it was Peter Mandelson.

One hand washes the other, as the saying goes. So, years later, Mandelson's protege McSweeney lobbying to get his old boss a sensitive diplomatic job is not surprising. What is surprising is the lack of people in government willing to say to Starmer, "come on, this is Peter Mandelson, he may be a brilliant political operator but he's massively dodgy and you know he'll end up being sacked in disgrace."

I have a theory this is part of Starmer's broader woman problem. There is no way Sue Gray would have signed off on the Mandelson appointment. Her job for many years as head of the Propriety and Ethics Team was literally to spot red flags and make sure ministers took them seriously. But of course Sue was ousted by McSweeney and his boys' club, who all worshipped Mandelson as the Supreme Operator.

Thanks. I suppose what I meant is how? What is it he does or has to offer that noone else can? Is it an ability to understand what people want and make them think he can give it to them? Is it that he is good at sucking up to the right people and has no shame about it? Or is it, as some have suggested, that he uses dirt he has on people to make things go the way he wants? Maybe it is a mix of these things and others that combine to make him very useful to Labour despite his awfulness? I'm just trying to better understand because when I think of Mandelson I just think he is so obviously a horrendous person and someone you would naturally recoil from but he must have something to have been so involved for such a long time even when causing them so much hassle.

Geoffrey Epstein called the girls he trafficked ‘goyim’ i.e non-Jews used disparagingly and he only trafficked white girls, this has echoes of the grooming gangs who called the girls they abused as ‘kaffir’.
Labour voted against an enquiry twice and they are worried about losing votes in marginal seats, they don’t care about the girls and women.
Mandelson received from Epstein £75,000 over the years but relatively this is not much (he gave Sarah Ferguson 2m). He seems to have given state secrets for friendship, social aggrandising, sleazy parties and business dealings, he has a house worth 8m.
If you look at the unexplainable weirdness that’s happened- Brown selling off gold and losing the UK lots of money, the Chagos deal costing us 6 billion. Starmer and the 3 Ukrainian young men fire bombing his home it all seems pretty corrupt and female victims are the last thought on their minds.

I think this is it. Starmer probably justified it by telling himself that he was putting the national interest above his own moral scruples.

Karen Pierce was the ambassador he replaced, a career diplomatic that was thought to be doing a brilliant job, and had developed a good working relationship with the Republicans and Trump.
Mandelson wanted the job so his BBFL McSweeney got it for him.