As an American observer who has deep affection for Britain, I am horrified that after so many deeply troubling assaults on the nation I love, Keir Starmer remains in power.
If he were occupying the Oval Office instead of Downing Street, he would have been impeached, tried, and potentially booted out of Washington months ago.
The sheer scale of his flawed judgment, hypocrisy and crony protection racket in the Peter Mandelson-Epstein debacle would have made even the most partisan Democrat join the chorus demanding removal for abuse of power, reckless endangerment of national security and brazen public deception. High crimes and misdemeanours do not come much clearer.
Yet in Britain, this hollow, preening danger clings to power like damp rot, shielded by a system that lets the progressive elite slither away from consequences that would crush anyone else.
Starmer installed Peter Mandelson despite known concerns — long-standing Epstein associate, even after the 2008 conviction — as ambassador to the United States, the single most sensitive diplomatic posting in the entire Special Relationship.
Cabinet colleagues, including his own Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, raised serious concerns that the appointment was toxic and dangerous. Starmer disregarded every red flag and shoved the peer into the job anyway.
When the latest tranche of Epstein files from the US Department of Justice detonated in early 2025 — revealing Mandelson allegedly passing sensitive UK Government market information — Starmer finally sacked him in September 2025.
Then came the nauseating spectacle: a grovelling apology to Epstein’s victims in which Starmer claimed he had been “lied to” about the “depth and darkness” of the relationship.
The excuse was contemptible. He had known enough to be warned repeatedly; he chose to look the other way, then played the injured party when the truth became impossible to bury. It was a masterclass in spineless deflection from a man who lectures the country on integrity.
The final insult arrived with the taxpayer-funded severance: a fat five-figure payoff, worth several months’ salary, handed to Mandelson as he slunk away in disgrace.
This golden parachute for an Epstein-linked fixer sparked immediate fury. The Foreign Office launched a review, cabinet ministers demanded the money be repaid or donated to charity, yet the fact remains that public funds were used to soften the landing for one of the most discredited figures in modern British politics.
Only in Starmer’s Britain does a government preach austerity and “squeaky-clean” standards while cutting cheques for cronies linked to a paedophile financier.
This is the real and very alarming reason Keir Starmer is avoiding the Parliamentary guillotine - Lee Cohen
|Getty Images
This is no one-off blunder. It is the defining signature of Starmer’s wretched premiership: a relentless parade of cronyism, ethical decay and catastrophic misjudgement.
A series of fraud cases, corruption probes, tax controversies and internal power struggles have forced resignations.
Policy after policy — winter fuel cuts, farm taxes, welfare changes — has been humiliatingly reversed. Approval ratings languish in the political graveyard. The Labour Party tears itself apart while ordinary Britons pay the price for this parade of incompetence.
In America, we would not tolerate such leadership. A president who elevated an Epstein associate to a key ambassadorial role, overruled internal warnings and then authorised public money as a consolation prize would likely face impeachment.
The House would investigate, the Senate would convict, and the spectacle would serve as a brutal but necessary reminder that no one is above accountability. That mechanism, however messy, delivers results when judgement collapses so spectacularly.
Britain has no direct equivalent to impeachment. Without this or any single, codified parliamentary guillotine for serial ethical failure, Starmer endures, insulated by the same establishment bubble he once pretended to despise.
The absence of real sanctions allows this Government of hypocrites to evade the reckoning it inflicts on everyone below them.
Britain deserves infinitely better than this devious, evasive failure. You need a leader whose appointments strengthen Britain rather than embarrass it on the world stage. At a minimum, you deserve honesty.
After witnessing this catastrophe of a Labour Government, one is convinced that you require a mechanism that robustly punishes betrayal of public trust instead of rewarding it with severance packages.
Keir Starmer’s survival through this accumulating sewer of scandal exposes the depth of elite impunity at the heart of the current order.
America would have finished him long ago. For the sake of the once-proud partner we admire and the alliance that has held strong for generations, your current leadership must stand down — or watch faith in its institutions rot away completely.