Kemi Badenoch is dead right when she says Keir Starmer isn’t just unfit to govern, he’s lost the moral right to do so. He has failed on every measure, from restoring integrity to high office and vowing to clean up politics to stopping the boats.
In essence, every single thing he promised us. And finally, it looks like these repeated failures are about to consume him.
And it must be hoped that when they do, this dolt is consigned to political obscurity because a fool such as this should never again be allowed anywhere near power.
Not just because he shames and degrades his office but because his stupidity is dangerous. This is a man who was willing to endanger our national security - because that’s what Mandelson’s appointment did – to further his own political career because he believed the Prince of Darkness would be a bridge between him and Trump.
Starmer knew Trump had him pegged as a fool and he believed Mandelson could convince him otherwise. And so, he compromised Britain’s national security to make that happen.
This appointment was, and always has been, about Starmer and his survival. He seemingly didn’t care about Mandelson’s dodgy past or his even dodgier links to despots and dictators.
Nor did he seemingly care about the optics of Mandelson's friendships with one of the world's most notorious paedophiles; he appeared to only care about hanging onto his job, and he believed Mandelson in Washington would help him do that.
Then, when it was revealed that Mandelson failed the security services vetting process because of his financial links to China and Russia, Starmer’s tack was to deny all knowledge of it, to pretend he knew absolutely nothing about any of it.
Which is a stretch even for an inveterate liar like Starmer because the intelligence services knew, his own national security advisor Jonathan Powell knew, the Cabinet Office knew, and Whitehall sources this week are insisting the security risks over Mandelson had absolutely been drawn to Starmer’s attention.
One said: “The reality is that Starmer had already been warned about the major risks and he waved them away.” But still, Starmer is pretending he didn’t.
He seriously expects the British people to swallow the guff that he didn’t know what it appears everyone else in Government and Whitehall knew.
But still Starmer is insisting – despite all evidence to the contrary – that he only found out Mandelson had failed the vetting process last Tuesday.
Okay, so let’s suspend reality for a minute and accept that’s true – why didn’t he then ‘fess up at PM’s questions last Wednesday? That was the perfect opportunity for him to come clean and say he’d misled Parliament.
Why, if he’s the man of integrity he claims he is, didn’t he put the record straight and accept responsibility when he had the chance? Why wait until journalists broke the story, which then made him look like the liar he insists he’s not?
But then this is the kind of snake who’s leading our country - a man who will run and run from the truth until he has nowhere else to go.
And even when he’s cornered and exposed, he still lies, and worse, tries to heap blame for his mistakes onto friends, trusted allies and underlings.
And it’s this kind of moral cowardice that has defined Starmer and his catastrophic premiership from day one. As PM it was his job to take responsibility for Mandelson’s appointment.
If he really didn’t know the details of the vetting process, the question has to be asked - why didn’t he? It’s his job to know.
You don’t appoint a man who has cosied up to despots and paedophiles and whose dodginess is legendary, to one of the highest jobs in Government without waiting for the proper checks to be done.
And the fact is, Starmer announced Mandelson’s appointment before the security vetting process had even taken place. So why does he keep repeating that “due process” was followed?
How the hell could it have been when he announced Mandelson had the job before the vetting process had even happened? Does he still not get what leading a country means?
It means he has to be across everything, especially something as important as this. And it's no good forever snivelling that nothing is his fault or his responsibility when it absolutely is. The buck stops with him – end of!
Olly Robbins will go down as a national hero if he blows the whistle on our useless PM - Carole Malone
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The Mandelson debacle has been likened to one of the greatest national security scandals of the post-Cold War era – on a par with the Profumo Affair-yet all our dopey PM can do is scream that he knew nothing about any of it.
And if that really is the case - which I don’t believe for a second - it should hammer home the message to him that he really shouldn’t be in Number 10. Because a PM who doesn’t know what’s going on in his own Government is about as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.
Starmer’s pathetic denials prove what we’ve always known- he’s just not up to the job. And it’s not like suspicion about Mandelson and his activities is new.
Security services have been worried about his business activities for years. Concerns about him were revealed to Starmer a whole year before he even got to Downing Street over his links to Epstein and the fact he’d been targeted by soviet intelligence officers as far back as the early 80’s.
Has Starmer conveniently forgotten all that? And why did he ignore his own Foreign Office’s objections to Mandelson’s appointment?
Why did he ignore concerns raised by U.S officials? I’ll tell you because he was prepared to hand Mandelson one of the biggest diplomatic posts in the world because he believed he would help him ingratiate himself with Trump, who saw - and still sees - him as a fool.
This is the weasel who is running our country, a coward who puts his own interests above that of the national interest, a man who even now is screaming “Mandelson betrayed our country” when everyone else can see it’s not Mandelson who’s done that – it’s him.
I very much hope Ollie Robbins - the Foreign Office boss who Starmer scapegoated and sacked over this (he says Robbins didn’t tell him about the failed vetting) blows the whistle on our useless PM this week at a Commons grilling. Not out of spite or revenge but out of loyalty to, and concern for, the British people.
Our country shouldn’t be led for a moment longer by this incompetent coward who will never understand the concept of responsibility, leadership or the greater good.
His premiership has always been about what good the job could do for him, not the good he could do for Britain.