Sir Sadiq Khan has insisted ‘Starmer must stay’ – adding ‘football is a 90-minute game and you wouldn’t sack a manager after 35 minutes’.
The London Mayor today shared his view on Sir Keir’s handling of the Lord Peter Mandelson fiasco, condemning the disgraced peer as ‘arrogant’.
Only yesterday Conservative Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch had claimed the Prime Minister knew about Mandelson’s relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein but chose to ignore it.
But Sir Sadiq told the Observer: ‘Football is a 90-minute game. You wouldn’t dream of saying in the 35th minute because you’re 2-0 down – we’ll take all the players off and sack the manager.’
The mayor-of-10 years then hit out at Mandelson in the same breath, saying he was the ‘only person who knew’ the contents of the Epstein files.
Sir Sadiq said: ‘The whole Mandelson saga is a case study in “there’s one rule for the elites and the establishment and there’s another rule for the rest of us”.
‘It also shows the arrogance of the man. The only person who knew what was in those files was Peter Mandelson. It beggars belief he still put himself forward to be the ambassador to the US.’
Probed further on whether he thought the appointment raised issues over Mr Starmer’s judgement, Sir Sadiq said his ‘starting point’ was the ‘victims and survivors’.
Sir Sadiq Khan has insisted ‘Starmer must stay’ – adding ‘football is a 90-minute game and you wouldn’t sack a manager after 35 minutes’ (file image)
The Prime Minister insisted in his speech in Hastings that ‘none of us knew the depth of the darkness’ of Lord Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender (file image: Keir Starmer speaking in Hastings)
Sir Keir handpicked Lord Mandelson as US ambassador before being forced to sack him in September over his ties to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019
He added: ‘Everyone’s talking, understandably, about market-sensitive information being leaked for personal gain, but if you’re the victim of paedophilia, if you’re the victim of rape, you will say, “Hold on a second, what about me?”‘
Sir Sadiq also refused to point the finger at the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who had advised Sir Keir to appoint Mandelson to his position.
Labour MPs are already in open revolt after the Labour leader admitted to the Commons on Wednesday he had known about Mandelson’s Epstein links.
Mrs Badenoch yesterday claimed Sir Keir ‘chose not to care’ – despite having evidence of Mandelson’s malpractice in front of him.
‘I believed Starmer knew,’ she told The Telegraph.
‘If the Conservative Research Department knew Mandelson had continued that friendship [with Epstein], everybody knew.
‘But Starmer chose not to care. He promised to be whiter than white, yet gave us self-righteousness and false piety.’
The opposition leader added she had served in government for five years and therefore knew ‘how vetting works’ – saying it was necessary to ‘fight to get people into jobs’.
Mrs Badenoch yesterday claimed Sir Keir ‘chose not to care’ – despite having evidence of Mandelson’s malpractice in front of him (file image)
On Thursday, critics probed Sir Keir’s claim he ‘barely knew’ Epstein as he hit out at Lord Mandelson’s ‘lies’.
The Prime Minister insisted in his speech in Hastings that ‘none of us knew the depth of the darkness’ of Lord Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender.
He said that before being appointed as US ambassador, Lord Mandelson was ‘asked directly’ about the nature of his relationship with Epstein.
‘The information now available makes clear that the answers he gave were lies. He portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew,’ he added.
‘And when that became clear and it was not true, I sacked him. Such deceit is incompatible with public service.’
Sir Keir said he was ‘sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies’ and for having appointed him in February 2025.
But questions were raised about the Prime Minister’s suggestion he had ‘no reason’ other than to take Lord Mandelson’s answers about Epstein at face value before appointing him.
The Prime Minister this week also blamed MI5 for failing to vet Mandelson property.
Recently-released photographs in the Epstein files show the paedophile billionaire with Peter Mandelson on a yacht. The date and location were not provided
Fighting for survival amid a revolt over his handling of the scandal, Sir Keir criticised the ‘vetting carried out independently by the security services’ on the disgraced Labour peer, suggesting the process needed to be looked at.
His comments provoked a furious backlash as critics pointed out Sir Keir had already approved and announced Mandelson as the new ambassador to Washington before he was subject to in-depth national security vetting.
MI5 did not carry out checks on Mandelson – it was the job of the Cabinet Office, with limited input from spies.
A two-page Cabinet Office propriety and ethics report compiled for Sir Keir before he gave Mandelson the US job revealed the peer had stayed at Epstein’s townhouse in 2009 while the financier was in prison.
The report, part of preliminary due diligence on all candidates for the role, amounted to ‘a summary of reputational risks’ from publicly available information.
It would likely have included an internal JP Morgan report from 2019 revealing Epstein ‘appears to maintain a particularly close relationship’ with Mandelson.
There were also reports of Mandelson attending intimate gatherings at his Manhattan house from 2002 onwards.
And photos emerged of the pair celebrating a birthday at Epstein’s Paris apartment in 2007, by which time he had been arrested, charged and bailed over soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Lord Mandelson has not explained why he posed in his briefs in images contained in the Epstein Files
The Metropolitan Police is probing accusations Mandelson sent market-sensitive information to Epstein while he was business secretary during the financial crisis.
Epstein, who courted the world’s elite, was found dead in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for masterminding a global child sex abuse network.
His madam, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is in jail for helping him recruit schoolgirl victims to molest.
A spokesman for Mandelson said: ‘Lord Mandelson regrets, and will regret until to his dying day, that he believed Epstein’s lies about his criminality.
‘Lord Mandelson did not discover the truth about Epstein until after his death in 2019.
‘He is profoundly sorry that powerless and vulnerable women and girls were not given the protection they deserved.’