Brown: Starmer a man of integrity but faces serious task amid leadership speculation
As speculation over Starmer’s future as prime minister continues, Brown has come to his defence, saying he is “a man of integrity”.
But he acknowledged that Starmer is facing a “serious” battle to keep his job.
“I mean, there’s always speculation. It happened to me, it happened to Tony Blair. It happens to everybody about how their future should be gauged,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“But this is serious, and the task is very clear. The task is we’ve got to clean up the system, a total clean-up of the system, an end to the corruption and unethical behaviour. And if we don’t do it, we’ll pay a heavy price.”
When asked if Starmer was the right man to take the country forward, he said: “I can look in his eyes and I can see that he is a man of integrity. He wants to do the right things.
“Perhaps he’s been too slow to do the right things, but he must do the right things now, and let’s judge what he does, on what happens in the next few months when he tries to, and I believe (he) will try, to clean up the system.”
Key events
Mandelson investigation will ‘take some time’, Met police say as they conclude property searches
The Metropolitan police has provided an update on the searches of two properties linked to Mandelson.
In a statement this morning, the deputy assistant commissioner Hayley Sewart said the investigation into a 72-year-old man over alleged misconduct in public office would “take some time” after officers finished searching the properties in London and Wiltshire.
“He has not been arrested and enquiries are ongoing,” the statement read.
“This will be a complex investigation requiring a significant amount of further evidence gathering and analysis. It will take some time to do this work comprehensively and we will not be providing a running commentary.”
Scotland Yard launched its investigation after allegations that Mandelson sent market-sensitive information to Esptein while he was business secretary during the financial crisis in 2008.
Here are some images from the newswires last night showing police searching two properties connected to Mandelson:
Henry Dyer
A Labour minister commissioned and reviewed a report in 2023 on journalists investigating the thinktank that would help propel Keir Starmer to power, the Guardian has learned.
The research was paid for and subsequently reviewed by Josh Simons, now a minister in the Cabinet Office, when he was director of Labour Together, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian.
Simons is close to the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who had previously run Labour Together and whose own role in the operation to gather material on journalists is under scrutiny.
In an agreement addressed to Simons, drawn up by the PR firm APCO Worldwide, the firm agreed to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of a November 2023 Sunday Times report about the thinktank, in addition to other journalistic investigations into the group.
The agreement noted APCO would “establish who and what are behind the coordinated attacks on Labour Together”.
Read the full report here:
Starmer’s position ‘irredeemable’, says Kim Johnson
Several Labour MPs believe it is a matter of when, not if, Starmer will step down as prime minister, with one backbencher saying his position is “irredeemable”.
“I think he needs to seriously consider his position,” Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, told Times Radio.
“He’s on the ropes and we have to think about the benefit of the country and the party. We have to consider the likelihood of what could happen, the stability of the country could be at stake.”
Rayner warned Starmer not to appoint Mandelson – report
Angela Rayner, Starmer’s former deputy, reportedly told the prime minister not to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador.
Rayner, who left government last year over the stamp duty row, told friends that she privately warned Starmer appointing Mandelson would be a mistake because of his links to Epstein, according to The Times.
While Rayner is widely viewed as a potential successor to Starmer, she is said to not want to be the one who launches a challenge against the prime minister, The Times reported.
Alleged leak to Epstein may have cause huge commercial damage, says Brown
Brown said the market-sensitive government information that Mandelson allegedly leaked to Epstein could have caused “huge commercial damage”.
The former prime minister, who appointed Mandelson as business secretary in his government in 2008, said he felt “shocked, sad, angry betrayed, let down”.
“This was financially secret information, it meant Britain was at risk because of that, the currency was at risk, some of the trading that would happen would be speculative as a result of that and there’s no doubt that huge commercial damage could have been done and perhaps was done,” Brown told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
It comes as the Liberal Democrats have urged the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the UK’s financial regulator, to immediately investigate Mandelson, saying the apparent leaks may have led to insider trading.
Daisy Cooper, the MP for St Albans and the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, wrote to the FCA saying the sharing of confidential information with a private financier “could easily have provided an unfair and lucrative advantage in the financial markets, either by Epstein himself or by his associates”.
Our banking correspondent Kalyeena Makortoff has more on this story below:
Police executed search warrants at two properties connected to Mandelson as part of an investigation into “misconduct in public office offences”. Officers searched a house near Regent’s Park in central London and a property in Wiltshire on Friday. Mandelson has been living in a rented property in Wiltshire since being sacked as ambassador to the US over his links to the late convicted child sex offender.
You can read our full report on this story here:
Brown: Starmer a man of integrity but faces serious task amid leadership speculation
As speculation over Starmer’s future as prime minister continues, Brown has come to his defence, saying he is “a man of integrity”.
But he acknowledged that Starmer is facing a “serious” battle to keep his job.
“I mean, there’s always speculation. It happened to me, it happened to Tony Blair. It happens to everybody about how their future should be gauged,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“But this is serious, and the task is very clear. The task is we’ve got to clean up the system, a total clean-up of the system, an end to the corruption and unethical behaviour. And if we don’t do it, we’ll pay a heavy price.”
When asked if Starmer was the right man to take the country forward, he said: “I can look in his eyes and I can see that he is a man of integrity. He wants to do the right things.
“Perhaps he’s been too slow to do the right things, but he must do the right things now, and let’s judge what he does, on what happens in the next few months when he tries to, and I believe (he) will try, to clean up the system.”
There is a systemic failure to do proper vetting in government, says Gordon Brown
Former prime minister Gordon Brown said there was a “systemic failure’ in the way senior appointments are carried out in government.
While he believed Starmer was “misled and he was betrayed” by Mandelson when appointing him as US ambassador, he said that it was “not sufficient explanation for what happened”.
“There is a systemic failure to do proper vetting, to go through the proper procedures and to actually have, in my view, what should be public hearings for anybody who is going to be in a senior position representing the British government,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Writing in the Guardian, Brown said he “greatly regrets” making Mandelson a peer and bringing him back into government in 2008 as business secretary. He said he was told at the time that Mandelson’s record as EU trade commissioner had been “unblemished” and he did not know about any Epstein links.
“No one could say I promoted him out of favouritism,” he wrote. “I did so in spite of him being anything but a friend to me, because I thought that his unquestioned knowledge of Europe and beyond could help us as we dealt with the global financial crisis.
“I now know that I was wrong.”
You can read Brown’s opinion piece in full here:
PM says ‘significant volume of material’ needs reviewing before Mandelson documents can be released
Good morning and welcome to our UK politics blog.
Prime minister Keir Starmer has said a “very significant volume of material” related to his appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US will need to be reviewed before any documents can be released.
Starmer believes the documents will prove Mandelson lied about the extent of his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during the vetting process before he was given the top diplomatic job in Washington last year.
The prime minister had previously said he wanted to release the documents sooner and raise it at PMQs but was advised by police that doing so could risk prejudicing a future investigation or legal process.
Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), a cross-party group of MPs and peers with access to highly sensitive information, will play a role in sifting through the emails, messages and documents, which could number in the tens of thousands, before they are released into the public domain.
Starmer wrote a letter to Lord Beamish, the chairman of the ISC, saying: “It is important that documents are made available to parliament as soon as possible, noting that there is likely to be a very significant volume of material that will need to be reviewed to establish whether it is in scope.”
It has done little to quell the anger among Labour MPs over his handling of the scandal, with some publicly suggesting the prime minister should consider his position, while also calling for him to sack his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who was instrumental in the decision to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador.
Meanwhile, Scotland Yard said enquiries were ongoing after police searched two properties connected to Mandelson as part of an investigation into claims that he passed market-sensitive information to Epstein.
Former prime minister Gordon Brown has said he “greatly regrets” making Mandelson a peer and appointing him to a ministerial role in 2008. Writing in the Guardian, Brown said the news that Mandelson was passing information to Epstein while he was business secretary was “a betrayal of everything we stand for as a country”.
