Donald Trump’s second state visit in six years starts today at King Charles’s Windsor estate in style: a carriage ride (past Harry and Meghan’s old haunt of Frogmore Cottage, as it happens), a lavish evening banquet and panoply of military bands and fly pasts. It is a massive ceremonial courtesy to a mighty US President by an embattled ally, on behalf of a Prime Minister who needs a hefty dose of political vitamins.
For all the festivity, there is not much sign of significant movement on tariffs on the “big enchiladas” – such as relief on the punitive tariffs now levied on steel exports to the US. The more modest (though advantageous) prize are new UK-US co-operations in areas like quantum computing deals to combat Chinese superiority and address associated security risks as well as shared nuclear power enhancements. But these gains, are much further down the line – and the Keir crisis is very much now.
The other factor is what one droll ex-Number 10 aide calls the “Banquo’s ghost” effect of Lord Mandelson’s ousting as ambassador to the US after a dithery couple of days. Coming on top of the implosion of Angela Rayner, his deputy PM on a tax-related failure, a botched welfare reform bill which helped bring the Chancellor to tears and now another departure from the Number 10 inner team as the head of strategy, Paul Ovendon, departs over emails sent in the heat of the Corbyn wars, referring crudely to the matriarchal leftwinger, Diane Abbott, the sense of farcical disorder is palpable.
It leaves Mandelson, an erratic but nonetheless major figure in Labour’s story since 1997, with a Peter-sized grudge (a large one, on past form) against the leader who removed him from his seigneurial residence at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue before a Foreign Office inquiry into his injudicious emails to the late Jeffery Epstein could take his explanations or context on board. That is a grudge match set to go, as the PM underlined today that he was “not at all satisfied” with the account Mandelson gave of his friendship with Jeffery Epstein.
Yet the knowledge that Mandelson had failed to break ties with his wealthy friend, a prolific sex abuse perpetrator and trafficker of young women, even after the first evidence of his propensities was revealed in a Florida court conviction in 2008 was scarcely new. The “vibes” darkened once we could all read the texts and expressions of unwavering support and the horrible thought of yet more to come.
Yet I doubt we have heard the last from the wounded ex-ambassador in his own defence – or in terms of his views on the limitations of Starmer as PM. The saga has amplified uncertainty over the Labour leader’s political convictions and direction – and unleashed a spate of threats and murmurs of challenges to his leadership.
If Starmer holds onto his powerful chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who persuaded him to appoint Mandelson as part of a praetorian guard to support a wavering and over-stretched PM, he may find himself, once again, using up valuable capital on defending colleagues in a mess when the country is tiring of this multi-part office drama. At the moment, McSweeney, fairly or otherwise, is taking most of the blame for being heedless about potential risks of crowning Mandelson as head of the UK’s most important mission.
Labour Conference passes are being sent out this week. They now look like an invitation to a brawl between ambitious mid-rankers in Labour, led by Greater Manchester's eternal power seeker and mayor Andy Burnham on one side, and the new risers on the right of Labour politics including current favourite Shabana Mahmood, the ambitious Home Secretary.
It is worth saying that this is a long way from an imminent threat to Starmer. Labour is loath to knife its helmsmen, even if Starmer has a relatively unenthusiastic level of support on the back benches. The left of his party is noisy, but ineffectual – 31 Campaign Groups MPs seeking to oust a leader who hauled the Corbynites over the coals for anti-Semitism is not a fighting army.
The pressure is rising fast as the Prime Minister faces a three-hour emergency debate on his handling of the scandal today – amid more gruesome detail published by Bloomberg about Epstein's manipulation of influential friends and young women target for sex with expensive guests. All of that makes Starmer's initial backing of Mandelson, even when the existence of the emails between the two men was first disclosed, look like a major blunder. The ousting of Paul Ovenden, a senior aide, has infuriated colleagues.
Soft leftists like Burnham and other ministers who have fallen out of power in the past year – Louise Haigh and Angela Rayner – can agitate for policy changes, but do not have the raw numbers for a ground offensive either. So barring another series of major unfortunate events, Starmer is not so much set to be quickly toppled, as to endure the Sisyphean fate of slogging a sullen party and its demoralised supporters up and down various painful political events, such the inevitably tax-rising Autumn Budget.
He will find, like Kemi Badenoch for the Tories, that the prospect of next year’s May elections – when Labour looks set for a heartland drubbing in Wales and Reform UK targets seats – is hovered over him like a sword of Damocles. That gives him a window – albeit a shortish one – to shake off a reputation as an "unlucky general", turning his solid majority into a series of unhappy Labour parishes. The root causes have been a poorly conceived economic policy and bad sequencing of priorities – too slow on asylum and immigration changes, too hasty on boosting employment rights, now heading for delays in implementation in order to assuage worries from businesses reeling from the early, ill-timed national insurance rises.
These are the more substantial challenges for Starmer to deal with than a bonfire of the Washington embassy vanities. But the root of much Labour angst is the same uncertainty: can Starmer manage his own government? And if not, why should they trust him to lead it through the enemy fire?
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at POLITICO and host of the “Sam and Anne’s podcast”
