Starmer on Mandelson

Peter Mandelson has resigned as a member of the House of Lords, following further revelations of his close ties to the convicted paedophile and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.

While I was acquainting myself with this development, I came across Keir Starmer's address to his cabinet, as reported in The Guardian:

Starmer said Mandelson had “let his country down” and added: “For the public to see politicians saying they can’t recall receiving significant sums of money or not was just gobsmacking, causing them to lose faith in all politicians and weaken trust still further.”

Which called to mind Paul Holden's investigation into Starmer's rise within the Labour Party, documented in his book The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy, in which Holden details the party contributions that financed Starmer's bid for office, but were never declared to the Electral Commission, which is, needless to say, illegal. The blurb reads:

Paul Holden shows how Keir Starmer has been the frontman for a ruthless, right-wing political project headed by Morgan McSweeney, now chief of staff in Number 10 and arguably the most powerful man in Britain.

McSweeney’s clique often employed dirty tricks to undermine the left-wing Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, fuelling a moral panic over antisemitism and establishing front groups that hobbled prominent independent media outlets in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’.

McSweeney then guided Starmer to the Labour leadership on a platform that Starmer, once in office, almost instantly betrayed. Having conquered the party on false pretences, McSweeney and his allies set about purging opponents, marginalising the membership, and dragging party policy to the right.

These machinations were made possible by financial donations that McSweeney did not disclose—a violation of the law that arguably subverted Britain’s democratic system. But was McSweeney’s unlawful failure to report donations a mistake—or was it deliberate?

This is a sordid tale that includes hacked emails, anonymous smears, dodgy dossiers, cynical stitch-ups, and staggering hypocrisy. It traces the Labour Party’s transformation into a censorial, authoritarian machine, and sounds the alarm about the possible corruption of British politics by dark money.

Pot kettle, much?

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