Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare? Being compared to Boris Johnson

In shape if not in substance, Keir Starmer’s involvement in the Mandelson affair is beginning to have a bit of a “Partygate” feel to it.

You’ll recall the problem with former prime minister Boris Johnson: did he deliberately mislead – lie – to parliament? In 2023, he had to appear in the House of Commons to correct the official parliamentary record following an investigation that found that he had made inaccurate statements to MPs regarding gatherings held at 10 Downing Street during Covid lockdowns.

Like Starmer saying that “due process” was adhered to when his appointee as British ambassador to Washington had, in fact, failed vetting checks, Johnson had constantly relied on the same kind of bureaucratic defence: that “all rules were followed”, that he was assured that that had been the case consistently by his advisers, and that he had no personal knowledge of rule-breaking.

Starmer’s defenders now eerily echo a line popular with Boris supporters in those days: that “Keir has got the big calls right” (Ukraine for Johnson, Iran for Starmer).

Some of Johnson’s critics at the time made the same ironical remarks about him that can be heard now about Starmer – which is that if Johnson really was ignorant about what was going on in No 10 and the Cabinet Office during lockdown, then he had no grip on his administration; and that he displayed a similarly curious incuriosity in what was going on under his nose. Now it is Starmer who is the hapless passenger.

In the end, it was a cross-party parliamentary committee on standards that finally did for Johnson’s political career when it concluded he had indeed knowingly committed “repeated contempts of parliament”. He’d lost the premiership by then, but he quit the Commons in preference to taking his prescribed punishment of a 90-day suspension. His reputation, such as it was, has never recovered.

Aside from his own monumental shortcomings, a major factor in his defenestration was the skill of the leader of the opposition – Keir Starmer – in identifying them and making him squirm. Politically, Starmer emerged as the “anti-Boris”, a figure of such contrasting rectitude. Who could imagine that he would ever end up accused of misleading the Commons, of losing control of his own government, and of being such a poor judge of character that he’d give a known wrong ’un another chance at high office?

In Johnson’s case, it was the Tory MP Chris Pincher, whom he indulgently made deputy chief whip despite allegations of personal misconduct (“Pincher by name, pincher by nature”). The appointment prompted more than 60 ministers, parliamentary private secretaries, trade envoys and party vice-chairmen to resign their positions in protest – before the prime minister announced his own.

For Starmer, it may yet prove a fatal mistake to have thought it was worth the risk to make Mandelson ambassador to Washington and give him access to state secrets. For the supposedly cautious and forensic former lawyer to gamble on a close friend of the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein to keep Donald Trump happy is the original sin from which little good has come.

Perhaps the now former Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins and those around him should have been more insistent about the dangers of Mandelson’s appointment – but sooner or later, there was going to be trouble. As it happens, the merciful thing was that the mistake was rectified, and Mandelson was fired quickly. Had he been tangled up later in some new scandal involving, say, defence secrets, relations with Washington would be even worse than they are today.

It will be particularly galling to Starmer that his behaviour is being compared to Johnson’s. It is, on the whole, unfair. Whereas Johnson has a long track record of disputes over fact and truth – with his various editors, party leaders, wives, colleagues, Supreme Court judges and staff – Starmer’s career is built on a reputation for integrity.

Put colloquially, people expect the flamboyant Boris to fib; the opposite is true of Starmer. That’s why this stuff is so corrosive. The honest, unshowy man who promised an end to the chaos and confusion of Tory control seems himself to have feet of clay.

Starmer’s obvious decency predisposes the public to believe that he really was kept in the dark by his civil servants – or at least it should. Foreign Office mandarins may well have decided that the PM was so determined on picking Mandelson that it might be for the best to leave such things undisturbed – or, more likely, that by the time Mandelson failed the vetting, he was all but in the Oval Office fawning over Trump.

There are many awkward subsidiary questions for Starmer. It would be interesting to know why he didn’t wait a few more days for the vetting report before confirming Mandelson in his post. It would be equally important to learn what happened after The Independent’s David Maddox put the allegations about MI6 raising concerns about Mandelson to Starmer’s press secretary, Tim Allan, last September.

The Maddox story – a bit of a smoking gun – was also raised subsequently in the Commons by Lib Dem MP Rachel Gilmour. Did Allan mention the MI6 allegations to Starmer? Did Starmer become aware of them and insist on finding the answers? No 10 now says there was no legal impediment to him demanding such information from his civil servants. Perhaps there are good explanations – we just need to see them.

Nonetheless, the original error of judgement from which all this has flowed was Starmer’s. He has already apologised for it, and it is only right to add that few at the time suggested that Mandelson was a disastrous appointment. Many thought it as inspired a move as Mandelson himself did, and assumed, understandably, that the Epstein-infested past was just that – over and done with. With honourable exceptions, such as the national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, it is mostly only those heavily armed with hindsight who say Starmer should have known. If Starmer wasn’t told, which people do find hard to credit, then he wasn’t told.

So, provided it can be proven that Starmer didn’t deliberately lie to parliament, grievous blunder though it is, there should be no question of him “doing a Boris” and resigning. We shall see.