Peter Mandelson is ‘a bomb waiting to go off’ say Labour MPs – with some of the stories that have appeared since his sacking hinting at the danger he could pose to the Prime Minister.
A report in Saturday's Times stating that Downing Street was already aware of damning emails between the peer and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein when Sir Keir Starmer stood up in the Commons to express his ‘full confidence’ in Lord Mandelson bore all the hallmarks of his ‘allies’.
Despite the embarrassingly gushing content of the messages to his ‘best pal’, in which he expressed his love and support for Epstein and urged him to apply for early release after his conviction for child sex offences, Lord Mandelson is said to feel ‘hung out to dry’ by the PM – a dangerous state of mind given how deeply embedded he was in Sir Keir’s inner circle and how privy he was to confidential information.
‘He must know enough to bring down Keir if he wanted to,’ said one MP.
Lord Mandelson refused to resign and remains on the government payroll, meaning he could be in line for a six-figure taxpayer-funded payout for his dismissal from the £200,000-a-year job as ambassador to the US.
