DAN HODGES: The Epstein cover-up is below manner. Starmer’s actions rattling him

Now we know. The cover-up is formally under way. The decision to hide precisely what the Prime Minister knew, and when he knew it, over the Mandelson scandal has been taken.

All that remains is to find out who took the decision to pull the wool over the eyes of the British people – and why. Though we already have sufficient evidence to come to some swift and concrete conclusions.

It was announced on Tuesday that some of the key documents relating to the initial appointment of Peter Mandelson may not be released to the public until after the next general election. In particular, a pivotal file – a record of an exchange between the former ambassador and Starmer’s chief of staff in which three specific questions were asked relating to concerns about his relationship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – may not be published until any criminal prosecution has concluded. A prosecution could take years.

Downing Street insists information is solely being withheld at the request of the police as not to prejudice the ongoing investigation. But the facts of this already-sordid affair do not support that claim.

Let’s go back to the evening of Monday, February 2 – days after the latest tranche of Epstein files were released. At around 6pm, journalists became aware the police were officially opening inquiries into Mandelson. No 10 would almost certainly have been informed sooner.

Either way when Keir Starmer stood up at the Despatch Box at PMQs that week he was fully aware that investigation was under way having spoken to the police about it. And, as a former director of public prosecutions, he was in a better position than most to be aware of the rules, regulations and protocols relating to the danger of prejudicing major criminal investigations.

Yet he felt entirely free to tell the House of Commons, and the nation: ‘Mandelson betrayed our country, our Parliament and my party. He lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein, before and during his tenure as ambassador. I regret appointing him. If I knew then what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government.’

These comments were made in direct response to the revelations in the Epstein files that Mandelson had directly passed Downing Street documents and market-sensitive information to the serial child abuser. Yet at that moment, with Kemi Badenoch piling on the political pressure, Starmer apparently had no qualms about declaring his former ambassador bang to rights.

Peter Mandelson with Keir Starmer when he was Britain’s ambassador to the US

A pivotal file in which questions were asked relating to concerns about Peter Mandelson’s, right, relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, left, may not be published until after the next general election, writes Dan Hodges

It’s a far cry from his position now. Responding to demands that the full cache of files relating to Mandelson’s appointment be released, Starmer was attempting to claim his hands are tied and that while he would dearly love to provide full transparency, the wishes of the Metropolitan Police must be respected.

But again, the facts point in a completely opposite direction. First, Starmer did not want full transparency. From the very beginning of this saga, he didn’t want a single file to see the light of day. It was only when he was dragged, kicking and screaming, by his own MPs that he finally agreed to their release.

And again, this is where his actions – rather than his honeyed words – damn him. When pressed, Starmer told the Commons in early February that the process of releasing the documents would be overseen by the then-cabinet secretary, Chris Wormold. When doubts were raised, his close friend the MP Nick Thomas-Symonds was dispatched to reassure members that ‘the process will be conducted by the Cabinet Secretary, with unimpeachable integrity’.

A week later the ‘unimpeachable’ Wormold was sacked. What’s more, he was dismissed with such haste that for several farcical hours No 10 officials were unable to say who Britain’s most senior civil servant actually was.

You need only compare Sir Keir’s attitude to the Mandelson investigation with his attitude towards the parallel investigation under way into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, right, writes Dan Hodges

The official line from inside Downing Street was Wormold was dismissed because he was part of a cliquey ‘Boy’s Club’ that had allowed a malign culture to fester and spread within No 10. But it then emerged his chosen successor, Antonia Romeo, was herself the subject of a series of major bullying allegations. Allegations that had reportedly been ‘resolved’ in 2022, when the propriety and ethics team broke into a safe and destroyed the report examining them.

According to one senior Whitehall source I spoke to, the suspicion among officials is Wormold was actually dismissed because he was taking ‘too liberal’ a view about which files could be released in regards to Mandelson.

‘Part of the reason there has been such an angry reaction to the sacking of Chris Wormold is that many people believe he was removed because No 10 want to suppress the files release,’ I was told.

In which case, No 10 is winning. At the start of February the House of Commons was told the release of the Mandelson files would begin ‘immediately’. Then MPs were told the process would begin as soon as the House returned after recess. Now the promise is a few may be released some time next month, while others may not be released for years.

And then there is one final, telling indicator of who and what actually lies behind the burgeoning Mandelson cover-up. As we have seen, the lawyerly Prime Minister continues to cite ‘due process’ and the ‘dangers of prejudicing an ongoing police investigation’ as his rationale for not releasing the documents.

But to see how flimsy that excuse is, you need only compare his attitude to the Mandelson investigation with his attitude towards the parallel investigation under way into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. From the beginning, Keir Starmer has seemed very keen for the fallen prince to serve as a distraction for his own failings.

When the latest Epstein emails were released, Starmer took the unprecedented – and highly newsworthy – step of calling on Andrew to testify in the United States, where many of Epstein’s crimes took place. On Tuesday the Government meekly acquiesced to a Lib Dem motion demanding the release of all files relating to his time as UK trade envoy. This stands in direct contrast to their furious attempts to block the release of the Mandelson papers.

Similarly, the news of Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest was succeeded by the announcement that the Prime Minister was preparing legislation to summarily eject him from the line of succession. The formal arrest of Mandelson, conversely, has been greeted with conspicuous – and self-interested – silence from Sir Keir.

The police may well be being over-zealous in their defence of their ongoing investigation into the former Labour peer. But there is no doubt the Prime Minister is cynically exploiting their fastidiousness in a final desperate effort to save his own skin.

As a result of which, the Mandelson scandal is slowly but surely morphing into Keir Starmer’s Watergate. High crimes and misdemeanours. Pay-offs. Document suppression. Safe-cracking. Peremptory sackings. The belated resignation of senior aides. Spurious allusions to national security and foreign relations.

Indeed, in some way it’s worse. At the heart of Watergate was a second-rate burglary. The Epstein files have only just begun to scratch the surface of the most cruel and heinous offences imaginable.

And if Sir Keir gets his way, that is all that we will get to see. The grimy outer-layer of one of the greatest scandals in western political history.

There’s an old political saying that its not the offence that gets you, but the cover-up. If there’s any justice, the Prime Minister will face a reckoning over both.