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Mandelson's Fall May Topple Starmer Says Adrian Wooldridge
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February 6, 2026
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4:17Now PlayingThe challenges for Prime Minister Keir Starmer are piling up. He now faces another blow to his leadership, as further details about ties between Britain's former Ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein emerge. In his latest Bloomberg Opinion piece, Adrian Wooldridge argues that the fall of Mandelson may be an opportunity for systemic reform, with politicians and the press corps needing to break the habit of manipulating the country from on high and think about the long-term national interest. Adrian Wooldridge joins Stephen Carroll and Anna Edwards on Bloomberg radio to discuss.
The Epstein files threaten to topple the government. Not Donald Trump’s in Washington, but Keir Starmer’s in London.
The British prime minister huddled with Labour MPs yesterday in a desperate effort to quell a party rebellion over his disgraced former ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, and his frequent appearances across the 3.5 million pages released by the US Justice Department.
Starmer issued a public apology to Epstein’s victims and said “sorry” for believing Mandelson’s assurances about the nature of his ties with the deceased convicted pedophile.
It may not be enough.
While Westminster is no stranger to sleaze, the explosiveness of the scandal has few parallels in recent British history. Some reach back more than six decades to the Profumo affair, when the then-secretary of state for war’s dalliances with a woman linked to Soviet officials precipitated the downfall of Harold Macmillan’s government.
Already weak and unpopular, Starmer looks to be governing on borrowed time, preserved only because his most likely replacements — such as Health Secretary Wes Streeting and former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner — aren’t ready to challenge him.
The prime minister faces pressure to fire his chief of staff. Betting odds on Starmer leaving office in the first half of the year have soared. It’s been a shocking reverse for the man who led Labour to a landslide election win barely 18 months ago promising a renaissance of the British left.
Instead, he’s battling a resurgence of the populist right, in the form of an antagonistic Trump administration and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
While Trump’s Democratic opponents were hoping the Epstein files would weaken the president, his British ally Farage may be the biggest beneficiary for now.
The Brexit campaigner only has to stand back and cheer the ongoing scandal.
Little wonder Farage joked yesterday he didn’t want Starmer ousted: “I want him to stay forever.”
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