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Feb 07, 2026

Britain | Bagehot

Headline: Britain’s worst political scandal of this century

Sub-headline: The Mandelson affair threatens Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership

https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/02/04/britains-worst-political-scandal-of-this-century

Editor: The first two paragraphs of this execise, in a bubious approximation, of the intellectual giant Bagehot?

In retrospect, the signs were there. In February 2025 Peter Mandelson was asked by the Financial Times about his relationship with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The soon-to-be British ambassador to America offered a forthright response. “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?”

Exactly a year on, Lord Mandelson has gone, and Sir Keir Starmer’s government is embroiled in Britain’s worst political scandal of this century. The peer lost his job in September, after emails emerged in which he questioned Epstein’s conviction for procuring a minor. On January 30th another tranche of emails revealed an intimate relationship. Lord Mandelson and Epstein giggled about strippers and joked about “a well hung young man”, in between discussing multi-million-dollar jobs post-politics and casually leaking confidential government documents. A political embarrassment has become a criminal investigation. Lord Mandelson’s behaviour raises depressing questions about the past but a more intriguing one about the present. What is the point of Sir Keir staying in office?

Editor: Let me engage in a bit of self-serving prestidigitation! The Reader might even conjecture, that I follow the well worn a pastisch of what an ‘actual Bagehot’ might opine?

…

“Keir’s not driving the train. He thinks he’s driving the train, but we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR,” a driverless train in east London, which has a pretend control panel for the enjoyment of toddlers. Somehow the Starmer train has still crashed.

…

To add insult, former ministers shuffled to the backbenches last year were surprised to learn that Lord Mandelson had offered advice on the reshuffle, in between canapés at the White House. It is one thing to lose your job; it is another to do so at the behest of a man who will go down as a 21st-century John Profumo, a Tory minister whose exit because of sex, lies and spies became the benchmark for government-crushing scandal.

…

Sir Keir’s failings on Lord Mandelson were common across parts of the Labour Party, which could never resist the charms and talents of the former minister, despite his flaws. More gifted politicians than Sir Keir have fallen prey to them.

…

In a rare bout of clear-eyed analysis, Sir Keir saw the damage being done by the Mandelson scandal. He warned his cabinet that “the public don’t really see individuals in this scandal, they see politicians.” For all the prime minister’s failings, he understands the seriousness of the moment, even if he does not himself possess the means to meet it. Sir Keir is correct that the shamelessness personified by Lord Mandelson is a fatal poison for the body politic. But if he truly believed what he said, he too would go.

Editor: The Reader of this essay might even come to the unwelcome conclusion, that David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Kier Starmer represent the utter failure of the whole British Political Class! How telling that Jeremy Corbyn was/is a possible represetative of a politics of reliability, and steadfastness, that even the shade of Bagehot might have found …?

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