“I am sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies,” said a pale and drawn Keir Starmer on Thursday morning.
The red-hot furore over his former Washington ambassador’s links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had followed the UK prime minister all the way to a Hastings sports hall.
“Mandelson knew Epstein . . . Mandelson was asked directly . . . Mandelson lied . . . evidence has emerged concerning Mandelson’s conduct,” said Starmer, spitting out the M word each time as if it pained him.
Over and over, he insisted on referring to Peter Mandelson only by his surname. It was the same in parliament on Wednesday. The pattern suggested it was deliberate.
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Although Mandelson has quit the House of Lords, his peerage is extant and he remains the Baron of Foy. Even the BBC follows protocol and still calls him “Lord Mandelson”.
For the UK prime minister of all people, a knight, to eschew address etiquette for a peer wasn’t just a figure of speech: it was a very British statement of contempt.
And no wonder. Mandelson’s “lies” over his links to Epstein have sparked the biggest crisis of Starmer’s six years as Labour leader. He now fights for his political life.
The worrying thing, from a Labour point of view, was that on Thursday Starmer didn’t look as if he had much fight left in him at all. Or perhaps, for Labour, that’s not such a worry; many backbenchers don’t want Starmer to fight. They just want him gone.
The Westminster travelling circus had followed the prime minister two hours south to the East Sussex coast to hear him give a speech on what it means to be British, as he extended the Pride of Place community empowerment scheme.
Hastings was the site of one of the most famous battles in British history, when Normans routed the Anglo-Saxons in 1066. Could Starmer launch a fightback here?
Bluntly, no.
He took to the lectern in the octagonal little hall of Horntye Park Sports Complex. Typically, these community events are a free hit for UK government politicians. They give a ra-ra speech while local party operatives whoop and holler: made-for-TV party pageantry.
But on Thursday, Starmer’s audience looked every bit as glum as their prime minister, who, uncharacteristically, kept stumbling over his words on the autocue.
There were times during his speech when Helena Dollimore, the Labour MP for Hastings and Rye, looked as if she might even be on the verge of shedding tears as she sat in the front row.
If it is true that Starmer’s time is almost up, political observers will look back upon moments such as this and say his people sensed it – the beginning of the end.
After his speech, he took questions from the Westminster media pack who had followed him down, smelling blood.
Time and again, he sidestepped questions over his future as prime minister. Later, Downing Street also insisted the future was secure for his chief of staff, Cork man Morgan McSweeney, whom Labour backbenchers really blame for the Mandelson fiasco.
But the word along Westminster’s corridors of power is that McSweeney’s political head may be the price Starmer has to pay to keep his own – for now.
“I don’t want the PM to go,” Hull East MP Karl Turner told the BBC. “[But] my concern is that he’ll keep Morgan McSweeney and the parliamentary Labour Party will kick off again and again and again to the point where it is untenable for [Starmer].”
The prime minister appears to understand that if he sacks his chief of staff, he might not have long left himself. He may be able to limp on for a while longer, if more damaging Mandelson revelations don’t emerge in the coming days as documents are released.
But if they do? Then Starmer could be toast.
