Starmer has sacked Mandelson, but he already knew – and his record regarding abuse and rape is appalling

Breaking: Labour suspends Glanville for partying with paedo – so what about Mandelson?

Keir Starmer has sacked Peter Mandelson as US ambassador over Mandelson’s closeness to serial child-rapist and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – only a day after saying, when the latest revelations of their closeness were already public – that he had confidence in him:

There are no excuses for Starmer over Mandelson

Starmer has no excuse: Mandelson’s closeness to Epstein had been in the public domain for years when he appointed Mandelson – first as a senior adviser in his ‘core’ Labour team – a position from which he has not been sacked yet, at least publicly – then as US ambassador. The sacking now is pure optics and, as yesterday’s PMQs ‘confidence’ response makes clear, one to which Starmer has been dragged unwilling.

But the Mandelson situation is anything but Keir Starmer’s first incidence of appointing people associated with rape and sexual harassment scandals, from his time as Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) through to what passes for his leadership of the Labour party.

As DPP – an awful one, according to staff who worked under him – Starmer relentlessly pursued Wikileaks founder Julian Assange over what turned out to be spurious allegations ultimately dropped by Swedish prosecutors. The CPS then destroyed the records of Starmer’s involvement, but he flew to the US to discuss Assange’s extradition with US officials.

But he notoriously failed to prosecute serial rapist Jimmy Savile – those around him have issued ‘non-denial denials’ that Starmer was personally involved in the decision not to prosecute, but it stretches belief to think that a serial rape case against Britain’s then-most famous entertainer would not have crossed the boss’s desk and, as boss, the buck ultimately stopped with him anyway.

Starmer was also DPP when, according to departing Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby last year, Welby informed Starmer’s CPS about the child abuse committed by paedophile church barrister John Smyth. Welby said that he

believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow.

It never did. Smyth was never prosecuted and, just as with Savile, the scandal only broke after his death.

An appalling record

Starmer welcomed London MP Neil Coyle back under the Labour whip despite Coyle being found by Parliament to have sexually harassed a staffer, as well as racially abusing a Chinese-British man – and when-Chester MP Chris Matheson was under investigation by Parliament for sexual harassment, neither Starmer nor the party machine suspended him pending the outcome of the investigation, as would be usual practice to protect the women around him.

Matheson ultimately resigned when found guilty by the parliamentary panel of ‘threatening’ sexual misconduct. Starmer also protected at least two further alleged sex pests on his front bench, despite ongoing investigations.

While Starmer’s machine was deselecting or blocking potential left-wing parliamentary candidates on any pretext it could find, his cronies on Labour’s National Executive ignored the advice of its barrister that it must thoroughly investigate allegations of ‘serious’ sexual assault brought against then-Redbridge council leader and slum landlord Jas Athwal, a right-wing Labour figure close to Starmer’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Instead, the NEC dropped the case and reinstated Athwal, who is now a Labour MP after a questionable vote to select him as the party’s candidate in Ilford South.

In Hackney, Starmer’s party allowed Thomas Dewey – a colleague of close Starmer ally and fellow Israel fanatic Luke Akehurst – to stand as its candidate in Hackney council elections, even though Dewey had already been arrested for possession of images showing the most serious and sadistic category of child rape. Dewey was ultimately convicted, but after the conviction the party blocked elected officers in Hackney from accessing member communication systems and threatened women members with sanction after they insisted they needed to discuss safeguarding issues arising from the conviction.

Rotten to the core

And, perhaps most seriously, Starmer and his then-sidekick as general secretary David Evans covered up Jewish whistleblower Elaina Cohen’s allegations of serial abuse of women by a party staffer.

Ms Cohen repeatedly warned Starmer and Evans that a staffer working for then-Perry Barr MP Khalid Mahmood – and allegedly Mahmood’s lover – was engaged in ‘sadistic’ and ‘criminal’ abuse of vulnerable Muslim women fleeing domestic violence, through the now-defunct domestic violence ‘charity’ that she ran.

Despite the repeated warnings, Starmer and Evans did nothing. Mahmood remained on Starmer’s front bench as long as he chose to be there, while Cohen was sacked from her role as a parliamentary aide. One of the staffer’s victims gave evidence, at Cohen’s successful wrongful dismissal tribunal, of the abuse she and others had suffered – including blackmail and sexual exploitation. Her evidence was not challenged by Mahmood or his lawyers and Mahmood admitted under oath to the tribunal that he had also personally made sure that Starmer was fully aware of Cohen’s allegations.

Keir Starmer may have unwillingly sacked Mandelson now, but there is no realistic doubt that he knew full well about Mandelson’s links to Epstein when he put him into two influential positions. The questions this raises only become even more serious in the context of Starmer’s record.

Featured image via the Canary