PETER Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party and stepped down from the House of Lords following his exposure in the web of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Documents released by the US Department of Justice reveal payments allegedly totalling $75,000 (£55,000) from Epstein to Mandelson and his partner in 2003 and 2004. A photograph places Mandelson in Epstein’s Paris flat, in his underwear, a detail his spokesmen dismiss with feigned ignorance.
Mandelson denies recollection of the funds, questions their authenticity, and offers apologies to victims whose suffering he claims to regret. Yet as a serving minister, he stayed in the American financier’s properties while Epstein was serving jail time for child sex offences, maintaining contact with Epstein post-conviction, advising on early release and affirming loyalty with words such as ‘your friends stay with you and love you’. This is not association by accident: it is complicity by choice. That was not all. Mandelson repeatedly leaked confidential documents to Epstein while serving in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet, including plans for a multibillion-pound EU bailout, Mr Brown’s resignation and the potential sale of government land and property. A criminal investigation has been launched.
Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister and leader of the party Mandelson once shaped, sacked him as Ambassador to the United States in September when earlier links surfaced. Now, with fresh revelations, Starmer has responded to calls for Mandelson to forfeit his peerage and to testify before the US Congress. Disciplinary proceedings are under way; Mandelson’s resignation pre-empted expulsion. Opposition leaders – Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey, Stephen Flynn – demand inquiries and full accountability.
The scandal unfolds not in isolation but as a symptom of deeper decay. Scripture speaks plainly to such matters. ‘Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm,’ warns Proverbs 13:20. Mandelson walked not with fools but with a monster, one whose exploitation of the vulnerable echoes the ancient sins of power unchecked. Tradition, from the Church Fathers to the moral philosophers of the Enlightenment, demands that public men embody virtue, or at least its semblance, lest the polity crumble. Duty binds the statesman to the common good. Order requires that rot be excised before it poisons the whole.
In Britain’s storied governance, from the Magna Carta’s curb on arbitrary rule to the Glorious Revolution’s insistence on accountable monarchy, the principle endures: those who wield authority must be beyond reproach.
Epstein’s network – financiers, royals, politicians – represents the inversion of this order, a cabal where wealth and influence shield depravity. Mandelson, architect of New Labour, positioned himself at its fringes, accepting largesse while denying knowledge. This is not mere indiscretion; it is a betrayal of the trust invested in peers and ambassadors. The victims, women and girls silenced for decades, cry out for justice. As Virginia Giuffre reminds us: ‘If we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.’ Reality, unyielding and impartial, exposes the fragility of reputations built on sand.
Starmer’s involvement compounds the offence. He appointed Mandelson ambassador, knowing – or failing to know – the extent of these ties. Vetting processes, ostensibly rigorous, faltered. The Prime Minister’s office now asserts ignorance of full details at the time of appointment, yet swift action followed September’s disclosures. This timeline invites scrutiny: what did Starmer know, and when? Moral seriousness requires not retrospective outrage but pre-emptive vigilance. The tradition of British politics, drawing from Christian ethics, insists on leaders who discern good from evil, not those who plead procedural blindness.
Mandelson’s errors are manifold. He apologises to victims while questioning the veracity of documents that implicate him. He regrets the ‘furore’ surrounding Epstein, as if the scandal were a mere public relations storm rather than a moral abyss. His denial of payments lacks corroboration; his ignorance of the photograph strains credulity. This is contradiction incarnate: a man who built a career on strategic acumen now claims obliviousness to transactions and settings that scream complicity. Hypocrisy abounds – he who advised Epstein on freedom after conviction for procuring a child for prostitution now positions himself as a peripheral figure, untouched by the core evil.
Yet the gaze must turn to Starmer, whose leadership this scandal indicts with surgical precision. He heeded calls for Mandelson to lose his peerage, acknowledging the House of Lords’ antiquated mechanisms for discipline. He urges testimony in Congress, framing it as victim-centred justice, yet his initial appointment of Mandelson reveals a cavalier disregard for those same victims. Incoherence reigns: a Prime Minister who campaigned on integrity now defends a decision born of apparent negligence. Education Minister Olivia Bailey insists that Starmer acted without full information, but this is no exoneration – it is an admission of an absolute failure in due diligence.
Broader hypocrisy infects the political class. Badenoch demands investigations into corruption, yet her party harbours its own skeletons. Davey calls for legislation to strip titles, invoking shame as if the Liberal Democrats were paragons. Flynn seeks ethics probes, but the SNP’s internal woes mock such posturing. This is not partisan rot; it is systemic. Mandelson’s ties to Epstein highlight a network where power brokers mingle with predators, shielded by mutual interests. Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, owes his rise to Mandelson’s mentorship – a connection that now taints the heart of government.
Starmer’s premiership, barely nascent, now bears the scar of this scandal. His judgement stands condemned: appointing a man with known Epstein associations to represent Britain abroad was not oversight but sheer hubris. The revelations force a moral consistency test he fails – how can a leader who allegedly prioritises victims appoint one who fraternised with their abuser? Public confidence erodes; polls, though not yet fully reflective, will register the damage. Opposition leaders exploit this with precision: Badenoch labels it ‘extreme levels of bad judgment’, Stride demands independent inquiries. Starmer’s authority diminishes, his cabinet shadowed by questions of what else lurks in the vetting files.
The implications cascade. Labour’s narrative of renewal crumbles, New Labour’s ghosts haunt the present. Starmer’s inner circle, tied to Mandelson’s legacy, faces purge or paralysis. McSweeney’s position becomes untenable, a conduit for influence now poisoned. Internationally, Britain’s ambassadorial credibility suffers – how does one negotiate with Washington while one’s envoy advised a notorious convict? Domestically, the scandal fuels cynicism, accelerating the decline in voter turnout and faith in institutions.
Worse, it reveals Starmer’s moral vacuity. He acts decisively only when cornered, his calls for testimony and reform reactive rather than principled. This is not leadership; it is damage control. Minister for victims Alex Davies-Jones rightly asserts no one is above scrutiny yet Starmer’s delay in full condemnation implies otherwise. The Prime Minister’s regime, built on promises of probity, now exemplifies the very complacency it decried in opposition. Devastation lies not in electoral loss alone but in the forfeiture of ethical capital. Starmer emerges diminished, a man who saw wrong and did little until the light forced his hand.
Britain requires not reform but revolution in its ruling cadre. The political class — Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Nationalist — is irredeemably tainted. Remove them all. This is no hyperbolic decree; it is the logical end of moral reasoning. Mandelson’s fall is emblematic: a figure traversing parties, influencing from Blair to Starmer, embodying the incestuous elite that prioritises networks over virtue.
Frame this in duty: the polity demands servants uncompromised by past alliances. Scripture enjoins, ‘Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you’ (Proverbs 4:24). Tradition supports wholesale renewal. Expose the error: the class clings to power through inertia, hypocrisy in their mutual protections.
The verdict is unavoidable: institute term limits, independent vetting by non-partisan bodies, and mandatory disclosure of all associations. But these are palliatives. True order requires excision — bar officeholders from future roles, elevate outsiders unscarred by Westminster’s machinations. Draw from the professions, the academies, the churches, those whose lives reflect consistent moral fibre.
This new class must embody reality’s demands: accountability without exception, transparency as norm. No positions for life; no ambassadorships for cronies. The victims of Epstein, and myriad others wronged by power’s abuse, deserve no less. Contrast the present decay with this vision: a politics of duty over deal-making, order over opportunism.
The Mandelson affair seals the indictment. Starmer’s implications are devastating, his leadership exposed as inadequate to the moral exigencies of the hour. Britain cannot endure this class any longer. A new order must rise, or the old will drag the nation into abyss. Let the tradition prevail. The rot ends here.
A version of this article appeared on Bishop Dewar’s substack on February 3, 2026, and is republished by kind permission.
