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Labour is blaming BBC for failing to question Mandelson on Epstein

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Updated: 15 September 2025 15:02
Labour is blaming BBC for failing to question Mandelson on Epstein

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Much like last week, Keir Starmer has found himself in hot water over these past seven days. This was because the media finally began asking why Starmer hired Peter Mandelson as our ambassador to the US despite his close ties to the notorious paedophile Jeffry Epstein. Although the media knew about these links, achingly few of them drew attention to this fact, because…

…err…

… we’re honestly not sure.

Now, Labour is putting it to the BBC that they’re also at fault for Starmer’s awful decisions:

Labour making a mess of things over Mandelson

Speaking to the BBC‘s Laura Kuenssberg, business secretary Peter Kyle said this on the unfolding Mandelson scandal:

All I can do is reveal what the facts are – that the emails revealed a material difference between what Number 10… believed at the time of the appointment, and that the vet – the vetting process, which is independent, and run by the Cabinet Office – was able to conclude based on the evidence; there’s a material difference between the two.

While it’s certainly the case that things look worse since the emails came out, there was nothing in them that was worse than what we all already knew – that Mandelson continued his association with the paedophile Jeffry Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender, as we reported in 2003. It wasn’t just us, either – it was common knowledge outside the sheets of the mainstream press:

It’s also been reported that Starmer continued to defend Mandelson this week even after he had the emails which supposedly represented the final straw.

So is the issue that Starmer knows more than he did?

Or is is that the public know more, because the famously slow British media have finally kicked into gear?

Kyle continued:

There was a lot of information public at the time, and Peter Mandelson had appeared on NewsNight just this year as ambassador, and he was not questioned about Epstein once

What point does Kyle think he’s making here?

I could understand making this point in private – a sort of ‘well it looks bad on us, but really it looks bad on you too, so maybe let’s not get into it?‘. Bringing it up on national television, though?

I wonder if this is why politicians and journalists are among the least trusted professions in the UK?

A singular talent

Explaining why Starmer hired Mandelson despite everything we all knew, Kyle explained:

Britain needed somebody with outstanding, singular talents.

It’s true Mandelson had a talent for resigning in disgrace, as he’d already done that twice at the point when Starmer appointed him. Mandelson also has a talent for being involved in the same Epstein scandals as president Donald Trump, which does make him somewhat qualified to serve as our current US ambassador, albeit for worst reasons imaginable.

Peter Kyle MP on #BBCLauraK describing Peter Mandelson as “somebody with outstanding singular talents”

Kyle continued, further explaining why they had to go with Mandelson:

Experience which was very hard to come by.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell the world ‘we considered everyone who’ll talk to us, and the best we could do was Peter Mandelson’.

Kyle continued again:

A lot was known about Epstein’s relationship with Epstein, he had apologised for it, and these two things were weighed up.

This is breaking news; he apologised for it?

He did?

When did he do that, and to whom?

In his recent interview, Mandelson expressed sympathy for Epstein’s victims, and he said he wished he hadn’t continued the friendship for so long, but he never apologised. We also can’t see any historic apologies either, although we will of course update this article if you can find one we couldn’t.

Back to Kyle:

There was an independent appointments inquiry that was done by the Cabinet Office. There was a political process run by Number 10, and on balance – based on what was known publicly; based on what we knew, and what you knew as journalists, the decision was taken to appoint him.

So he’s back to ‘we thought you were going to keep quiet on the whole international paedophile scandal thing, so we just went for it‘.

You’re not going to believe it, but he ends this train of thought by defending Mandelson and the decision to hire him:

And I have to say, that in that period, we have navigated the most difficult period In US-UK relationships since the second World War, and we have delivered for people in Britain.

I’m not sure that Kyle is cut out for being a politician, because he’s arguing that Donald Trump and his tariffs are the worst thing to happen since WWII. Maybe Mandelson really was the best they could do?

We should also point out Starmer has chiefly navigated Trump’s tariff chaos by licking the president’s boots and bending over backwards for whatever nonsense he comes out with each week.

The BB-nothing-to-C-here

To be fair to Kyle, he wasn’t wrong to suggest the media are terrible, as Staniforth noted in 2024:

People pointed out other issues with the interview too:

So all in all, it’s another disastrous interview for Labour.

We’re not sure where Starmer’s Phase Two government goes from here, but we’ll keep you updated as the shit hits the fan.

Featured image via BBC / World Economic Forum – Flickr





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Willem Moore

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