It was one of the first occasions that I warmed to Keir Starmer – when in April 2022 he eviscerated Boris Johnson in the House of Commons for his incompetent, self-serving, corrupt response to the Covid pandemic.
It was Starmer at his best. He presented the evidence with the precision of a lawyer, but laced it with emotion. It was a psychological exposition of Johnson as a man and a politician – encapsulating how his privilege and entitlement had caused such a slapdash response to a national crisis.
It also drew a clear contrast between Starmer – often bland, but also principled – and Johnson’s brand of destructive, reprobate charm.
“For all those unfamiliar with this prime minister’s career, this isn’t some fixable glitch in the system – it’s the whole point. It’s what he does. It’s who he is. He knows he’s dishonest and incapable of changing, so he drags everybody else down with him.”
– Keir Starmer, talking about Boris Johnson in April 2022.
This was a major theme of Labour in opposition – dining on a political feast of Conservative corruption scandals.
Whether it was Liz Truss planting an economic landmine under the British economy drafted by dark money “think tanks”, or the Johnson government doling out billions of pounds in Covid contracts to its donors, Labour had plenty of material to exploit – and changing this rotten culture was one of the party’s core promises to the electorate in 2024.
However, up to now, it seems that Starmer has been relying too heavily on the naïve assumption that things will improve simply because “our guys are better than the last guys”.
Westminster’s moral compass went haywire a long time ago, and no party knows how to navigate its way out of the swamp. The political graveyard is full of those who blithely – and fatally – assumed that their troops were cleaner than their opponents.
Such a fate has befallen Starmer in the case of Peter Mandelson, with the prime minister somehow believing that he could preserve his government’s ethical integrity while handing a senior diplomatic position to a man nicknamed the “Prince of Darkness”.
On entering Downing Street, the prime minister should have rapidly introduced new transparency, integrity and ethics rules – belatedly ending the “good chaps” era in which politicians are trusted to behave with honour, even though we have centuries of proof that they’re certified heathens.
Despite the grand promises made by Labour during Johnson’s period of raucous profligacy, the impetus for structural reform – a few examples aside – has fizzled over the past 18 months.
Why? Because Starmer’s administration is afraid of taking on the corporate interests and lobbyists who profit from Westminster’s cronyism and sleaze.
The current system is maintained not just by starry-eyed politicians who think their party is morally incorruptible, but also by the donors and influence-peddlers who avail themselves of hazy rules and non-existent punishments.
Starmer’s Labour cannot call out this world, because it was borne from it.
Mandelson represents this dynamic in human form. Prior to his appointment as U.S. ambassador, he was a corporate lobbyist. He co-founded Global Counsel, which last year lobbied the government on behalf of the likes of Vodafone, BMW, and – notoriously – the U.S. tech giant Palantir.
Tim Allan, who resigned as Starmer’s head of communications last weekend, had a similar background, having been the founder and managing director of the lobbying firm Portland, whose clients currently include BP, Google, and Southern Water.
This CV is commonplace in Starmer’s government. He has drawn heavily from the architects of New Labour – partly because they have experience of running the country and partly because Labour’s Blairite faction has been crap at cultivating new talent for the past 20 years.
These political fossils are up to their eyeballs in corporate cash, having left the New Labour government to work in “public affairs”, which is a fancy way of describing a lobbyist. And now, they have gently – or not-so-gently – urged Starmer to keep the revolving door swinging between the government and big business.
There’s no better example than Palantir – the U.S. spy-tech firm co-founded and chaired by the deranged Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel.
As I’ve mentioned, Global Counsel represents Palantir and lobbied the UK government throughout last year on its behalf. And Starmer has been all too happy to accommodate this corporate influence.
Last February, Starmer visited the firm’s Washington office alongside Mandelson, meeting Palantir’s chief executive Alex Karp and its UK chief Louis Mosley (grandson of the fascist Oswald Mosley).
Even more strangely, Mosley was “in the room” when initial trade talks took place between Trump and Starmer later that day.
Palantir has a pretty sordid record. Its former staff have accused the company of breaching its own ethical standards by helping the Trump administration track immigrants for deportation.
The company has also defended its work with Trump’s ICE deportations unit, which has killed innocent bystanders and protestors in recent months.
What’s more, Palantir allegedly provides “AI-based predictive policing systems” used in Gaza and the West Bank.
Despite all that, Starmer’s government has agreed to spend up to £750 million on Palantir’s defence technology over the next five years – entrenching the company’s involvement in the British state.
The Mandelson scandal is multi-dimensional, and the Palantir angle still has plenty of mileage.
The cynical argument is that Starmer never had any interest in sleaze, aside perhaps from perpetrating it, and simply used the Conservative corruption scandals to book his ticket to Downing Street.
Of course that’s partly true, in the sense that all politicians have to respond forcefully to the issues of the day in order to win votes – and Johnson’s cronyism was a strong stink that couldn’t be ignored. I also think that Starmer is undeniably a political weathervane seemingly unmoored from any particular ideology or school of thought.
That said, I’m more sympathetic towards Starmer than some commentators. I think his lack of vertebrae is due to an absence of intellectual curiosity rather than an active attempt to deceive people.
Insofar as he has a political philosophy, it’s one of compromise. He’s willing to do deals with the devil. He thinks in politics you often have to sacrifice your moral convictions for the greater good.
Mandelson’s appointment epitomised this philosophy. As Lewis Goodall and others have noted, the Prince of Darkness wasn’t appointed in spite of his grubby history, but precisely because of it.
Starmer sent a man to Washington who could stoop to Trump’s level – hoping somewhat desperately that the president would see a kindred spirit in Mandelson and would exempt the UK from his trade war.
This speaks to Starmer’s willingness to compromise, and to his belief that the ends justify the means. He will kowtow to Trump, fly to China, make deals with Gulf autocrats, all in the name of adding a morsel to UK GDP.
But morality is about the means, not just the ends. And in times of intense moral conflict – when the bad guys are trying to trash democracy and revive ethno-nationalism – compromise lands you in bed with some pretty awful people. The Mandelson scandal is the end result.
Of course there is still hope for Starmer – not least because he has (almost) survived the week.
The departure of Morgan McSweeney, the long-awaited arrival of the Elections Bill, the government’s review of foreign financial interference, and the widely-expected leftward turn of his administration may finally lead Starmer to follow through on his promise to clean up Westminster.
Or perhaps now I’m being the naïve one.
I agree with much of this but I think you’ve been somewhat soft on Starmer . His behaviour has been treacherous to the public will and undemocratic since he rather mysteriously landed on the political scene. His betrayal of Corbyn, his mandate full of lies, his cleansing of left wing party membership was before much of today’s sleaze, as was his inaugural speech pledging to serve a feign country’s interests before all else. Interesting to speculate about what makes him tick, but nothing absolves a PM who puts personal zeal before honour and country. It it isn’t called out, loudly it will never leave British politics .
I found this highly enlightening. I wholeheartedly agree that Starmer has, in some respects, inherited a toxic culture embedded in Westminster. I still believe him to be, basically, a decent individual, easily swayed by those he assumes are more experienced at negotiating 'Westminster' and the lobbyists that seem to thrive there.
I pray his seeming naivety dissipates and he recognises the fawning yes men and disruptors for who and what they are.