Starmer leadership speculation ‘serious’ but task ahead ‘very clear’, says Brown – as it happened
Brown: Starmer a man of integrity but faces serious task amid leadership speculation
As speculation over Starmer’s future as prime minister continues, Brown has come to his defence, saying he is “a man of integrity”.
But he acknowledged that Starmer is facing a “serious” battle to keep his job.
“I mean, there’s always speculation. It happened to me, it happened to Tony Blair. It happens to everybody about how their future should be gauged,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“But this is serious, and the task is very clear. The task is we’ve got to clean up the system, a total clean-up of the system, an end to the corruption and unethical behaviour. And if we don’t do it, we’ll pay a heavy price.”
When asked if Starmer was the right man to take the country forward, he said: “I can look in his eyes and I can see that he is a man of integrity. He wants to do the right things.
“Perhaps he’s been too slow to do the right things, but he must do the right things now, and let’s judge what he does, on what happens in the next few months when he tries to, and I believe (he) will try, to clean up the system.”
Key events
Closing summary
That’s all from us on the UK politics blog, thanks for following along.
Here are the main news lines from today:
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Gordon Brown came out in defence of Keir Starmer, describing him as a “man of integrity” but acknowledged that he was in a “serious” situation as speculation continues over whether he will remain as prime minister. He suggested Starmer may have been “too slow to do the right things” and “made the wrong decision” in appointing Peter Mandelson to a senior diplomatic role, but he urged Labour MPs to stand by him.
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The Metropolitan police said the searches on two properties linked to Mandelson have concluded and that its investigation will “take some time”. Police executed search warrants at two houses in London and Wiltshire yesterday as part of an ongoing investigation into misconduct in public office offences. In a statement this morning, the Met police said the investigation is “complex” and will require “a significant amount of further evidence gathering and analysis”.
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The Green party leader Zack Polanski has called for Starmer to resign, saying the Mandelson scandal “erodes trust in politics”. Speaking at a campaign event in Gorton and Denton, where a byelection is due to take place later this month, Polanski said the prime minister “needs to go” after showing a “catastrophic level of misjudgment” by making Mandelson the ambassador to the US last year.
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The Liberal Democrats have urged the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to immediately investigate Mandelson, saying his apparent decision to leak market-sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein may have led to insider trading. Daisy Cooper, the MP for St Albans and the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, wrote to the FCA saying the sharing of confidential information with a private financier “could easily have provided an unfair and lucrative advantage in the financial markets, either by Epstein himself or by his associates”.
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The Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard was suspended from the party amid a new investigation into sexual harassment allegations. The party said it had received advice that a 2013 inquiry into the claims made by four women against Lord Rennard was “flawed in several respects”. Rennard previously said he was sorry if he had “inadvertently encroached” upon anyone’s “personal space”.
The PA news agency has reported that a top corporate and finance lawyer visited a house linked to Mandelson near Regent’s Park in London today.
Adrian Darbishire KC was at the property for about 90 minutes, and while he declined to comment, including whether he is representing Mandelson, he did confirm his identity.
PA reported that he was seen at the property yesterday while it was being searched by police officers.
‘Pestering for a role’: how Mandelson talked his way back into the Labour fold
A general election was on the horizon and Peter Mandelson was everywhere. “He didn’t have a desk but he would dip in and out on big issues; he was always there for advice,” recalled a former Labour official of the party’s run-up to the campaign in 2024.
“He would be in and out of the Loto [leader of the opposition] office in Westminster, picking people off individually, ‘We need to chat and do this’, sort of thing.”
The Labour peer’s presence was welcomed by some, who found it reassuring to have a member of the election-winning New Labour team around, but others were notably seeking to keep a distance.
“Sue didn’t want him near anything,” said the source of Sue Gray, who was then Keir Starmer’s chief of staff and for six years before that was head of the Cabinet Office’s ethics and propriety team. “She kept trying to push him away. I think by that point, he was definitely, like, pestering for a role and wanting a role. She could probably see that all of this would happen.”
Read the full report here:
Meanwhile, in Gorton and Denton, Zack Polanski is campaigning with Green party candidate Hannah Spencer ahead of the byelection on 26 February. Spencer also brought her four greyhounds along, sporting party colour raincoats.
In case you missed it, the Guardian reported yesterday that Reform UK will face a police investigation in Gorton and Denton after admitting it sent out letters from a “concerned neighbour” which did not state they had been funded and distributed by the party.
Dozens of voters in the Greater Manchester constituency reported receiving letters from a pensioner written in a handwriting-style font. The letters do not include an imprint saying who they have been funded and distributed by, as required by electoral law.
Read the full report here:
Away from the Mandelson scandal, Keir Starmer has been accused of hypocrisy after cutting funding to the World Food Programme (WFP) by a third while pledging to tackle “suffering and starvation”.
The reduction of UK funding to the WFP from $610m (£448m) in 2024 to $435m last year is part of a wider reduction in aid spending that campaigners said was putting lives at risk.
On top of the WFP cuts, government has also failed to make any financial pledge despite hosting a two-day conference last year on starvation and malnutrition in Afghanistan.
A government spokesperson said the UK remained the fifth largest donor to the WFP.
Michael Bates, a former Conservative aid minister in the House of Lords, said ministers were cutting funding as cases of starvation were growing “exponentially”.
He said:
If this was just a UK story it would be bad enough, but we are seeing it is a French story, it is a German story and a US story.
All these countries are cutting. There will be a time lag but this will cost lives. We have a responsibility to protect these lives.
The UK made it a commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development in 2015 in order to align with a UN target. The Conservative government cut that commitment to 0.5%.
On entering government, Starmer told a G20 summit in Brazil that his administration would prioritise “the fight against hunger” and would tackle “suffering and starvation”.
But last year, Starmer announced that aid spending would be reduced to 0.3% of GDP from 2027, in order to increase defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2027.
Geraldine McKelvie
Commenting on Rennard’s suspension, a Lib Dem spokesperson said:
Rennard has had the Liberal Democrat whip in the House of Lords and his party membership suspended, and the party is conducting a new investigation into these allegations.
The party has now received legal advice that the 2013 investigation into allegations against Rennard was flawed in several respects.
Ed Davey has made clear he believes Rennard should not be a member of the House of Lords and that it should be made easier for peers to be expelled from the Lords for serious misconduct.
You can read the full story here:
Lib Dem peer suspended from party
Geraldine McKelvie
The Liberal Democrat peer Chris Rennard has been suspended from the party amid a new investigation into sexual harassment allegations.
The party said it had received advice that a 2013 inquiry into the claims made by four women against Lord Rennard was “flawed in several respects”.
The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, believes Rennard, 65, should not be a member of the House of Lords, the party added.
In turn, Rennard, a former chief executive of the party who was awarded a life peerage in 1999, pointed to a series of investigations by police and lawyers that had concluded the allegations against him could not be proved.
He previously said he was sorry if he had “inadvertently encroached” upon anyone’s “personal space”.
Three of the women involved in the original claim welcomed the move as “the first signs of change” by the party.
The former deputy party chair Alison Goldsworthy, the academic Alison Smith, and Bridget Harris, a former adviser to Nick Clegg, issued a joint statement after the latest developments.
They said:
We decided to speak out in 2013 so that future generations of women could participate in politics safely. We did not expect a fair investigation to take so long and hope that the next steps will finally put the matter to rest.
The fourth complainant, the former councillor Susan Gaszczak, resigned from the party in 2014 after the original investigation. She said at the time she “could no longer remain a member of a party that feels it acceptable for the then chief executive to invite me to his hotel room to advance my political career”.
Speaking of Polanski, the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone has been on the road with the Green party leader, from protests and podcasts to Soho’s legendary Heaven nightclub.
You can read Simon’s piece here:
Green party leader Zack Polanski has called on Starmer to resign, claiming the Mandelson scandal “erodes trust in politics”.
Polanski said the PM “needs to go” after showing a “catastrophic level of misjudgment” by making Lord Mandelson the ambassador to the US.
He told the Press Association:
I think the Peter Mandelson scandal actually is bad for democracy in general. I think it erodes trust in politicians.
I think we already know that people deeply mistrust the political system and, actually, I just think it reflects on everyone really badly.
I do think Keir Starmer needs to go though.
Keir Starmer knew that Peter Mandelson was still friends with a notorious paedophile, was still staying in his house and he brought him into the heart of government because he knew he could whisper into Donald Trump’s ear.
That’s a catastrophic level of misjudgment. It wasn’t just one mistake – with Keir Starmer we’ve seen misjudgment after misjudgment.
Starmer claims he was misled by Mandelson over the extent of his ties to Epstein post-conviction.
Reform UK’s flagship council has been accused of telling a “blatant lie” after its claim of nearly £40m in savings on net zero were found to be based on hypothetical projects for which there was no documentation.
Kent county council, which has a £2.5bn annual budget, is one of 10 where Nigel Farage’s party has outright control and is seen as a test case for whether the insurgent party can govern competently.
The council’s leadership claimed it has found £100m in savings, £39.5m of which come from what it said was two net zero-related projects: £32m by scrapping a programme to make properties more environmentally friendly, and £7.5m by not making the council’s fleet of vehicles electric by 2030.
After the council leader, Linden Kemkaran, announced these at a council meeting last July, Polly Billington, a Labour MP in Kent, requested details of the apparent savings via a freedom of information request, setting off a months-long battle with the council.
The eventual answer said the two projects were documented in two lines of a “potential capital projects” section of the council’s 2025-26 budget plans, but added they had no business cases or identified funding.
Read the full report here:
John McDonnell, a Labour MP and former shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, has questioned (again) why senior party figures did not raise concerns over Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador at the time. “I did,” he said in post on X.
He described Starmer as “a leader who in denial looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights” and railed against “deluded leadership contenders fighting like rats in a sack”.
He added: “If we are to save our party and Labour in government we need a thorough cleansing process which exposes not just the role Mandelson played but also the influence of other wealthy individuals and corporations and the way a brutal political culture has undermined party democracy.”
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