It has long been obvious what Starmer is
But our political journalists covered it up for factional reasons
Keir Starmer is a man without integrity, without principle, without loyalty, without honesty. We could add more - charisma, competence - but the point is simpler than that: there is nothing to recommend him, or his premiership.
He is a void. A political non-entity. A frontman - nothing more - for one of the most odious factions in modern British politics. And as events continue to demonstrate, he will throw anyone under a bus if he thinks it might save his own skin.
None of this should come as a surprise. It was all visible, all there in plain sight. And yet much of the British media is implicated in what followed - because the real story, even now, is still not being properly told.
The scandal surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson - an associate and friend of late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein - arose for a straightforward reason. It has a clear origin point: six years ago, a right-wing faction seized control of the Labour Party under false pretences. That original sin is what will, in the end, bring this government down.
Today, the senior civil servant sacked by Starmer - Olly Robins, the former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office - gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. It was, by any measure, damning.
Robins made clear that at no point was the Mandelson appointment made conditional on vetting, despite being announced well in advance. The Cabinet Office, he said, argued there was no need to vet Mandelson at all.
His office, we were told, was subjected to relentless pressure from No. 10 to push the appointment through regardless. One official even reportedly rang his predecessor to say: “Just fucking approve it.”
That intervention is alleged to have come from Morgan McSweeney - Starmer’s former chief of staff, a close associate and protégé of Mandelson, and the man who ran Starmer’s deeply dishonest 2020 leadership campaign, in which sweeping left-wing pledges were made to members and then discarded wholesale. McSweeney denies the allegation.
But it doesn’t end there.
Robbins also claims the government attempted to install Starmer’s former director of communications, Matthew Doyle, as an ambassador. Doyle is a personal friend of Mandelson, and a member of the same faction.
They worked together inside the Labour Party, and during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership they met regularly - over dinners involving figures like Wes Streeting and Mandelson himself - to plot their course.
Like Mandelson, Doyle is also linked to a convicted paedophile: former Labour councillor Sean Morton. Morton was charged in 2016 with possessing indecent images of children; Doyle campaigned for him even after those charges were brought. Morton was later convicted.
These links were known. Yet Starmer appointed Doyle to the House of Lords. The SNP’s Stephen Flynn was among those who warned against it. Only sustained outrage forced Doyle’s suspension.
Doyle denies any knowledge that No. 10 pushed for his appointment to an ambassadorial role. But we already know - from correspondence released during the Mandelson scandal - that Robins’ predecessor recorded: “The Prime Minister had indicated his intention to recommend… a small number of political appointments to serve as His Majesty’s Ambassadors overseas.”
Starmer, for his part, has repeatedly denied knowing that Mandelson was denied security clearance. But David Maddox, political editor of the Independent, messaged No. 10 last September to say he’d been told by two sources that Mandelson did not clear vetting with MI6 but the prime minister pushed his appointment anyway. So how did he know but the prime minister did not know?
It is all rather academic in a sense. Starmer is merely the frontman for this faction. As his own advisors briefed journalists in 2024: “Keir’s not driving the train. He thinks he’s driving the train, but we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR.”
The DLR, for those who don’t know is a driverless train.
What we know is that Morgan McSweeney spent years - whilst Corbyn was Labour leader - using the ‘Labour Together’ think tank to lay the groundwork for a right-wing takeover of the party.
That effort was funded by £700,000 in secret donations from business figures - conveniently declared only months after Starmer became leader, dismissed by McSweeney as an “admin error” after an Electoral Commission fine.
(If you haven’t already, do buy Paul Holden’s The Fraud on all this).
Once in control, they remade the party in their image.
Selections were stitched up. Leading factional members were parachuted into constituencies they had no connection to, bypassing local members entirely. And as we now see, the same mentality extended to the state itself - attempting to hand out ambassadorships to factional allies with no relevant experience, but with deeply troubling associations.
And still, most political journalists looked the other way.
Why? Because they approved of the war waged by Starmerism on the left. They saw it as good politics. And so they overlooked all the traits which have emerged in undeniable full force during the Mandelson scandal.
Five years ago, I wrote the following about Starmer’s leadership:
The one thing I got wrong was that Starmer was unelectable, and that had absolutely nothing to do with him - it was just because the Tories destroyed themselves more comprehensively than any government in our history, and the electoral system gifted Labour two-thirds of the seats with only a third of the vote.
This faction must be driven from British politics. But alas, they rigged the parliamentary selections to ensure that the parliamentary Labour party is now full of their loyal drones.
That’s why the Labour Party needs to be replaced - and why voting Green in the upcoming elections is one way of achieving that.
You can pre-order my new book THE FALL OF THE WEST now…
Speaking as someone who actually - perhaps somewhat reluctantly - voted for Keir Starmer, I can only (also reluctantly) agree.
I deliberately went well out of my way to watch him in the leadership hustings at the Design Centre in Islington. He lied to us pure and simple. I knew it - he knew it. But we were all a bit shell-shocked to be honest. Jeremy was gone.
Jeremy had not 'failed' - although the media - particularly the BBC (where I then still worked) had complied with 'antisemitism' campaign, and Panorama, alongside its General Election analysis (still persisting), had characterised Labour’s loss as a 'catastrophic landslide'. The stage was set.
Later that year I had moved to Kentish Town (branch) where I encountered Keir at first hand. Buoyed by his sycophants and clearly already having his ascent planned - heartbreakingly fronted by his friend Tony Benn's son - he quietly waited.
Back in the 80s, I had been one of Jeremy's ward organisers in the very north part of Islington North, afterwards braving New Labour as a councillor in Haringey - something Jeremy did prior to becoming an MP. I was there in Holloway Bus Garage when he was selected, my union votes adding to his victory. Fond memories.
I left London, ending up in Bath, where despite the party of the Left being suspended (like so many in the West) we got to listen to speeches by Ken Loach during Starmer's pre-election 'honeymoon'.
I very much enjoyed Olly Robbins measured remarks. Classic understatement.
I worked on Jeremy's re-election as an independent, remembering now those people who approached us in the street, thanking him for his work locally as their MP. Repayment enough.
Stephen Flynn is fantastic at socking it to politicians. Listening to Robbins, it further confirms Starmer had already decided to appoint Mandelson, and vetting did not matter. The vetting marking was not seen by Robbins. So he cannot be held responsible for this MORE recent addition to the records. It was not fit for purpose. The marking document should have been pass or fail. It rather shows the slight of hand of a lawyer. This vetting document appears to be an attempt to muddy the waters. Starmer clearly and immorally disregarded all of Mandelson's turgid history when he decided he would appoint Mandelson. Perhaps he was encouraged to do this by his "sponsors".