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 is it with Starmer and pedophiles? 🤔

We know Starmer and Lab have a woman problem. Having been forced to get rid of McSweeney, he's appointed two women (because women are so feeble that one woman on her own wouldn't cope, of course, and negotiating a job share arrangement on the hoof is such a piece of cake) as temporary (because that will be so good for their authority) joint chiefs of staff.

Welcome to the glass cliff edge, Vidya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson. Typical Lab to wait until a moment of crisis and appoint women only when he has run out of other options and is effectively setting them up to fail.

Keir Starmer was a dedicated human rights lawyer. He worked hard for free in a number of important cases. Here are Helen Steel and David Morris talking about his help in the McLibel case.

https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/keir-took-mcdonalds

He is a disappointment as Labour leader. And either unable to admit that or feels there is no one who would do a better job.

Rather as was done with Theresa May. 'Just hold this for us love, until the shit stops flying and it's safe for the blokes to swan in and look all heroic and saviour'.

Exibit D Radio silence from Parliament about the conviction of the killer of Rhiannon Whyte

And the only national media outlet that gave a voice to Siobhan Whyte was GB News.

Unfortunately he failed to understand that the qualities needed to be a dedicated human rights lawyer are not the same as those needed for either the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Prime Minister.

The DPP needs to be capable of prosecuting people whether or not he thinks there’s a human rights element to the case - and not prosecuting minor or dubious cases even if he thinks there’s a human rights element to the case.

The Prime Minister needs to consider the good of the country as a whole. That involves balancing rights; I don’t think Starmer can. I think he’s always going to go all out for whichever side he thinks has the strongest case.

But if you’re always supporting one group against another, the wider society will break apart. The PM’s job is to bring it together…

I must say it was galling to hear Starmer speak directly to, and apologise to, the women and girls who had been abused by organised rings of perpetrators in the US, when he has done nothing of the sort for the girls who suffered in even more horrific ways in this country. Unforgivable.

Agree 100%. Unforgivable and also cruel to the UK grooming gang survivors.

Antonia Romeo set to join Alakeson and Cuthbertson on the glass cliff edge - apparently she's likely to replace the execrable Wormald as Cabinet Sec.

The Institute for Govt thinks that Wormald's failure and the manner of his departure make the job more difficult.

If starmer goes over this it's because rivals spotted an opportunity, not because any of them suddenly give a fuck about women.

That humble beginnings ‘son of a toolmaker’ spiel of Starmer’s cracks me up - his dad owned a factory that made tools, his dad didn’t make them by hand using a forge and anvil 🙄

That’s what I was thinking.

House of Cards Francis Urquhart (British not American one) style scheming that because Mandelson was friendly with Epstein, he’d be accepted by Trump to give the UK a FTA and labour would deliver growth. Shame about the girls but needs must.

There is another thread on here about the inaction over the rape gangs in Rotherham, Bradford and elsewhere, Governments have ignored the issue and failed to act - both Tory and Labour - but what I cannot forgive Labour for is how cynical they in not wanting to rock the boat of the Muslim block votes. These voters will not be challenged and neither will the rapists. So Labour is guilty on both counts - it has betrayed women and girls, and it has done so to preserve a completely undemocratic method of getting Labour votes. Completely disgusting on both counts. They care nothing for women, and never have.

Fixer as in Epstein fixed things or bob the builder?

There's a thing about the Cab Sec appointment that tells you a lot about how inept this government is.

Gove has been saying from his experience of Wormald, he's a perfectly good public servant. I'd qualify that by saying, if the secretary of state or PM knows what they want to do, Chris Wormald is good at getting it done. That's basic civil service skills. But if he's serving a PM who doesn't really have an agenda, is allergic to taking decisions and you don't hear from him for days on end... it's no surprise if he reverted to Sir Humphrey factory settings.

Lots of briefing for and against Antonia Romeo right now. That reflects her reputation as a go getter and arse kicker, which are reflected in her very effective partnership with Shabana Mahmood.

(Personally I am sad that someone called Antonia Romeo is being promoted to the top of government and Jilly Cooper isn't around to write about it, but let's crack on.)

What I find interesting is that there's briefing from No10 that Antonia was the candidate Starmer really wanted in 2024. I don't think they know how pathetic this makes him look - that he had this outstanding candidate but someone (who? McSweeney?) talked him into appointing Wormald instead. It's pathetic on a level with him complaining that Peter Mandelson told him porky pies.

In any case I think it's an obvious lie. Starmer was given his shortlist of candidates, with the final decision resting with the PM, and he picked the most Starmer-like candidate in the frame. You can tell this by the fact that the McSweeney people were briefing against Wormald within days of him starting the job.

Personally I don't like this trend for PMs ousting the Cab Sec - Boris ousting Mark Sedwill and then Starmer ousting Simon Case - but if they must do it, you'd hope a PM would have the self-awareness to say, I want a leader who's going to make up for my weaknesses instead of amplifying them.

I suspect what's going to tip the scales is that Antonia is a huge Arsenal fan. It's notoriously difficult to interest Keir in anything other than the law and Arsenal.

Juliet Samuel in the Times makes a useful point that may help explain why Labour's Westminster team are not very good at listening to voters:

The machine McSweeney did know how to get a grip of was the Labour Party, which is why Andy Burnham is still more than a hundred miles (plus ten billion brain cells) away from power. Unfortunately, the team he built to wield power in government was more like a Labour spousal commune, where the No 10 political secretary was married to the chief whip, the No 10 foreign policy adviser was with the chancellor’s political director, the No 10 political director was married to one Labour MP and sister to another, the chancellor was married to a senior civil servant and the most senior Cabinet Office minister was married to a special adviser, also in the Cabinet Office. McSweeney himself is married to a Scottish Labour MP. All of this might make for enjoyable away days but it’s not a formula for political entrepreneurialism.

This is a level of nepotism that even Newham Borough Council might think was pushing things a bit.

Labour’s humiliation is richly deserved

That's appalling, no wonder they have no clue, they're not just in an echo chamber, they're in their own family silo in the chamber. All the insults they slung at the Tories about corruption, when they're much worse. 🤮

@SionnachRuadh Gove has been saying from his experience of Wormald, he's a perfectly good public servant.

No. A thousand billion times no.
Wormald should have been ignominiously booted out a long time ago. I hate that he'll get a severance package and a fat pension, but government will be vastly better and safer without Wormald in it.

You might have read beyond that sentence before you started spitting. I don't know what he's done to provoke you, but there's no need to take it out on me.

Anyway, instead of just appointing Antonia, we've now got three mandarins exercising the functions of Cab Sec on an interim basis, to go along with the two interim joint chiefs of staff, while Starmer dithers about who's going to replace the people he's thrown under the bus to protect himself. This may be the most Starmer thing ever.

Labour has always been a bit nepotistic. Unsurprising. But part of the problem is that the role of the British PM has become more like an executive president than the leader of a cabinet among which he/she is only first among equals and they must work as a team. All these special advisers etc muddy the political waters and put party above country.

I really enjoyed this week's Political Fix podcast. The panel spends the first 20 mins discussing Lab's women problems and the misogynist culture in Downing Street. Stephen Bush is pretty withering about the way Starmer leans on his DPP work on VAWG and the notion that someone who actually cared about women and girls could manage to appoint two paedophiles. It was so refreshing to hear some honesty.

A happy bonus is that in their 'political stock picks' feature at the end, three out of four of them choose to 'buy' female politicians.

I'm a fan of this podcast and listen regularly, but this episode is worth a listen even if it wouldn't normally be your thing.

This article, despite the unfortunate title, is an excellent long read and very detailed. It also discusses Starmer’s (poor) attitude towards women:

https://spectator.com/article/authority-is-like-virginity-once-its-gone-its-gone-inside-keir-starmers-downfall/

“Every single quote in this article is from a Labour source: a minister, MP or party official, and most importantly eight serving and former Starmer aides.

‘Keir travelled very lightly,’ says a former Labour official. ‘He never defined himself, and when he came in, he was defined by events. Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The problem was Keir didn’t have a plan.’ In opposition, Labour tied itself in knots over trans rights rather than debate whether, with money very tight, it was sensible to rule out major tax rises. As a senior figure under Starmer puts it bluntly: ‘We spent more time working out whether chicks could have dicks than on a programme for government.’

The causes of the Keirtastrophe boil down to this: the manner of Starmer’s victory hindered his ability to govern. He, his aides and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, made errors that damaged his relationship with the voters who had elected him to change Britain, then with the parliamentary Labour party (PLP), and finally with his closest aides. Everything flowed from the Prime Minister’s fundamental lack of politics.”

Edited: I found an archived version: archive.is/6Mb7U

Thanks for the archive version I've been wanting to read that.

I don't always go along with Shippers (he's a McSweeney fan and a Sue Gray detractor, and I think that leads him astray on a few points) but he's just about the best of the current lobby correspondents, and all those quotes from Labour insiders are devastating.

I'm sure Starmer would be horrified to hear that people think he's sexist - just as Corbyn was with the antisemitism - but there's no denying that he's a bloke's bloke, and so are most of the very small circle who surround him. That's nothing new with Labour leaders - Barbara Castle used to talk about how it was impossible to get Jim Callaghan to listen to her - and I don't believe Labour's patented brand of girlboss feminism with shiny bobs and trouser suits has ever found a way to crack that culture.

The Antonia Romeo appointment will be worth watching for that reason. She's the only obvious candidate, but there's also a non-trivial chance that Starmer dithers about filling the Cab Sec role and then u-turns and does a recruitment from scratch in order to find a suitably qualified man.

Thanks for the link, on day 1 Two Tier stated that the "culture wars were over", that's how little attention he paid to women being robbed of all they're rights, he dismissed it as irrelevant. The First Minister in Wales, fobs it off with the same rhetoric, lets hope she does so at her own peril just like Two Tier did.