When Keir Starmer’s Labour was flung into power by the implosion of the Conservatives, the chattering classes were gripped by almost comical levels of delusion. We were assured this assortment of third-rate managerialists were about to usher in a new age of calm, competence and principle. Surely, the Peter Mandelson scandal has finally put paid to all that.

Sleaze defined New Labour, and it didn’t just sully the so-called Prince of Darkness

Of all the supposed virtues that were projected on to Starmer’s incoming Labour government, the notion it would rid British politics of sleaze was almost adorable in its naivety – not to mention its wilful blindness to not-too-distant history. Indeed, with his deference to New Labour and its apparatchiks, Starmer was always doomed to be hoist by his own moralistic petard.

Having spent the past few years calling for Tories’ heads when they so much as passed wind, Starmer was inevitably, and instantly, beset by scandal. Even so, Lord Alli’s shopping trips and Angela Rayner’s creative accounting are quaint compared with what Mandelson had been getting up to. Following the latest release of the Epstein Files by the US Department of Justice, he stands accused of handing politically and financially sensitive information to financier Jeffrey........

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