Starmer suspended seven Labour MPs for refusing to vote to keep children poor – but Mandelson still has the whip

In July last year, then-new PM Keir Starmer withdrew the whip from seven Labour MPs, suspending them from the parliamentary Labour Party. Three of them – Zarah Sultana, Apsana Begum and John McDonnell – have never had the whip restored and Sultana left the party altogether and co-founded Your Party, which now has almost a million members before it has even officially incorporated.

The seven’s crime? They refused to obey Starmer’s order to vote in support of his decision to keep hundreds of thousands of poor children and their families poor even though it would have cost the government less to scrap the two-child cap than to keep it, earning him the nickname ‘Kid Starver’ within less than a fortnight of his Reform-gifted general election win. The suspensions happened rapidly after the vote.

Child poverty bad – Mandelson good

This week, Starmer removed Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US – but kept him on the payroll – for his closeness to deceased serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein. Shortly afterwards, one of the still-suspended MPs, Apsana Begum, posted on X to point out that when several of the seven had the whip restored last February, she only found out from social media that she was still suspended – the latest in a string of abuses by Starmer and his cronies:

Ms Begum is absolutely correct: Peter Mandelson not only remains a life peer, but a Labour peer, because – at the time of writing, days after the latest scandal – Mandelson has not had the whip suspended:

Starmer’s record of covering up abuse and protecting abusers is appalling – and he already knew about Mandelson’s closeness to Epstein when he appointed him as ambassador and as a key Downing Street adviser. And he clearly considers being a hugging-buddy of a child-rapist – and maintaining that closeness after Epstein was first convicted – is a less grave disciplinary matter than refusing to vote to keep poor children hungry.

The deep contempt of the public for Starmer is well earned – and he appears determined to keep it.

Featured image via the Canary