Starmer has survived a key vote in the House over the Mandelson affair.
This isn’t a shock. Contrary to the popular press and the internet, he was never likely to lose.
I don’t normally comment on people or events. Normally I stick to rather policies, but this affair does reveal some important things about how government actually works, and where the country is at.
Firstly, the press hate Starmer. Every Labour leader gets stick from the press, and most of them don’t deserve it, but this is a different level.
Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions at the time of the Leveson inquiry, and many journalists have never forgiven him for that. Nor have the foreign media owners whose wings were clipped — whose ability to trade influence for commercial advantage was, briefly, constrained. In power, Starmer hasn’t stopped. He is now passing laws to limit foreign influence on the British press, even if Levenson 2 has been shelved.
For that reason, there is a determined campaign to undermine him and remove him — pour encourager les autres.
The testimony of Ollie Robbins, and the squeals of outrage from the senior civil service over his defenestration, show something else: how weak parts of that system have become.
When Blair and Brown were in office, they became frustrated with the quality of the senior civil servants they relied on. Fresh talent was brought in from the private sector, banking, and elsewhere in the public sector. That created tension with the traditional fast-trackers — who were often cliquey, privately educated, and conservative by background and instinct. It didn’t help that the outsiders were appointed on higher salaries.
People underestimate the role of class in British politics. The 2010 coalition was built on it. The more Clegg and Cameron met, the more they recognised themselves in each other — same schools, same universities, same assumptions about the world. That shared background mattered.
The outsiders brought in under Labour were, in many cases, quietly removed. The old fast-track system reasserted itself, and promotion once again favoured those who fitted the mould. They got on better with ministers who looked and sounded like them.
Fourteen years of that produces a system in its own image.
Weak, cliquey, and comfortable with itself.
Robbins’ decision to withhold Mandelson’s vetting looks inexplicable on the surface. In context, it looks more like continuity. Boris Johnson was appointed Foreign Secretary despite concerns about his suitability. Dame Pauline Neville-Jones served as National Security Adviser without full vetting and later resigned over links to Russian business interests. Andy Coulson operated at the heart of government without proper clearance, and later went to prison.
You could list many more.
What you are seeing now is a collision between three groups: a political leadership trying to assert control, a civil service that has become used to operating within a certain culture, and a press that is deeply embedded in both.
And that press — often as socially and culturally aligned with ministers and officials as they are critical of them — now finds itself on the side of the system against a Prime Minister it distrusts.
Labour made a mistake in 2024. They underestimated the extent to which the senior civil service they inherited was shaped by the previous fourteen years. Instead of a more thorough reset, too many remained in post, and too many promotions came from the same limited pool.
There have been exceptions. Wes Streeting, at Health, appears to have grasped the scale of the problem and acted. Others have been slower to recognise it. But key deparments like DWP and HMRC stagger on.
None of this means the government is blameless in the Mandelson affair.
The problem won’t go away, partly because the government is not being fully candid.
They knew about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein before he was appointed. He was not appointed despite it, but in part because of it. The calculation appears to have been that Mandelson’s network — including proximity to figures around Trump — would be useful.
That is not something any government will say out loud, particularly given the sensitivity of relations with the United States.
But it is the logic that makes the decision make sense. And until the Government finds a way to be honest this will still hang round their necks.