This is going to be another one of those columns which begins: Call Me Old Fashioned. Or, perhaps, You Couldn’t Make It Up. Or, even, Makes You Proud To Be British, etc…
In what sane world would the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom arrange a lunchtime press conference to apologise to a stripper, and or, assorted strippers/masseuses/call girls, about something which may or may not have happened on a Caribbean island thousands of miles away owned by a rich American nonce?
This isn’t to detract from the trauma of the under-age girls who were abused by Epstein and his collaborators on an industrial scale.
But none of this was anything to do with Starmer, or the people he is paid to represent, ie: us.
The Prime Minister wasn’t responsible for sending young women to Wasting Away In MAGA Lolita-Ville to administer happy endings to dirty old men.
Yet, dressed in a dark open-necked shirt like a small-time New Jersey Soprano wannabe, Surkier summoned the Boys And Girls In The Bubble to a ludicrous mea culpa over Peter Mandelson‘s association with Jeffrey Epstein.
And they went along with it hook, line and thingy, as usual, pretending this laughable audience with Surkeir was one of the great affairs of state, just as they lazily took dictation from self-styled ‘Dark Lord’ Petey for donkey’s years.
Starmer’s only culpability in all this shambles was appointing Mandelson as Our Man In Washington – the act of a madman, as some of us (me) said at the time, even interrupting my Christmas holidays to do so.
Keir Starmer in cheery conversation with his former ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson
On the Epstein front, I bow as always to the superior instincts of the women in my life, who are firmly of the opinion that you don’t get in a yellow cab to JFK, fly across the Atlantic and then take a limo to Windsor to oblige Prince Andrew, or whatever he calls himself these days, without proper remuneration and a great story to tell the girls back home in the bordello.
Treble porn star martinis and Four Seasons Pizza Expressos all round!
Brings a whole new meaning to Poking In Woking. And that old trollop Ghislaine Maxell has now confirmed the photo of the late Virginia Giuffre with Air Miles Andy was genuine. My only observation was: Where were the parents?
As Ian Dury said of Janet From The Isle of Thanet: her father helped me plan it. And Giuffre’s family have been trying to cash in ever since. Just ask Joyce and Vicky.
Anyway, I digress. This is about Starmer, the PM who makes the utterly hopeless Theresa May look like Good Queen Bess and Maggie Thatcher rolled into one.
On days like this, I try to put myself in the shoes of the loyal Daily Mail reader sitting outside a boozer in Essex with a pint of Best and a wet Labrador munching on a dog biscuit. I was that soldier.
The first thought that comes to mind is: who the hell is Starmer and what planet is he from? Who in their right mind would call a press conference to apologise for something which had nothing to do with him? It’s right up there with Tony Blair saying ‘sorry’ for the Irish potato famine. What was that all about?
Surkeir 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.
‘I want to say this: I am sorry, sorry for what was done toyou, 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.’
Oh, do give it a rest, son, you ridiculous hypocrite.
As the late, great editor and columnist John Junor, formerly of this parish, used to say: Pass the sick bag, Alice.
Mandelson pictured in the ‘Epstein Files’ in his underwear next to a woman whose face has been obscured
Surkeir then compounded his duplicitous stupidity by rubbishing MI5, MI6 and the Old Bill, claiming he’d not been told by any of them that Mandelson was a wrong-un.
Hang on a minute. As I may have mentioned, even little old me worked out 40-odd years ago that Mandelson was a four-letter fellow. Is the PM seriously trying to allege that the Funny People and Special Branch withheld what they knew about Mandelson from him?
Sorry, trust me, but top coppers were well aware of Petey’s, er, shortcomings when he was in government first time around. So were the Funnies. And Blair and others like liar-in-chief Alastair Campbell who indulged him.
One person who would certainly have been in the loop for years was the country’s most senior prosecutor, the DPP – er, Keir Starmer, as he never stops reminding us.
How can he plausibly claim with a straight face that when it came to Mandelson he, like the gormless Spanish waiter Manuel in Fawlty Towers, knew nussing?
Yet he still thought thistwo-bob crook and his Elizabeth Taylor 747 excess baggage was a fit and proper person to send as British Ambassador to the Court of the Tangerine King.
Nope, none of this nonsense washes with me. For all the phoney Guildford Gooner guff and ‘principled’ yuman rites lawyer pretence, Surkeir is a very bad man.
Even those ‘his and his’Ron-and-Reg specs he shared with Mandelson were probably bought by another noble benefactor ‘Lord’ Waheed Ali. It made them look like Scotland’s house band The Proclaimers. I’d certainly walk 500 miles to get away from them. All the way to America, as it happens.
Look, Starmer’s a Dead Man Walking, an absolute disgrace. Even Angry Ginge Rayner is tipping the bucket, and backing herself to take over (along with some of the shameless Boys And Girls In The Bubble). Give me strength.
As I may also have mentioned before, the last time I saw Ginge she was draped over one Peter Aloysius Mandelson, at lunch in the Lords’ dining room, like a lovesick schoolgirl – before becoming sunk (but not for long) in a Mandelson-style dodgy house tax scam. Now there’s a coincidence.
Former PM Tony Blair and Mandelson meet school pupils in Hartlepool back in 2001
We don’t need a Labour leadership debacle. The other self-proclaimed front-runner is the ‘moderate’ Wes (my grandad was a gangster who ran with the Krays) Streeting, who once said he wanted to push our own dear Jan Moir under a train over something she wrote. Nice man.
What we need is a General Election, as a matter of urgency. We’re not going to get one, though, so don’t get your hopes up. This rabble will cling on to the bitter end, just like Gordon in 2010, even though just one in five of those eligible to vote put them into office. By then the tumbleweed will have taken over everywhere, from Oxford Street to Aberdeen, and the sinking ship will be rat-free, apart from the 25 million living on benefits with Mental Elf ishoos.
Our alleged democracy is a sham, never better demonstrated than by Surkeir’s disgusting, self-serving spectacle yesterday. Don’t bet against them cancelling the next General Election, too, just like they’ve cancelled the council elections. These people are Communists is everything but name.
Kemi Badenoch was bang on in her response, but her major misstep was to start rubbishing Reform before turning her fire on Labour.
Much as I’d like to see my old mate Farage sweep the board, and share his loathing for the Tories (apart from the decent Iain Duncan Smiths of this world) there’s going to have to be a deal before 2029.
I absolutely get why Nige is reluctant, after the 2019 Boris stitch-up. But at some stage realpolitik is going to have to kick in.
Otherwise, the game’s up for good. Call me old-fashioned, etc. And, as another old mate of mine would conclude, on that bombshell…