Don’t you know there is a war? That was the highlight of the somewhat contentious showdown between Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer today, as the UK grapples with whether or not to deploy warships to liberate the Strait of Hormuz. With the world on the brink of an energy crisis (for a taste of impending doom if the situation is not resolved, read on this terrific interview with oil market researcher Rory Johnston) and President Trump continuing to badger our Prime Minister about Winston Churchill, the Leader of the Opposition wanted to talk about last week’s news: Peter Mandelson.
As a reminder: the government released the first installment of the so-called “Mandelson Files”about the former US ambassador’s disgraced nomination process on Wednesday afternoon after PMQs were safely done and dusted and Starmer had escaped the Commons roasting. So this was Badenoch’s first chance to raise the revelations with her, and she wasn’t going to let little things like the seven-day wait and the war in the Middle East get in her way.
Badenoch wanted to know: Did the prime minister speak to Mandelson personally before appointing him? This was her first question and the basis of the next five questions. As the Conservative leader pointed out, the published documents reveal that Starmer had been warned that Mandelson had stayed at Jeffrey Epstein’s house after the latter’s conviction for child sexual abuse. So had he picked up the phone to ask about her?
In response, Starmer talked about… well, other things. Namely: Badenoch’s initial gung-ho impulse for the UK to be drawn into the US-Israel conflict in Iran without any sort of plan, and comments made by shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy condemning Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square. What any of these have to do with Peter Mandelson is unclear – except in the vaguer, more tangential sense that if Starmer’s poor judgment is under the microscope, it might also bring Badenoch under the lens. He appointed a man who had been sacked by the government twice for fraud and maintained a friendship with a sex trafficker to the top diplomatic role, she wanted to rush into war, and she had someone at her front who gets angry when she sees other religions praying in public – for all of them.
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From this excruciating exchange, we can surmise that the answer to Badenoch’s question is probably no, Starmer did not speak to Mandelson before nominating him, because if he had, he would surely have mentioned it instead of constantly hiding behind “the process”. Badenoch’s line of attack that Starmer “outsourced” this decision and left it in the hands of two aides who were themselves close to Mandelson (Morgan McSweeney and Matthew Doyle – who shamefully had another friendship with another convicted pedophile) is hard to avoid.
We also got a reminder that last week was just the beginning: there are many, many more documents related to Mandelson to come, which will confirm the assurances the former ambassador gave the government that his friendship with Epstein was nothing to worry about, and will reveal how he communicated with various members of Team Starmer while in Washington. This has the potential to cause extreme damage, both to Starmer himself and to those around him – far more damage, in fact, than Badenoch was able to inflict today. Perhaps she should have kept her powder dry, which would have had the added bonus of not making her look completely irrelevant while ignoring the main issue of the day.
On that front, Starmer’s deflections proved to be a weapon of despair. This is it THE the third week when he has tried to channel some gravitas and make a serious point about not recklessly taking the UK to war as Badenoch (and Nigel Farage) initially appeared to want. What was a valid point is now wearing thin. And Timothy’s attack came out of nowhere. Starmer has tried this tactic before, dissing Badenoch by drawing attention to what her front panel has said or done (Robert Jenrick not seeing white faces in Birmingham, for example) and demonstrating the similarities between the official opposition party and those on the fringes of British politics (hence the Tommy Robinson reference). But again, this has nothing to do with Peter Mandelson. And acting as if it succeeded in underscoring Starmer’s lack of a straight answer to a straightforward yes-or-no question and undermining his general suggestion that the only thing a prime minister needs to think about right now is war.
Perhaps the Prime Minister was distracted by the knowledge that Nigel Farage was – for once – in the room and ready to ask his question. It was about the looming energy crisis and North Sea oil and gas, with the reform leader asking “Isn’t it time to follow Norway?” and opened the hole. Starmer swallowed his response on the “consequences” of a war that Farage had said Britain must “hurry up”, once again trying to take the mileage out of that initial response. All well and good, but when energy bills start to rise, the British public are unlikely to be happy with a blame game about who started the war. They will want government intervention. And if Reform can present an enticing (if wildly impractical) story about North Sea drilling, Starmer will need a better answer than “this is the war you wanted”.
A final mention must go to Tory MP Andrew Snowden for bringing things full circle and getting back to Mandelson – a subject that Starmer probably hoped would have been saved by this point in the process. “What is he afraid of? What is he hiding?” Snowden asked. Starmer’s response was that he wasn’t surprised that Tories didn’t want to talk about the war in Iran or Nick Timothy’s Muslim comments – which is fair enough. But it is emphasized once again that Starmer does not want to talk about Mandelson. And at some point, he will have to.
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