British prime minister Keir Starmer has already said sorry – appointing Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the United States in late 2024 was a bad idea. Everyone else claims they knew it was a bad idea, an obvious calamity from a mile off (energy secretary Ed Miliband and then foreign secretary David Lammy said so to each other at the time, if we are to believe the story).

Starmer was supine – and nasal – in the House of Commons on Monday: “I should not have appointed Peter Mandelson ... I take responsibility for that decision ... and I apologise again ...”

What more is a man to do? Britain is not technically a secular state – it has the Church of England over which the monarch reigns. But Westminster has not demonstrated much in its powers of forgiveness this past week, that ultimate Christian virtue. The feeling among Labour MPs is quietly mutinous; and his cabinet are hardly voluble in their support (secretary of state for work and pensions, Pat McFadden, on the radio on Wednesday morning three times declined to say the PM was right in his decision to sack a prominent civil servant over the whole debacle).

A quick precis for anyone who hasn’t been following: Mandelson, Starmer’s one-time adviser, was appointed ambassador to the US. Last year, details of Mandelson’s continued relationship with Jeffrey Epstein were revealed........

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