Two men made mistakes over the Peter Mandelson affair, but only one has lost his job. That disparity should haunt Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as the fallout from the botched ambassadorial appointment continues to erode his authority. A good leader never asks others to do what they would not do themselves. Holding people to high standards is fine, but only if those standards apply equally to the leader. Otherwise, obedience may be commanded in politics, but respect will not follow. Less than two years into power, that lesson is becoming painfully clear for Starmer.
The Mandelson Affair Unfolds
No one in government emerges well from the story of Peter Mandelson's journey to Washington. Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office mandarin sacked for not informing Downing Street that the chosen ambassador had raised red flags during vetting, could arguably have saved himself by kicking the decision upstairs. He might have let Starmer choose between public humiliation—telling the Americans that his preferred envoy was a security risk—or sending Mandelson anyway with added safeguards. However, even that would not have been simple. The vetting process relies on strict confidentiality, and the taboo on sharing details is real. Cat Little, the senior civil servant who uncovered the failed vetting in March, said it took three weeks to determine she could inform the prime minister.
Robbins's Misjudgment and Contrast with Starmer
With hindsight, keeping everything within the Foreign Office's fiefdom was a rare misjudgment, for which Robbins paid with his job. That makes the contrast with Starmer glaring: his misjudgments are mostly paid for with other people's jobs. Bodies are piling up, and it is hard to dispose of them with dignity. The final grenade Robbins lobbed on his way out was the revelation that Downing Street had not only sought a foreign posting for Mandelson but also inquired about ambassador jobs to cushion the fall of spin doctor Matthew Doyle. Doyle was eventually given a seat in the House of Lords, only to lose the Labour whip after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend charged with indecent child image offences to become a councillor. Warnings were seemingly overridden again: SNP MP Stephen Flynn says he wrote to the prime minister flagging the connection but was ignored.
Impact on Labour MPs and Cabinet
The soul-crushing impact on Labour MPs is hard to overstate. Angry and frustrated, some wonder why they gave up good jobs for this life of impotent embarrassment. Rumours fly about ministers on the verge of quitting. Ambitious backbenchers are visibly swivelling away from Starmer, trying to ingratiate themselves with whoever might come next. Angela Rayner and Louise Haigh, both cut loose from the cabinet—Rayner over taxes, Haigh over a past insurance fraud charge—made high-profile public interventions this week. Rayner's sounded suspiciously like a stump speech. Reports of loyal cabinet ministers challenging Starmer over Robbins's sacking reflect a fear that going to war with Whitehall will poison radical change.
The Blockaded Premiership
What unites all those Starmer has dumped is not that they were blameless. None were saints; all made mistakes. But the same looks increasingly true of him, yet he clings on, sustained by the fear that it could always be worse. With Andy Burnham not in parliament, and no contender bar Ed Miliband obviously qualified to lead through the economic shock brewing in the Gulf, the outcome of any coup remains unpredictable. Downing Street is essentially blockaded, with no obvious way in for a new prime minister and no obvious way out for the old one.
Select Committee Inquiry
That could change if the foreign affairs select committee—whose chair, Emily Thornberry, knows about jobs for the boys, having been dropped from the shadow cabinet to accommodate Starmer's friend Richard Hermer—finds evidence contradicting Starmer's insistence that No 10 did not pressure the Foreign Office to appoint Mandelson. Ironically, Starmer's fate may now lie with Morgan McSweeney, the former chief of staff, who is expected to face questions over allegations that he told Robbins's predecessor to 'just fucking approve' the posting.
Character Revealed
If you are losing track of who got fired for what, you are not alone. Even one MP on the committee observed that there had been so many sackings it was hard to keep up. But one thing is clear: this affair reveals as much about Starmer's character as about Mandelson's. Pushing body after body off the back of a sledge means that every time one hits the snow, we see the driver a little more clearly, until he is the only one left. If he is still blaming everyone else as he hits the oncoming tree, that was not leadership, but the failure to recognise its absence until too late.
