LONDON — For Keir Starmer, the crises and climbdowns just keep getting faster.

The British prime minister, facing questions about his judgment in appointing Peter Mandelson as U.K. ambassador to Washington despite his Jeffrey Epstein links, pledged on Wednesday to publish a cache of emails and texts between the ex-Labour peer and his top team — on his own terms.

But hours later he was forced to toughen up independent scrutiny of this document release in the face of a revolt by his own MPs, who are horrified by the scandal and fear opposition accusations of a cover-up will stick.

Taken alone, this technical U-turn will not enter any history books. But the last-minute drama around it puts the already weak Labour leader in further peril.

Nervous MPs in his governing party, now awaiting the document dump with deep unease, are rounding with renewed ferocity on the PM and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.

POLITICO spoke to 20 Labour MPs and current and former officials for this piece.

“We need a head,” said one moderate Labour MP who entered parliament in 2024 and was, like others quoted, granted anonymity to speak frankly.

“Someone has to pay the price for this failure,” a second, usually loyal, MP from the 2024 intake said, adding they “wouldn’t care” who exactly it was.

In the minds of many of Labour’s own MPs and officials, the Mandelson affair has further weakened Starmer and McSweeney, who pushed for the appointment of his close ally and friend as ambassador in late 2024.

After rows over a succession of tax and policy U-turns, some believe the Mandelson crisis exemplifies their criticisms of Starmer’s leadership — paying too little attention to a potential problem until it blows up into a full-blown scandal.

“I love Morgan, but Keir has to sack him and he should have sacked him a long time ago,” said one Labour official who has long been loyal to the leadership. “The problem is, who does Keir replace him with?”

Tainted by Mandelson

Starmer defended McSweeney to the hilt on Wednesday.

“Morgan McSweeney is an essential part of my team,” he told MPs. “He helped me change the Labour Party and win an election. Of course I have confidence in him,” the PM said.

Some MPs also rallied around Starmer, blaming an overexcited media narrative and MPs on edge for the next scandal. “This feels like a Westminster story at the moment rather than something terminal for the PM in the eyes of the public,” said a third Labour MP elected in 2024. But the mood in large parts of the party on Wednesday night was bleak.

The latest round of bloodletting began in earnest on Monday, when emails released as part of the Epstein files appeared to show Mandelson leaking government financial discussions in the wake of the 2008 banking crash. Police are now investigating allegations of misconduct in public office.

Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the police investigation Tuesday evening. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims.

Starmer, like the rest of the British state and public, insists he did not know about the bombshell emails, and would never have appointed Mandelson if he did.

Having already sacked Mandelson in September he is now obliterating his reputation, saying on Wednesday that Mandelson “lied repeatedly” during his appointment as ambassador. 

Yet it was well known that Mandelson came with baggage.

Starmer knew the former Labour Cabinet minister had been repeatedly sacked in scandal — and confirmed at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session on Wednesday that he had known Mandelson was friends with Epstein.

“That was the moment,” said a fourth, moderate Labour MP. “The mood was awful. I had opposition MPs saying to me that they had not seen one that bad in decades.”

Several Labour MPs and officials who spoke to POLITICO voiced fears that revealing details of the vetting process will paint Starmer and his chief of staff as too incurious about the wider situation.

Mandelson had worked closely with McSweeney since the late 2010s and gave Labour informal advice in the run-up to its 2024 election landslide.

One former No. 10 official said Mandelson was not on the list of potential ambassadors until McSweeney took over as chief of staff in October 2024, claiming: “Morgan didn’t do anything without speaking to Peter.”

“Once the timeline — and the degree to which searching questions were asked — become clear, I think Morgan might be in trouble,” one U.K. government official added.

Mandelson went through at least three layers of checks, a second U.K. government official said.

Before his role was announced, the Cabinet Office carried out due diligence. Afterward, he was subjected to full deep security vetting.

The third layer — and potentially the most problematic for Starmer and McSweeney — was a letter to Mandelson before his appointment from the chief of staff on the PM’s behalf. It asked three questions: why he continued contact with Epstein after his conviction, why he was reported to have stayed in one of Epstein’s home when the financier was in prison, and whether he was associated with a charity founded by Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

A No. 10 official said reports that linked Mandelson to Epstein, including after he was first convicted, had been looked into as part of the appointment process.

“Peter Mandelson lied to the Prime Minister, hid information that has since come to light and presented Epstein as someone he barely knew,” the No. 10 official added.

Hurry up and wait

Some Labour MPs — spooked by consistent polls putting Labour behind Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK — are so angry that they want to see regime change immediately.

For many on Labour’s left or “soft left” flank this was simply a chance to push their campaign against No. 10.

One former minister, already hostile to the leadership, said it felt like the worst part of Starmer’s premiership and McSweeney should go now.

Left-wing former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, long cast out of the party over comments on antisemitism, went on Sky News to say Starmer may even be challenged before local elections, which will be held across the U.K. in May.

Others were new converts to immediate action. A fifth Labour MP, a moderate who entered parliament in 2024, also said McSweeney should go now. They lamented the “blind spot for many in the leadership” who allowed Mandelson to become ambassador.

It has left some MPs angry and dejected. One, Sarah Owen, made an impassioned intervention in Wednesday’s debate: “Don’t we need to put the victims at the heart of this, not just ourselves?”

But they will have to wait if they want the facts behind the case to become clear.

MPs agreed on Wednesday night to release a series of documents concerning the diligence and vetting around Mandelson’s appointment, as well as communications he had with McSweeney, ministers, civil servants and special advisers in the six months before his appointment.

Starmer had intended to block the release of any documents that would prejudice U.K. national security or international relations.

But No. 10 staged a late climbdown after Angela Rayner — a key figure among MPs on Labour’s “soft left” who resigned as deputy prime minister amid a housing scandal in September — called for parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) to have a role. Officials scrambled to compile a new amendment that would give the ISC the final say on what is blocked.

It will likely take days or weeks for the government to work through what needs to be released, and far longer for the ISC to work through the most contentious documents after that.

The Met Police also released a statement on Wednesday night warning the release of specific documents “could undermine” its current investigation into Mandelson’s alleged misconduct in public office.

The releases — which could include Mandelson’s private messages to friends in the Cabinet, such as Health Secretary Wes Streeting — will provide easy fodder to a British media gripped by the stories of Epstein’s friendships with Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew.

But most MPs and officials who spoke to POLITICO agreed that No. 10 and McSweeney stand to lose the most.

A second former No. 10 official said: “Lots of people are nice to creepy people in politics. But when it comes down to the brass tacks of who knew what or did what when they made the appointment — that’s the chopping block stuff.”

A sixth Labour MP, on the left of the party, said even frontbenchers were “questioning why they should jeopardise their own positions to protect one individual [McSweeney].”

But the question of “when” remains a key one. 

One Labour figure loyal to Starmer’s No. 10 admitted there will be pressure for McSweeney to go now, but insisted anyone with an ounce of political sense would delay any move against him until after local elections in May — so that he could absorb the blame for any losses and protect the PM.

Even a staunch ally of McSweeney — who has been at Starmer’s side since he first ran to be Labour leader — said they had no idea if he will survive.

But a seventh Labour MP, elected in 2024, thinks questions over McSweeney’s future are a red herring. “It’s ultimately about the PM’s judgement,” they said.

The fourth Labour MP quoted above added: “If one of them goes, the other one has to go too.”

Esther Webber contributed reporting.