𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Keir Starmer has been exposed for the dishonourable man he really is… but what happens next will punish us all. The Mandelson saga is like a Netflix boxset with so many plot twists and minor characters it’s hard to keep up. But the series recap boils down to this: the Prime Minister knew the disgraced peer was a wrong ‘un when he appointed him as US ambassador. The security vetting is a sideshow. It was already a done deal. But the row has revealed Starmer for who he is, a man who turns on everyone around him to save himself. It has not worked. Now every single option for the season finale is bad for him, but, more importantly, worse for us.

Starmer is done. Cabinet ministers are starting to turn on him. Behind closed doors they have failed to back him and, crucially, they have started to publicly distance themselves from him. But will anyone have the guts to challenge him? Labour history suggests not, which leaves us with a zombie government, one with a huge majority but zero ability to make the meaningful changes at a time of economic and social turmoil that are desperately needed.

Starmer could decide that the situation is unsustainable and set out a timetable for his departure and a change of leadership.

That would allow a way back for Andy Burnham, so-called King of the North, by persuading a supporter to make way for him with a safe seat and the PM would no longer have the power to block him. Burnham has the ability to seem human in a way that Starmer cannot and his political apprenticeship in the Blair government means he understands the importance of presentation.

But scratch the surface and there is not much more there, it’s style over substance when the country needs gravitas. Speaking of which, tax-dodging Angela Rayner is apparently cutting back on the cocktails in readiness for a tilt at the top job.

But ditching her favourite jugs of “venom” – which involves mixing a bottle of vodka, a bottle of Southern Comfort, ten bottles of Blue WKD and a litre of orange juice – will not make up for the damage her employment rights bill has had on the country’s small businesses.

Meanwhile, hapless Health Secretary Wes Streeting is still in dispute with the junior doctors despite offering them a massive bung just months after taking the job.

Which leaves Ed Miliband. The man with the most political heft, a fully fleshed out philosophy for governing. Sadly, it is one that would leave Britain reeling from his obsessional commitment to net zero at a time when energy bills are only going one way.

Back to Starmer. We were told he was the decent man the country needed following the turbulent Tory years but his true character was hiding in plain sight all along.

The human rights barrister showed he cares little about humans and nothing about rights when he dispatched Foreign Office mandarin Olly Robbins in a late night phone call without even letting him give his side of the story. It was a politically boneheaded move and also showed the PM is happy to ignore the process when it suits him.

But Keir Starmer was only ever a fantasy, a mirage in the desert for a desperate Labour party that couldn’t even win a raffle after Jeremy Corbyn led it into the wilderness.

Along comes a white knight, literally, Sir Keir, former director of public prosecutions, a man in a suit and tie with an air of respectability, and he was on their side. He rescued the party, impressively stemming its miserably anti-semitic hard left factionalism to make it not only electable but with a majority most leaders could only dream of.

But it was all built on lies, smoke and mirrors, slippery misdirection. He made ten promises to his party so they would elect him leader then ditched them after he was successful.

He promised the country integrity, probity and decency but ran a “jobs for the boys” operation that, bizarrely, seemed particularly favourable to men who were friends with paedophiles. He was mired in sleaze from the start after taking freebies from a man who was then mysteriously given a pass for No 10 despite having no role.

On and on it goes, but the worst part is we will all now suffer for the failings of this dishonourable PM.