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.)

I’ve lost count of the number times I’ve seen Kier doing his highly affronted face/body language (+ irritated spluttering noises) when being asked about his crap attitude towards, and crap record on, protecting women and girls. He also does it when asked sharp questions by female journalists.

It’s bloody obvious that he dislikes what he considers to be uppity women.

He's not good at being challenged at the best of times. He splutters, goes pink, jabs his finger and tells whoever it is that they've let the country down, they've let themselves down and worst of all they've let Paddington Bear down. But he gets much angrier when it's a woman doing it.

Antonia Romeo is a bit of a marmite character in Whitehall. There are old school mandarins who dislike her because she's a shameless publicity hound (god forbid a woman should be openly ambitious!). There are more junior civil servants who quite like that because she's a very visible leader who's eager to trumpet all the cool stuff her department is doing. Shabana Mahmood, who is not a low maintenance secretary of state, has a very strong relationship with her.

I just think, if Starmer couldn't cope with Chris Wormald telling him he couldn't do stuff, and Wormald is basically a Starmer clone, he's going to spontaneously combust when a woman tells him he can't do stuff.

No he’s not. He bristles, fizzes and reacts badly. Look at last PMQs.

Losing staff that really believed in him eg McSweeney is going to be a dent.

I don't even think McSweeney believed in him. He was just an empty vessel who McSweeney could use.

I dislike Alastair Campbell but he correctly said - nobody ever believed that Blair was my puppet.

The book Get In by Maguire and Pogrund (which sources close to McSweeney cooperated closely with) is an interesting read but a very strange one. There's an awful lot about McSweeney's genius (I take this with a pillar of salt) and some revealing pen pics of figures like Rayner and Mahmood. But at the end you're no wiser about what Starmer believes in or what makes him tick, and there are lots of quotes from people on his team saying he's really crap at politics and not even particularly interested in it.

The nearest thing you get to an insight into his character is that he gets angry when someone (especially an uppity woman) challenges him. The very brutal sacking of Becky Long-Bailey really comes down to him ordering Becky to delete a tweet and her not understanding that she had to do what he said immediately instead of thinking it was up for discussion. Which is very weird for such a usually indecisive man, and it's not even as if Becky is a very assertive woman.

The one thing everyone remembers from the book is that brilliant quote (if it doesn't come from McSweeney it's from someone extremely close to him) saying "Keir thinks he's driving the train, but we've just sat him at the front of the DLR." I bet he's been fuming about that since the book came out.

Isn't it amazing that these men believe other men when they claim to be innocent of abuse, even when they've already been proved guilty, yet they refuse to believe women who are survivors of abuse.

Good on her, Starmer was the ringmaster in the bullying of Rosie when she insisted on defending womens'right to privacy, dignity and safety. He is a lefty misogyny, as are most men on the Left. Womens' rights have always been "jam tomorrow" in their view. Good to hear from her.

If by "bloke's bloke " you mean a vile bully who hates women and has no care for children or young women trafficked by paedophiles, yes.

This . Also how on Earth has Margaret Hodge had a long successful career following her utterly shocking behaviour when it was brought to her attention that children were being abused in Islington care homes .

This was widely covered in the mainstream press in the 1990s .The Independent articles are still up on line .
The brave Islington social worker , Dr Liz Davies , (who has just been given an OBE ) covers the subject well on her website .

M.H.was later made ‘Minister for Children ‘ in the Blair government.
I have no words .

You should have a column @SionnachRuadh!

@Ereshkigalangcleg one of these days I will get annoyed enough at the world to start a substack, but not just yet.

This podcast makes interesting listening and may explain some things:

@TinkyBella Please don't dump a link with no obvious relevance to sexism or misogyny in the British Labour party without explaining why it has any bearing on the topic of this thread. A man who has no expertise on Labour, manifestations of sexism or politics interviewing an American man with a track record of disseminating anti-vaccine disinformation isn't a promising start.

Absolutely agree. Dumping a link with no explanation more than three months after the last post - well, it's not worth clicking on IMO.

Let's give a wave to Darren Jones, paying lip service to victims when it's politically expedient to do so, but sending a fulsomely sympathetic message to the disgraced Mandelson on the day he was sacked:
"You’ve been doing such a great job, and you worked wonders with Trump. I’m so sorry about today."

This message, so different from the government's public protestations at the time, was mysteriously unavailable for publication under the terms of the humble address yet had been passed to Shipman back in April. The Beeb is now reporting the story too.

Of course it suits Jones to be pro-woman when he's trying to score points against Farage re females on small boats.
But in the dirty world of politics, your friend is always your friend, no matter how discredited they are.
Thus Jones can revert to misogynist mode very easily indeed.

@1984Now I don't want men on this thread. I've observed your style on other threads, it has features which are more common in male writing and you have disrupted or diverted discussion in a way that wouldn't otherwise have happened.

There are other threads where you can express your opinions.

I comment less and less on MN because of posters like you and the people who defend you.

This is the only comment I will make on this and I will report people who derail the thread. Anyone who wants to discuss the role men can or should play on FWR should create a thread for doing so.

What?

You're really crediting me with more power and influence than I have. I should be honoured, but I genuinely don't deserve it.
Who are these other men on here you object to? I've noticed one or two, max.
It's interesting that the male in Brighton fighting for his daughter's rights gets no-one telling him he should bog off, funny that. Including you.
No one's derailing this thread, who are you going to report?
Enough women here have been kind enough to stick their oar in for me, should I not listen to them, only you?

This