The ‘Pragmatism’ of Power: When ‘Decent Men’ Make Indecent Choices
The political obituaries for Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership are being drafted with a bitter ink. Once marketed to the British public as a “decent man” who “actually does care,” the Prime Minister now blinks in the harsh light of a scandal he thought would remain “manageable” . His government, not yet two years old, is in freefall. His chief of staff has resigned in disgrace, his communications chief has followed him out the door, and the leader of Scottish Labour has openly called for him to quit to end the “distraction” . The cause? A breathtaking act of political convenience that revealed a contempt for principle and victims alike: the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States.
Mandelson wasn’t just any politician. He was a man whose long and documented friendship with convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein continued after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor . This was not a secret. Labour peer Lord Maurice Glasman personally warned Downing Street over a year ago, recounting how people in Washington D.C. showed him photos on their phones of “Peter Mandelson blowing out the birthday candles with Jeffrey Epstein and in his bathrobe” . The memo was ignored. Starmer and his team decided Mandelson’s value as a political “fixer,” a “favour merchant” skilled in the “dark arts,” outweighed the minor inconvenience of his association with the world’s most infamous child sex offender .
The resignation of chief of staff Morgan McSweeney was a masterpiece of understatement: “The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself” . This is the political equivalent of a firefighter arriving to declare the ashes cold. The damage is done. The Metropolitan Police are now investigating allegations that Mandelson, while serving as Business Secretary during the financial crisis, sent market-sensitive information to Epstein . The scandal has laid bare what critics call a “continuum of disdain” that runs from Epstein’s abuse to a political establishment that trades in power and protection .
A Pattern of Weakness: From Epstein’s Circle to the Israeli Lobby
Starmer’s failure of judgment with Mandelson is not an isolated incident but part of a pattern—a chronic devotion to “grown-ups” admired for their ruthlessness, and a willingness to outsource principle for perceived political utility . This pattern is perhaps clearest in his government’s abrupt, chaotic foreign policy.
· Caving on Israel: In 2024, the Starmer government made the extraordinary decision to unilaterally suspend dozens of arms export licenses to Israel. As detailed by Conservative critics, this decision was framed not as a clear-eyed legal assessment but as a political surrender. The government’s own Foreign Office advice reportedly stated it had not been possible to reach a “determinative judgement” on Israel’s conduct and noted Hamas’s tactic of embedding within civilian populations . The move was interpreted as “cav[ing] to the mob,” undermining a critical defence and intelligence partnership and sending a signal of weakness to both allies and adversaries .
· The ‘Decency’ Deficit: These two episodes—the Mandelson appointment and the Israel arms reversal—are connected by a common thread: the evaporation of Starmer’s core brand attribute, “decency.” In the first, decency was sacrificed for political networking. In the second, strategic consistency was sacrificed for domestic political pressure. The result is a prime minister who appears, in the words of opposition leader Kemi Badenoch, “like a plastic bag blowing in the wind” .
The Reckoning: Resignations and a Legacy in Tatters
The political crisis is now immediate and visceral. The dominoes are falling:
· Morgan McSweeney, Chief of Staff, resigned taking “full responsibility” for the Mandelson advice .
· Tim Allan, Communications Chief, resigned a day later “to allow a new No 10 team to be built” .
· Anas Sarwar, Leader of Scottish Labour, has broken ranks, stating “the distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change” .
Starmer insists he is “getting on with the task” and has the “full support” of senior deputies like Angela Rayner and David Lammy . But such statements are the mandatory currency of a collapsing regime. The parliamentary Labour Party is reportedly furious . The public, suddenly “too close and informed for comfort,” sees a government mired in a “putrid horror” of its own making .
The bitter irony is that Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, once issued guidance to protect vulnerable rape victims who retracted allegations under pressure . He positioned himself as a man of legal principle and moral clarity. Today, his premiership is defined by the very opposite: a failure to protect the principle of accountability, yielding to pressure, and a glaring lack of moral clarity when it mattered most.
His legacy is being written not in a manifesto, but in the unsealed Epstein files and the rushed reversal of foreign policy. It is a legacy of a “decency” that was always more marketing than substance, revealing a leader who, when tested, consistently chose the path of least resistance over the path of principle. The resignation he once dodged now seems less a question of “if” and more a matter of “when.”