What does Peter Mandelson drama tell us about Keir Starmer?

Peter Mandelson has been appointed to the three most recent Labour governments and has now been fired from all three.

Douglas Alexander, the Scotland secretary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “In different ways, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer have all recognised that Peter Mandelson brought both high risks and potentially very high rewards.”

But pressure is growing on Starmer to explain why he thought that risk was worth taking as Conservatives demand the publication of all vetting material and some Labour MPs criticise the PM for appointing Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the US in the first place.

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What did the commentators say?

It’s “now increasingly clear” that Starmer has “zero political nous whatsoever”, said Madeline Grant in The Spectator, and a “combination of arrogance, inexperience and ineptitude" has "robbed him of any judgement whatsoever”.

Mandelson is gone but “questions about the prime minister’s judgement remain”, said the BBC. He decided that “being friends with a convicted paedophile in the past should not exclude someone from high public office”, but further details this week “changed the PM’s view”. Many Labour MPs think Starmer “should have seen this scandal a mile off”.

His “public image is one of stolid caution”, said Emma Burnell in The Guardian, but if you “look more closely” you’ll “see that Starmer is actually something of a political risk-taker”. At PMQs this week, his “buttoned-up persona” and “risk-taking” were “both on display” when he “took a leap by vocally standing by Mandelson” and “fell back on the fact that Mandelson was vetted for the role”.

Even before he “bowed to the inevitable”, the prime minister’s “judgement” was “under fresh scrutiny”, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper, because “what was obvious to the backbenchers appeared to be less clear to No. 10”. He was “already seen as out of touch” with his MPs and now he’s “facing serious questions about his future”.

Where he “once claimed sole custody of what few ethics were left in Westminster”, said Patrick Maguire in The Times, in just six days he’s “lost two of his government’s household names to scandals whose details might have been designed to vindicate the public’s disappearing trust in the political mainstream”.

His “programme for government” is a "knapsack of heirlooms rescued from the homes of Labour’s extended family” – “by turns it is soft left, then old right”. You "could call this a very Keirish preference for practicality over faction”, but “more likely, you’d call it incoherent”.

What next?

The outgoing chief of MI6 has emerged as “one of the early frontrunners” to replace Mandelson, said The Telegraph – Richard Moore would "bring decades of experience”. Other favourites in the “chatter” include Mark Sedwill, Boris Johnson’s national security adviser, and Barbara Woodward, Britain’s permanent representative to the UN.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump arrives in the UK next week and the fuss around the vacant US ambassador role “casts a shadow” over Trump’s “upcoming state visit”, said Beth Rigby on Sky News. If a replacement can’t be installed before the US president arrives, interim ambassador James Roscoe will lead preparations for the visit.