POLICE PROBE<\/p>\n
Kendall said Starmer should remain in his job because he had “made the right call” on big issues, such as building closer relations with the European Union and limiting Britain’s involvement in the Iran war.<\/p>\n
Polls suggest Starmer is one of Britain’s most unpopular prime ministers ever, in part because of several policy mis-steps.<\/p>\n
He has endured repeated questions about his judgement for selecting Mandelson whose friendship with Epstein was well known, and faced down calls from Labour’s leader in Scotland to resign over the issue earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Starmer sacked Mandelson in September 2025 after new details emerged about the depth of the ex-envoy’s ties to Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while facing sex-trafficking charges.<\/p>\n
UK police are investigating allegations of misconduct in office by Mandelson when he was a Labour minister more than 15 years ago. He was arrested and released in February.<\/p>\n
Mandelson, 72, has not been charged and denies criminal wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Starmer and his Labour party are bracing for a chastening set of local elections next month, including in the devolved Scottish and Welsh parliaments.<\/p>\n
The results are likely to renew questions about Starmer’s future, although there appears to be little appetite within Labour to a launch leadership challenge right now, with no obvious successor available and war raging in the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"POLICE PROBE Kendall said Starmer should remain in his job because he had “made the right call” on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,420,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-539673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-keir-starmer","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}