The latest batch of UK government internal messages with Peter Mandelson reveal the sacked former Washington ambassador’s scathing opinions of UK prime minister Keir Starmer, whom he said lacked “verve” while his Downing Street office seemed “bereft”.In one set of private WhatsApp exchanges last summer with senior UK cabinet member, Pat McFadden, Mandelson also appeared to suggest that former prime minister Gordon Brown “had it in for” Starmer and UK chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves.The exchanges with the normally cautious and restrained McFadden, who like Mandelson is a veteran of Labour’s Tony Blair governments, stood out among the latest 1,500-page batch of papers that the UK government has been forced to release after controversy over Mandelson’s links to US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.In May 2025, while Starmer’s government was being rocked by a huge backbench rebellion over welfare cuts, McFadden messaged Mandelson to say he was worried by “manoeuvring” from Brown and former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner – Brown had publicly criticised the cuts that month while Rayner negotiated with the rebels.“Doesn’t feel good for Keir,” said McFadden.Mandelson responded that he had been “direct” about the UK government’s political difficulties in talks with Irishman Morgan McSweeney, who was then Starmer’s chief of staff and a friend of the ambassador’s.“Keir is not leading from the front and Morgan is not organising the centre as it needs to be,” Mandelson told McFadden. “Gordon has it in for Keir (and Rachel [Reeves]) big time. He doesn’t seriously believe that Angela is an alternative but she is an instrument of destabilisation.”Mandelson accused Brown of “doing to Keir what he has always done to successive Scottish leaders”.Since this exchange, Brown has switched to publicly backing Starmer, who recently gave him a job as a global finance envoy. Rayner, however, later quit the UK government over her tax affairs but has re-emerged in recent weeks as a potential challenger to Starmer.A document dated May 24th, 2025, issued by the UK Cabinet Office shows WhatsApp exchanges between Peter Mandelson and Pat McFadden. Photograph: Cabinet Office/PA Wire