The Prime Minister’s judgement has been called into question after the man he appointed as US ambassador – Peter Mandelson – was alleged to have sent market sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein
Keir Starmer has been mocked by a Putin mouthpiece as his troubles relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson continue to mount. The Prime Minister apologised to the nation for “believing Mandelson’s lies” around his ties to billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein during the vetting process for the US ambassador job.
A dump of three million Epstein files by the US Department of Justice revealed allegations that Mandelson communicated market sensitive information to the paedophile around the 2008 financial crash. At the time, Mandelson was business secretary in Gordon Brown’s cabinet.
The fiasco has led many – including Labour MPs – to call into question the Prime Minister’s judgement and now even Putin’s mouthpieces are saying Starmer is “finished”. Russian businessman Kirill Dimitriev took to X, formerly Twitter, to share a picture of Starmer in a bikini.
He wrote: “Yes, Starmer is finished. To make it easier for the UK establishment and media to dispose of him, they may end up saying: Starmer was a Soviet spy — hiding behind anti-Russian rhetoric while eroding and destroying the UK from within.”
In a speech delivered today (February 5) at an event in East Sussex, Starmer said: “The victims of Epstein have lived with trauma that most of us can barely comprehend, and they’ve had to relive it again and again.”
He said they had seen accountability “delayed and too often denied”. The PM added: “I want to say this. I am sorry, sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him and sorry that even now you’re forced to watch this story unfold in public once again.
“But I also want to say this: in this country, we will not look away, we will not shrug our shoulders, and we will not allow the powerful to treat justice as optional. We will pursue the truth. We will uphold the integrity of public life, and we will do everything within our power and in the interests of justice to ensure accountability is delivered.
“That is what the public expects. That is what the victims deserve, and it is what I will do.”
The PM said Lord Mandelson was asked directly about the nature of his relationship with Epstein, and it is “clear that the answers he gave were lies”.
He said: “In recent days, serious allegations and serious evidence has emerged concerning Mandelson’s conduct, including his relationship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender. It had been publicly known for some time that Mandelson knew Epstein, but none of us knew the depth and the darkness of that relationship.”
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