‘Good Riddance’: Keir Starmer Resigns as UK Prime Minister

“Getting rid of Keir Starmer is not enough. We need to get rid of the politics he represents: corporate greed, anti-migrant rhetoric, and endless war,” said former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.


British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer gives a speech outside 10 Downing Street announcing his resignation in London, United Kingdom on June 22, 2026.
(Photo credit should read Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Jun 22, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, less than two years after his Labour party swept into power in a landslide election.

In his resignation speech, Starmer said that he was stepping down because members of his party did not feel he was the best choice to lead them into the next general election, with polls showing the far-right anti-immigration Reform party currently on track to receive the most votes.

Starmer also said that whomever is chosen as his successor “will inherit a Britain that is far stronger and fairer than the one I inherited two years ago, better prepared for the challenges ahead and better able to ensure the Labour party secures a second term in office.”

Starmer’s progressive critics disputed this characterization of his governance, which they said has done little more than legitimize the far right.

Specifically, critics pointed to the Labour government’s continued support of Israel in its genocidal assault on Gaza, its decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group, and its efforts to court far-right voters by restricting immigration as some of its most destructive actions.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that Starmer had wasted the large majority that Labour had won and had done little if anything to improve the lives of the UK working class.

“Keir Starmer could have ended child poverty, homelessness and the grotesque levels of inequality in this country,” Corbyn wrote. “Instead, he abandoned those in need, destroyed our civil liberties, and facilitated genocide in Gaza. That is how this prime minister will be remembered—and that is the legacy of moral and political bankruptcy he leaves behind.”

Corbyn added that “getting rid of Keir Starmer is not enough,” as “we need to get rid of the politics he represents: corporate greed, anti-migrant rhetoric, and endless war.”

Member of Parliament Zarah Sultana, a former Labour MP who has since joined Corbyn’s Your party, noted after watching the prime minister’s speech that “the most emotion Keir Starmer has shown is over losing his job, not enabling the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

“Good riddance,” Sultana said. “His next stop should be The Hague.”

Zack Polanski, leader of the Green party, predicted that Starmer’s premiership would be remembered entirely negatively.

“Bills up. Wages too low,” Polanski wrote, summarizing life in the UK under Starmer’s leadership. “Record profits for oil and gas. Fifty richest families with more wealth than 50% of population. Shit in our rivers. Pensioners jailed for protesting. Migrants thrown under the bus. Supporting a genocide. That’s Starmer’s legacy.”

Journalist Owen Jones delivered a similarly scathing assessment.

“Keir Starmer lied through his teeth to become Labour leader,” Jones wrote. “He justified Israeli war crimes, arrested opponents of genocide, attacked pensioners, disabled people, and migrants, pocketed freebies, crushed dissent, and threw others under the bus to save himself. History damns him.”

Economist Yanis Varoufakis delivered a lengthy rundown of Starmer’s failures as prime minister, arguing he “was not merely a disappointment” but “a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning.”

“History will remember Mr. Starmer as a man without conviction,” Varoufakis wrote, “a prime minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.”

Starmer Leaves Behind ‘Legacy of Moral and Political Bankruptcy’

Ana Vračar | 25 Jun 2026

• 
  

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned on Monday amid widespread discontent with his policies and mounting calls for him to step down.

Britain could have a new Prime Minister as early as mid-July after Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, June 22. The announcement came amid widespread discontent with Starmer’s policies and mounting calls for him to step down. Newly elected parliamentarian Andy Burnham, former mayor of Greater Manchester, is widely expected to replace Starmer as both prime minister and Labour Party leader.

Left and progressive critics have denounced the Starmer administration for failing to address working-class concerns and endorsing Europe’s regional military buildup. Beyond economic policy, they have also emphasized Starmer’s support for Israel throughout the Gaza genocide – including his government’s refusal to implement an arms embargo on Israel and their crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement and civil rights in general.

“Keir Starmer could have ended child poverty, homelessness and the grotesque levels of inequality in this country,” Your Party’s Jeremy Corbyn – whom Starmer helped oust from the Labour Party – wrote in reaction. “Instead, he abandoned those in need, destroyed our civil liberties and facilitated genocide in Gaza. That is how this Prime Minister will be remembered – and that is the legacy of moral and political bankruptcy he leaves behind.”

Corbyn’s party colleague Zarah Sultana highlighted Starmer’s involvement in several high-level scandals that have shaken the Labour Party recently, including the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States despite his close association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “A man who gave the top diplomatic job to the ‘best pal’ of a convicted pedophile, said Israel has the right to cut off water and electricity to Gaza, rolled out the red carpet for Israeli war criminals, and kept the weapons flowing to the Israeli military as it committed genocide,” Sultana wrote of Starmer.

“Ultimately, Starmer will go down as one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers in British history,” the Peace & Justice Project echoed. “In less than two years, he has gone from a historic landslide to a Labour government on the brink of political extinction.”

Over the past two years, Starmer’s cabinet has also walked back many pledges from the 2024 campaign, cutting welfare, continuing the privatization of health services, and failing to take decisive action on the cost-of-living crisis. When progress was made – such as scrapping the two-child benefit cap – it only happened under intense pressure from both Labour members and the public.

In the context of economic policy, left-wing analysts point to Starmer’s continuation of austerity-driven policies previously advanced by Conservative governments. “Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetuated by the City of London, throwing in for good measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a ‘Strategic Defense Review’,” wrote former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. “It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.”

As a result, trade unions that have backed Labour for decades have recently expressed extreme discontent, signaling they might cut ties with the party and consider backing others as a more progressive alternative to the far-right Reform and other right-wing options.

Looking ahead, several trade union leaders emphasized that the new Prime Minister must honor promises to bring services like transport and water into public hands and oppose anti-migrant and racist rhetoric.

“The next Prime Minister has an opportunity to break with tinkering around the edges and deliver a complete transformation of this country, permanently shifting wealth and power to working class people,” stated Andrea Egan, head of the public services union UNISON. “Schools, hospitals, councils and transport – and the public service heroes working in them, keeping our country running – must be the fiscal priority, not the military and foreign wars.”

“Whoever replaces Keir Starmer needs to be clear that the status quo has to change,” said Fire Brigades Union leader Steve Wright. “The reason we find ourselves with yet another PM standing down is that, like May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak before him, Starmer failed to break with the perceived wisdom of attacking public services, failing to tackle wealth inequality, whilst letting privatized public utilities rip off the people of this country. A new Labour leader needs to learn that lesson and learn it fast.”

Courtesy: Breakthrough News

Keir “Sir U-Turn” Starmer on the Skids

Kenneth Surin

 July 1, 2025

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photograph Source: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street – OGL

In a few days’ time the Labour party will be celebrating the first anniversary of its landslide 125-seat victory in the 2024 UK general election.

For now though there seems little to celebrate. Keir Starmer and his equally unappealing chancellor of the exchequer/finance minister Rachel Reeves have led Labour’s lurch from one U-Turn to another virtually from Day One. This is indicative of at least 2 things: (1) deficient policy-making; and (2) political antennae so defective they can’t pick up the political equivalent of an exploding megaton bomb.

When Labour has been in power historically, the UK’s overwhelmingly rightwing media has been quick to throw the muddy and hysterical “tax and spend” label at it in the hope that it will stick (a move certain Democrats in the US–  Zohran Mamdani in particular at this moment– will be thoroughly familiar with).

Anticipatory baulking at the likelihood of being called “tax and spenders” by the UK’s rightwing has pushed Starmer-Reeves into a corner.

Rather than taxing the rich to rescue a welfare system devastated by 14 years of Conservative austerity, a move consistently favoured in opinion polls, Starmer-Reeves have given paltry increases to a few welfare programmes while cutting several of the rest. They insist that their push for economic growth will create a supposedly prosperous UK that will then be able to fund a more ample welfare system. Understandably the public is not swayed by such nebulous imaginings about future “growth”.

Most of the Starmer-Reeves U-turns involve cuts to welfare that have had to be walked back. In the past month alone Starmer has U-turned on 3 occasions.

First, the government had axed in its 2024 Budget the one-time winter heating allowance of up to £300/$412 from 10 million pensioners, by turning what had been a universal policy into a means-tested one. The overall “savings” from this cruel measure were negligible, reflected in the U-turn’s cost of about £1.25bn/$1.70bn a year. It was Starmer’s holding out on rescinding this welfare cut for months, while committing to increased spending on defence to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027, rising to 5% of GDP in 2035, purely in order to conform to Trump’s diktat to NATO governments, that provoked the ire of Labour MPs. The increased defence spending will include bombers carrying nuclear weapons based in the UK for the first time since 1998— an obvious breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It was this abrupt military largesse that prompted his appalled MPs to pressure Starmer into making his U-turn on the winter heating allowance.

Starmer’s intransigence was said by his more diehard supporters to be a signal that Starmer-Reeves were prepared to be “tough” on limiting government spending, except of course when it came to the grovelling-before-Trump acquisition of new generation cyber weaponry.

Second, cuts were made to the Personal Independence Payments (PIP), which deprived 370,000 people of this support. The prospect of stroke victims unable to wash or dress themselves having budget cuts enacted on their backs was again too much for many Labour MPs—some of whom remarked pointedly that they did not enter politics to amplify the already wretched condition of the severely disabled. Also restored in this U-turn was the income of all those receiving the health element of Universal Credit, cuts which affected 2.2 million people.

 In the short term, Starmer and Reeves need £5bn/$7bn “savings” a year to balance the books and avoid increased borrowing, pleading that they inherited a £22bn/$30bn fiscal “black hole” from the previous Tory government which Labour now has to fix. This “black hole” was not mentioned when Starmer announced the massive boost to military spending. The recently abandoned benefits cuts were however said at the time to be a vital part of the financial and social “reforms” needed to deal with the Tory fiscal incontinence inherited by Labour. The U-turns on these “reforms” will certainly incur increased borrowing and/or taxation in the government’s Autumn Budget. Starmer has deferred such decisions until that Budget is announced in a few months’ time (October to be precise).

Another U-turn by Starmer involved the decision to hold a national inquiry into the child grooming gangs which prey on vulnerable teenage girls in a number of northern English cities (the police jurisdictions of Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire were mentioned in a report by Baroness Louise Casey which highlighted significant institutional failures in protecting children from sexual predation).

For months Starmer had dismissed calls for a such a national inquiry, arguing the issue had already been examined in a seven–year inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay. The matter is sensitive because the police had found a disproportionate numbers of men of Asian ethnicity (primarily Pakistani) among those arrested for group-based child sexual exploitation. The UK anti-immigrant far right is always willing to exploit such issues when it comes to stereotyping and marginalizing immigrant communities. Perhaps out of fear of being accused of  racism the organizations tasked with protecting children at risk from predation did not take these data about two-thirds of offenders being Asian into account during investigations.

Louise Casey said in a later interview that the data should be investigated as it was “only helping the bad people” not to give a full picture of the situation, before she went on to say: “You’re doing a disservice to two sets of population, the Pakistani and Asian heritage community, and victims”.

Whatever his motives, Starmer’s delaying over the child exploitation scandal has done nothing to detract from the “too little, too late” image that has been pinned on to him. Starmer has sunk precipitously in opinion polls, with Labour losing a lot of potential voters to the far-right Reform UK led by Nigel Farage.

Starmer made his U-turns in the hope this would dissuade some of the 126 Labour MPs – about a quarter of the parliamentary party – who signed up to a wrecking amendment that could bring down the government’s Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. A vote on the crucial second reading of the bill is due next Tuesday, and these MPs argue that the amended bill is still not good enough to merit their support. In particular they object to Starmer’s refusal to remove the two-child cap on child benefit imposed by the Tories when in power, and a restriction Starmer-Reeves place on the PIP allowance despite their U-turn, that is, the proviso that only those currently in receipt of PIP will benefit from its restoration—once Starmer’s bill becomes law, future PIP claimants will have their allowances reduced in line with the stricter eligibility rules of the originally intended bill. This results in what critics say will be an unjust two-tier welfare system based not on need but on the vagaries of time affecting the onset of one’s disability. Hence a quadriplegic parent disabled as a result of an accident on a construction site currently receiving PIP will benefit from the U-turn, but their child who becomes a quadriplegic from a car accident (say) after Starmer’s bill becomes law will suffer from the cut to PIP. Same disability, but discrepant benefit outcomes, so as the French would say: quelle justice!

Part of the blame for such chaotic stumbles are laid at the feet of Starmer’s Rasputin-like chief of staff, the Blairite Morgan McSweeney. It was McSweeney who masterminded Starmer’s coup in the party leadership race after Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation. It may be recalled that Starmer campaigned on upholding Labour’s election manifesto proposals (which were popular with the party membership) before dumping this commitment as soon as he was voted leader. McSweeney, behind the scenes, then orchestrated Starmer’s purge of the party’s social democrats. Quite simply: Starmer was campaigning on a false prospectus, in effect promising “Corbynism without Corbyn” before switching to outright Blairism when elected leader.

McSweeney was also one of the brains marshalling those Blairites who had sabotaged Corbyn at Labour HQ, after Corbyn came near to winning the 2017 general election, into his shadowy anti-left organization Labour Together. These Blairites had connived with a vicious rightwing-media character assassination of Corbyn, accusing him of antisemitism for being pro-Palestinian and being a former eastern bloc spy (even the BBC threw its weight behind the latter). But McSweeney found these Corbyn saboteurs to be good company in a move that matched any Trotskyite vanguardist infiltration of mainstream political parties.

Starmer, who is said by many who know him to have no real political convictions while red-hot with ambition, was not associated initially with McSweeney’s Labour Together. However Starmer, now on the verge of being a veritable Trojan Horse, was promoted by them to give the appearance of “continuity Corbynism” before espousing Blairism as soon as he was elected. This is amply documented in the book Get In: the Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund.

With the rise of Nigel Farage in the polls, seemingly at Starmer’s expense (Labour now has a 6-point poll deficit behind Farage’s Reform), Starmer has started to steal Farage’s racist and anti-immigrant electoral clothes, apparently at McSweeney’s instigation.

In May Starmer gave a speech about cutting immigration in which he said the UK risked becoming “an island of strangers” as a result of immigration. Starmer’s speech echoed the notorious “rivers of blood” speech delivered in 1968 by the anti-immigrant Tory MP Enoch Powell, a classics professor in a previous life, who referenced “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”, when voicing his feverish anxieties about immigration.

In typical fashion Starmer retracted his racist speech. In an interview published in the Observer newspaper Starmer said: “I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell.

“I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either.

“But that particular phrase – no – it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it”.

Oh dear, Starmer shows in these remarks how shockingly ignorant he is about the UK’s recent political history, and in any event he needs to give his speechwriters the boot, given that they were almost certainly drawn from the McSweeney operation.

The indication here is that Labour and Starmer are torn between 2 opposing electoral strategies.

On the one hand is the McSweeney approach designed to peel-off Labour voters who might defect to Nigel Farage. On the other is a broader strategy, said to be favored by the influential centre-right Labour minister Pat McFadden, which opts for an appeal to the national electorate instead of attracting those who might move to Farage in a general election.

For now the McSweeney strategy prevails with the ambitious leader lacking in political principles. However, if Labour continues to sink in the political ratings, its MPs may decide that Starmer is not up to the job. It is rumoured he’s been given a year to sort things out. Who knows what will happen, least of all the endlessly irresolute Starmer?

At the same time Labour lacks even the merest critique of capital, has no intention of deepening democracy by backing proportional representation, and refuses to take seriously the fucking of our planet as the despoliation of the environment and nature are given free rein.

Labour’s position is dire, and not just electorally. The only improvement for it on the horizon is getting rid of Starmer and his spectral eminence grise Morgan McSweeney.

Some of us who recall a better Labour still live in hope.

Kenneth Surin teaches at Duke University, North Carolina.  He lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Why Keir Starmer's hard to pin down:

 A Trotskyist who's capitalists' delight

Keir Starmer, the UK PM, a Trotskyist in his youth, has become capitalists' favourite now. As a lawyer, he helped over 400 people escape the gallows but defended police excesses too. The ambiguity in his personality might help him respond to changing situations and come up with pragmatic and radical solutions.


Keir Starmer is set to be the UK PM and his ambiguous personality might help him respond to changing situations and come up with pragmatic and radical solutions. (Image: AP)

Priyanjali Narayan
New Delhi,

UPDATED: Jul 6, 2024 1

In ShortKeir Starmer is the most working-class Labour Party leader of his generation
He was a Troskyist, who now supports wealth creation as part of Labour agenda
These shades in Starmer's personality show his evolution and flexibility


Keir Starmer becoming the Prime Minister of the UK was inevitable, if his ex-partner, Philipa Kauffman, is to be believed. "If you’d told me back then that Keir would be prime minister, it wouldn’t have surprised me one little bit. One, he is very capable. Two, he is utterly driven. Three, his values and principles are so important," Kauffman says in Starmer's biography by Tom Baldwin.

Capable, utterly driven and principled. Keir Starmer's win is no surprise for his ex-partner.

The biography was released in February, when it had become pretty evident that the Starmer-led Labour Party wasn't just on course to win the general election, but to sweep it.

On Friday, the Labour Party leader emerged victorious in the July 4 election, enabling Labour to form the government in the UK after 14 years. It was Starmer who steered Labour to victory by wooing and consolidating voter anger against the Conservatives.

"Starmer is peculiarly hard to pin down, especially for people who work in politics, because he resists being fitted into the clean lines within which politicians usually project themselves," wrote his biographer.

It is really "hard to pin down" who Starmer is. In Starmer's personality, we see many shades, even paradoxes.

He was the editor of Trotsky magazine in the UK who put "wealth creation" as an important agenda of the Labour Party in this election.

He is the most working-class leader of the Labour Party Britain has seen for years. But he is 'Sir', having been knighted by the British crown. He is a private man who has chosen public life to be in the political limelight.

Starmer is an anti-monarchist, who will now meet the King once a week. These paradoxes show his evolution as a political leader and a person over time. He adapts and is quick to understand and respond.

He was a human rights lawyer who became the adviser to the Northern Irish Policing Board, where he helped police officers justify their use of guns and plastic bullets.
'MY DAD WAS A TOOLMAKER, MY MOM A NURSE,' SAYS STARMER

Starmer is going to be the most working-class PM of the generation in the UK. He has defeated a man -- Rishi Sunak -- who some say was even richer than the royals.

Born to a toolmaker and a nurse, Starmer never had to think of or mention his origins till he entered politics.

"'My dad was a toolmaker and my mum was a nurse,' before adding – in words that these days might induce some form of aneurysm among those who have followed his interviews and speeches since – 'not everybody knows that and that’s because I don’t say it very often," wrote his biographer.

Starmer also spoke about unpaid bills and the phone being cut off. They could not eat pasta or travel abroad. His father felt "very disrespected" working as a factory worker, revealed Starmer.

But Starmer moved beyond his circumstances and was the first in the family to attend University of Leeds, and then do a year at Oxford.

Now, he is helping families get their first mortgage as his family's humble home "was everything to my family — it gave us stability, and I believe every family deserves the same".

He would go on to be a lawyer.

STARMER BECOMES A LAWYER, BUT WILL LAW BE ENOUGH?

He was a human rights lawyer at the famous Doughty Street Chambers. He fought death penalty cases for Commonwealth countries and was even part of a legal team that got the death sentences of 417 people removed.

He would never mention his working-class roots to win a case. In fact, he was never a "jury's lawyer". He built his case with facts. His style was considered "forensic" even when he represented the opposition in the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.

He was a problem solver, not a poser.

"He’ll walk around a problem, look at it from every angle, almost touch and feel it before working out what to do. If we can’t abolish the death penalty altogether, he’ll find ways to engage with the prosecutors in that country or the government. There’s no point in telling these countries that capital punishment is barbaric just to get some cheap applause – where does that get you?"

He had pragmatic solutions to radical problems and was more interested in getting solutions than posturing, wrote his biographer.

This side of his personality is what will be of great use in 10 Downing Street. A London-based lawyer who worked with him said he was always "looking 10 miles down the road."

He became the top prosecutor of the country.

After being a human rights lawyer for decades, Starmer became in-charge of the Crown Prosecution Service in 2008 and was responsible for criminal prosecutions in England and Wales.

He saw the first British prosecution of al-Qaeda terrorists. He also came under scrutiny after he was, what some considered, harsh to rioters in London after the police shot dead a black man in 2011, Mark Duggan.

Finally, in 2014, Starmer was knighted and he became, 'Sir Keir'. But as Kauffman said, law was not enough for him.

KEIR STARMER ENTERS BRITISH POLITICS

Starmer finally entered electoral politics at the age of 52.

In 2015, he became the MP for the London district of Holborn and St Pancras in 2015, and was the “shadow minister” and dealt with Labour's position on Brexit.

Starmer had been against leaving the European Union but many Labour voters were in favour of it. Finally, the party could not reach a conclusion and asked for a second referendum.

This, along with other factors, led to the defeat of the Labour Party in 2019.

After the elections, Starmer became the party leader. He worked relentlessly and his fluidity as a leader made him cater to many. While several people say they do not know what he stands for, in reality, he stands for a few things.

“What Keir has done is taken all the left out of the Labour Party,” billionaire John Caudwell, told the BBC. “He’s come out with a brilliant set of values and principles and ways of growing Britain in complete alignment with my views as a commercial capitalist.”

Another strength of Starmer is that he hasn't been tied down to any of the party's factions and adapts to the situation.

“One of Keir’s greatest strengths is that he’s never been from or beholden to a particular faction of the Labour Party. I think that’s because – unlike almost every previous Labour leader – he didn’t spend his life in the Labour Party, and it isn’t his whole life, even now. It’s why he could win a leadership contest from the soft left, but now lead it from the centre-right," said Chris Ward, one of his principal advisers until 2021.

As for what he stands for?

“He believes in pragmatism, in developing policy by solving problems, not through grand theory. And he doesn’t come to the table with ideological presuppositions,” said Josh Simons, who headed the think tank, Labour Together.

As for immigration, Starmer has stated that they will use the money currently being used to send the immigrants to Rwanda to establish a new Border Security Command to tackle gangs operating via small boats across the border and other purposes.

He also stands for supporting his British Indian voters as he visited the Swaminarayan Temple in Kingsbury on June 28 to reiterate his commitment to building a “strategic partnership with India”.

"If we’re elected next week, we will strive to govern in the spirit of sewa to serve you and a world in need,” said Starmer, reiterating his promise of “absolutely no place for Hinduphobia in Britain”.

Though it is hard to pond down the real Starmer, the advantage of this flexibility of personality is that the new British Prime Minister can adapt to fast-changing situations and respond to them fast.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for TROTSKYISM 

UK Green MP calls on Keir Starmer to resign over Peter Mandelson scandal in fiery PMQs speech

Olivia Barber 

22 April, 2026 

Left Foot Forward

‘Does the prime minister not recognise that the best thing he can do to restore trust [...] is to take true responsibility and resign?’

Green MP Dr Ellie Chowns used her question at PMQs to call on Keir Starmer to resign as prime minister.

In a fiery speech, Chowns accused Starmer of appointing Peter Mandelson, who had links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, “in a desperate and doomed attempt to pander to Donald Trump”.

Chowns alleged that Starmer knew about Mandelson’s involvement in Kremlin-linked company Sistema and his friendship with Epstein.

She also criticised the PM for taking “a dismissive and extraordinarily incurious attitude to vetting, compromising national security”.

This comes after Sir Olly Robbins, former head of the foreign office, who Starmer fired last week, told the Foreign Affairs select committee that there was a “dismissive approach” to Mandelson’s vetting at No 10.

In reference to Starmer sacking Robbins, she added: “Now he has thrown a civil servant under the bus to save his own skin.”

The Green MP continued to criticise Starmer, stating: “All this from a prime minister who promised to restore trust and integrity in government, but who has repeatedly betrayed the trust of voters and let the country down.”

Chowns then asked Starmer: “Does the prime minister not recognise that the best thing he can do to restore trust and integrity is to take true responsibility and resign?”.

The prime minister did not respond to Chowns’ call for him to resign.

Instead, Starmer said the Green MP was wrong about there being “a dismissive attitude” to vetting.

The prime minister said: “Mr Speaker, let me just correct what she said. There was no dismissive attitude to developed vetting, I knew the post was subject to developed vetting.”

He added: “it was subject to developed vetting, what didn’t happen was that I wasn’t told about the UKSV recommendation. That was a serious error of judgement.”

Starmer once again said that if he’d known about the UK Security Vetting Recommendation he wouldn’t have appointed Mandelson.

Chowns shook her head at Starmer’s response.

5 things we learned from Sir Olly Robbins giving evidence on Peter Mandelson’s appointment

Olivia Barber 

21 April, 2026 

Left Foot Forward

Pressure is piling on the prime minister over the Mandelson scandal ahead of the local elections

Sir Olly Robbins, former head civil servant at the Foreign Office, appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee today to give evidence on Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador.

Sir Keir Starmer fired Robbins last week, after it emerged that the foreign office had granted Mandelson security clearance despite him failing the vetting process. Mandelson was fired from his ambassador position last September after it was revealed that he had had close ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Here are 5 things we learned from Robbins’ appearance at the select committee hearing.Robbins did not tell the prime minister about Mandelson’s failed vetting

Starmer has consistently insisted that he was not told that Lord Mandelson failed the vetting process carried out by the Foreign Office. Robbins confirmed that he did not tell the prime minister that Mandelson had failed the vetting process.

He told MPs today: “You are not supposed to share the findings and reports of UKSV other than in the exceptional circumstances where doing so allows for the specific mitigation of risk.”

Starmer and No 10 say that there is nothing to stop officials telling the prime minister about the recommendations made by security officials even if they are not involved in making the decision. Starmer announced Mandelson’s appointment before he was vetted.

Starmer announced Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador in December 2024, before the Foreign Office had completed its vetting process.

Robbins told the committee: “I regret that this process was not done before [the] announcement”. However, he said it would not have changed his decision if it had been.

He also noted that Mandelson had already been given access to the Foreign Office building as well as “highly classified briefing on a case-by-case basis” prior to vetting being carried out.

The prime minister said that vetting usually happens after the appointment. Starmer told MPs on Monday: “For a direct ministerial appointment, it was usual for security vetting to happen after the appointment but before the individual starting in post. That was the process in place at the time.”‘Not a given’ Mandelson would be vetted at all

Robbins said there was a “dismissive approach” to vetting at No 10.

The sacked civil servant said: “I’m afraid I don’t think, at the point of his appointment and for days thereafter, it was actually a given that he would be vetted. He also said that the position taken by the Cabinet Office was that Mandelson’s status meant “vetting might be unnecessary”. Constant pressure on foreign office to get Mandelson to Washington

“The focus was on getting Mandelson out to Washington quickly,” Robbins said, adding: “Throughout January, honestly, my office [and] the foreign secretary’s office were under constant pressure. There was an atmosphere of constant chasing.”Starmer asked Robbins to ‘potentially’ get diplomat job for his top spin doctor

During the select committee today, Robbins told MPs that No 10 asked him to “potentially” find an ambassadorial job for Matthew Doyle, who at the time was the prime minister’s director of communications.

Robbins said he had felt “quite uncomfortable” about the request, and that he was told not to discuss the possible appointment with the then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

Surely this the end of the Starmer Project – but will it take the Labour Party down with it?

HubMP2012

APRIL 20, 2026

Frank Hansen explains why the Prime Minister’s claims of ignorance about Mandelson’s vetting process are not credible.

As the ‘Starmer Project’ staggers towards its death agony following the latest revelations concerning the security vetting of Mandelson, plus the likelihood of a massive defeat in the May local elections, this provides both an opportunity and a threat for the Labour Party.

 Starmer probably won’t be resigning soon due to external factors and the effect of his project on the Labour Party itself. The Iran debacle, local elections and above all the suppression of Party democracy have left a lack of an effective opposition in the Parliamentary Labour Party – destroyed by the Starmer Project’s manipulation of selection procedures – and a shortage of challengers for the leadership, who can bring about the radical change needed if Labour is to continue as a party of Government both now and in the longer term.  

Those who have read Paul Holden’s book The Fraud – described by Owen Jones as “meticulous, explosive, essential” – will know exactly what is meant by the term ‘Starmer project’ and be aware of its appalling, toxic impact on the Labour Party and UK politics. Those who haven’t, should do so – it is eye-opening and will cure you of any tendency to argue that ‘poor Sir Keir’, a ‘a lawyer and a decent bloke’, has probably been ‘manipulated’ by Mandelson, McSweeney and Labour Together. Wrong – McSweeney may have been the devious, invisible hand planning and guiding the project, but Starmer was up to his neck in it. He was the politician chosen to front a massive political scam that helped him become Labour leader and eventually put him and his clique into Government. He was a conscious participant in the project and still is. 

As the ship sinks and Cabinet loyalists huddle around to justify his increasingly ridiculous excuses, Starmer s striving to deflect responsibility away from himself by throwing former allies overboard – Mandelson. McSweeney, Josh Simons. At McSweeney’s leaving do, it is reported that Starmer even praised him as a great political strategist.

Indeed, the strategy (or ‘fraud’) that enabled Starmer to win the Labour leadership contest was a ‘clever’ one in the worst sense of the word. It was concocted by McSweeney and carried out in plain sight. Starmer posed as a successor to Corbyn – a socialist and a progressive internationalist.  His ten promises, promoted during his leadership campaign, ticked all the right boxes for Party members, but this was just a means to outflank Rebecca Long-Bailey and attract support. As we know now, it was just a con devised by McSweeney based on the polling of members, funded dubiously and for the project’s use.  Once elected the fake promises were ditched and the real Sir Keir emerged – a right-wing authoritarian, who set about purging those who opposed him.

As Paul Holden documents in his book, McSweeney and his allies carried out a series of secret machinations, dirty tricks and questionable funding arrangements to facilitate success. ‘Success’ meant winning the leadership and then destroying Corbynism and any effective opposition from the left or even the centre. This was achieved by the purges of life-long socialists, many of them Jewish comrades, deliberately using antisemitism allegations as a weaponised tool to promote this, backed up by underhand online techniques to whip it up into a crisis.

McSweeney also tried to undermine and take down media websites like The Canary who were beginning to expose what was really happening, just as Josh Simons tried to do later with journalists, including Holden, who were investigating the questionable activities of Labour Together – except he was caught out and forced to resign from the Cabinet.

CLPs were also suspended and prevented from selecting local candidates, although one of Starmer’s ten ‘promises’ was to protect Party democracy! This was orchestrated by McSweeney, and it is alleged that Mandelson even provided advice on which candidates to exclude.

As Holden says, the project “radically reshaped the Labour Party at every level, primarily to neutralise oppositional forces and disempower party members. One small, right-wing element of the Labour coalition effectively captured the party. This freed Starmer to move Labour to the right on nearly every political issue.”

We have seen the disastrous results of this in Labour’s dismal performance in Government: a failure to tackle poverty and inequality, support for Trump and Israel, legal attacks on human rights, shadowing Reform’s policy on immigration and so on.  The resulting loss of tens of thousands of members and local representatives means that the Labour Party has been hollowed out. Today it is less of a movement of activists in touch with communities and more a Party of time-serving politicians and bureaucrats many of whom owe allegiance to Starmer, and, until recently. McSweeney.

But now the Starmer project is falling apart. Ironically it is a victim of its own toxic culture and modus operandi. Having won a massive electoral majority due to the vagaries of the UK electoral system – an unprecedented 412 seats based on only 34% of the vote – the project seemed to have gamed the system via McSweeney’s strategy of making vague promises about ‘change’ and shadowing the right to avoid being outflanked.

With a Cabinet packed with loyalists it became easy to ‘fix’ the political agenda as required. Housing Secretary Steve Reed makes numerous appearances in The Fraud as a close long-term ally of McSweeney. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud and many others also feature, with links to and funding from Labour Together. The Cabinet – mainly a Starmer Project clique – embraced big business and proceeded to implement a programme of neo-liberal austerity – some of the worst aspects only abandoned because of protests by community groups and concern within the PLP – but still mainly intact.

On migration the approach was to mimic Reform. On foreign policy it was to appease Trump and support Israel’s destruction of Gaza – with minor ‘reservations’, while continuing to supply arms and even undermining civil liberties by proscribing Palestine Action. 

The decision to appoint Mandelson as US Ambassador was intended to help fix and solidify the relationship with Trump. It too must have seemed a ‘clever’ thing to do, another great plan of the ‘Starmer Project’. Of course, Starmer and McSweeney already knew all the key things about Mandelson’s past and McSweeney was a friend of his. As with the Starmer Project’s previous machinations and fixes, they thought they could easily get away with it, and the Cabinet was mainly tame and acquiescent. 

You would have thought that the ‘great strategist’ McSweeney might have identified the gathering storm around the Epstein files in the US and backed off.  Apparently not – a gross error that led to his own demise and could well finish off Sir Keir. These kinds of ‘mistakes’ happen when you have a political project which is devoid of diversity and any real democratic checks and balances, where differing opinions are not represented, let alone heard and respected, where real decisions are made behind closed doors.  

Starmer should never have appointed Mandelson – it was his own decision and mistake. Once further information about Mandelson’s activities were revealed in the Epstein files, Starmer should have resigned on the basis of incompetence and bringing the Labour Party and Government into disrepute. Instead, he threw McSweeney overboard and decided to cling on and fight to the bitter end. 

While there will be further investigations and revelations around the Mandelson appointment, we have sufficient ‘evidence’ to demand that Starmer sets a timetable for resignation. One that is acceptable to the Labour Party, that ensures an orderly succession.  We need an election process based on democratic procedures and principles which cannot be manipulated by a small clique as it was in 2020. Candidates will need to be open and transparent about their political programme and any previous association with McSweeney and the ‘Starmer Project’.   

To survive, the Party needs radical change – to restore internal Party democracy and enhance the diversity of views. We need an independent investigation into the ‘Starmer Project’ and Labour Together that holds the individual to account no matter what their current standing in the Party is.

Read Labour Hub’s interview with The Fraud author Paul Holden here. Read Bryn Griffiths’ introduction to his Labour Left Podcast interview with Paul Holden and watch the podcast here.  

 Frank Hansen is a former Councillor in the London Borough of Brent.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/number10gov/54354501680. Creator: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str |Credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str Copyright: Crown copyright. License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Deed