Labour's hypocrisy and indifference to female victims

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I need a rant.

I can't quite understand why Starmer’s appalling decision to appoint Mandelson is only now coming back to bite him.

The FT reported on Mandelson’s continued relationship with Epstein back in 2023 - to a resounding silence from the British establishment and media ecosystem, which says nothing good about the indifference of the powerful. An FT journalist asked Starmer about the relationship back then: “I said, you’ve got a very senior Labour peer who was staying at Epstein’s house while the paedophile was in jail. Aren’t you a bit worried about this? And Starmer just batted it away and he said, oh I know as much about this as you do.”

The developed vetting report on Mandelson prior to his appointment as ambassador raised red flags on both security and financial grounds. Starmer made a political decision to ignore the security service advice. His decision, not McSweeney's (McSweeney shouldn't have seen the DV report). I can see only two ways to interpret this.

One, Starmer thought someone who had been flagged as a security risk and had maintained his ties to a convicted paedophile was a fit person to represent the UK - he facilitated a situation in which the UK ambassador to the US was effectively providing reputation laundering to a convicted US paedophile.

Two, he’s stupid enough to have believed the excuses offered by a man who had already been sacked from government twice. That strikes me as unlikely, so it makes my blood boil when I hear Starmer doing his best moral outrage voice and excusing himself on the grounds that Mandelson lied to him.

What is making me truly angry, all over again, is that information about the depth and extent of Mandelson's ongoing links with Epstein and that Starmer knew that Mandelson continued the relationship post-conviction when he appointed him ambassador was widely reported in September. I couldn't understand why he wasn't forced out then. Kudos to Badenoch and her team for - belatedly - realising the killer question that needed to be put to the PM (the man who regards himself as some sort of moral true north and promised us the highest standards in public life), but why the fuck has it taken so long?

If Lab MPs genuinely didn't realise before this week that their supposedly whiter than white leader knowingly appointed the close friend of a convicted paedophile as US ambassador they aren't doing their job properly, if they did then they’re as morally culpable as Starmer.

I cannot stomach the hypocrisy and the hand-wringing from people whose inaction and lack of curiosity simply betrays the low priority they give to the victims of Epstein.

(The FT podcast on the September wave of this scandal is here, transcript also available. Worth a read/listen if you think I'm overreacting.)

What I also find really odd is that Mandelson has always been problematic. Nobody likes him, he is forever causing drama, breaking ministerial code and so on, and generally being a pain in the arse. So what was the motivation to bring him back into the fold and give him a role? He is so obviously someone to avoid at all costs; if he worked at Sainsbury's you'd keep him in the stock room at all times. So it's not just a case of 'oh I believed him' (which is daft enough when he has consistently demonstrated himself to be dishonest) but also just completely weird that anyone would want to give him any role. The man's a liability and has obviously been so for a long time. Why was Starmer so keen to overlook that?

The assumption is that Starmer had a real choice in all of this? For a while people have been speculating when, not if, he steps down. He may have to make deals to keep support.

Either way, it demonstrates that politics doesnt care about morality.

Nobody likes him, he is forever causing drama, breaking ministerial code and so on, and generally being a pain in the arse. So what was the motivation to bring him back into the fold and give him a role?

I dont think hes ever been away, just working in the background making alliances.

Is anyone else feeling it's a bit rich of Harriet Harman to criticise Kier for being naive after her involvement as a supporter of PIE.
It's as baffling to me that she continued to be lauded in politics as it is that Mandleson was.

PIE was insiduous in the 70s and their arguments that children had a sexual being they ought to be able to express particularly resonated with young people, who would have remembered their own (entirely innocent) mild incursions into sexuality as children (e.g. 'doctors and nurses' and early masturbation). When that generation had children of their own, or came into contact with children, the penny dropped heavily that what was being talked of was not children 'playing with themselves' but paedophilia. I think PIE also latched onto a strong romantic trope of younger female and older male esp in the romantic literature of the time e.g. Mills and Boon and a lot of historical romances including G. Heyer.
Not that this exonerates Harman in any way.

And people are still pre-disposed to over-look or minimise the issue of paedophilia. These men are absolutely committed and driven by their urges. They haven't gone away, and they operate at every level of society.

Yes

It just sickens me. I just look at men at the moment and think 'do you actually see me as a person?'

The extent of the disregading, the simply not seeing, is horrific to me.

Apparently Mandelson is very bright and a political genius, and was indispensable in negotiating the UK/US trade deal.

Labour has a long history of believing that the end always justifies the means.

Mandelson was the Labour Party's fixer for decades that why despite all the times he was fired he was brought back because the labour hierarchy didn't have anyone else that could 'fix' things like he could.

McSweeney's the reason he was given the ambassadorship, he and Mandelson were BFFL, Two Tier is to beholden to McSweeney and too untrustworthy as a PM because he clueless about things like this, he is too easily swayed by people he credits with having knowledge because he fundamentally lacks any knowledge himself.

Starmer is a man who lectured the nation about the sexual fetish that women can have a penis.
Starmer presided over the bullying & removal of Rosie Duffield and countless women trying to speak about safeguarding and women's rights out of the labour party
Look at his behaviour over the rape gangs?
His behaviour in appointing Mandelson despite all the evidence of his involvement with a paedophile makes complete sense when you look at Starmer's track record.

He's been enabling predators from the outset

Maybe Starmer appointed Mandelson precisely because Mandelson is devious, manipulative, good at getting people to do what he wants. And because he already moved in the same dodgy circles as Trump.

Starmer will hopefully go over this.

Thanks for this insight and I'm genuinely interested, what does this mean? What was / is Mandy able to achieve that others can't? I mean, it's not rocket surgery or molecular physics. Or is it basically that those traits some of us would perceive as weaknesses (devious, manipulative etc as @RoyalCorgi listed) are real strengths when it comes to our shitty political system? What does it mean to be a political genius? Same question to @TheywontletmehavethenameIwant what is he doing that means he is able to fix things that others can't?

Mandelson has the dirt on Stamer - that is why. Whatever backroom deals her did to become PM, and has continued to do to remain in power. Men like Mandelson (and Epstein) gain power by owning secrets. Mandelson has a lot of powerful peoples secrets.

What @MrsOvertonsWindow said.

Labour hate women.

I used to vote for them religiously, never again.

'
@guinnessguzzler - what is he doing that means he is able to fix things that others can't?

He fixed the Labour Party so they were electable for a start.

And the answer is a resounding NO! as all the Epstein papers and Pelicot case demonstrate so clearly.

Greer was more right than I thought. Or maybe not - they don't hate us, they merely see us as subhuman. As long as we domestic and sexual units aren't malfunctioning or demanding things, men can happily ignore us.

I don't give a shite about Mandelson and Starmer. I give a shite about those poor abused women. I want accountability from the foul men who abused them, plus those who colluded or looked the other way.

My impression at the time was it was to try keep Trump onside - the belief Mandelson could 'manage' the orange psychopath.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...