Oh, Mandy - political sketch
Yesterday's a dream, I face the morning, Crying on a breeze, the pain is calling.
Barry Manilow - Mandy
Well, the man who, less than twenty-four hours previously at Prime Minister's Questions at 12pm in the House of Commons, had Sir Keir Starmer's full support and endorsement, is gone. That had been high noon for the PM and, at 10.45 this morning in the same Chamber, in answer to an Urgent Question granted by the Speaker, the Foreign Office Minister, Stephen Doughty, dropped the bombshell that Lord Peter Mandelson had been sacked as the UK's Ambassador to the USA. Cue gasps and cheers in equal measure from Members who had bothered to turn up.
Doughty by name and by nature, the Minister doggedly responded to questions by quoting the same line, that the sacking followed the emergence of further details which had not been revealed when Mandelson was originally vetted for the post. Asked whether the PM had been aware of these details when he gave his answers at PMQs the day before, Doughty merely repeated his mantra. The Opposition benches were understandably unimpressed by his response while the few Labour MPs present shuffled uncomfortably or tried to deflect the anger by pointing out the Tories' failures of probity, as if two wrongs somehow made a right.
Coming so soon after losing his Deputy, Starmer will, perhaps, be reflecting on Lady Bracknell's famous reaction to news of the loss of both Jack Worthing's parents - if, that is, Starmer does reflection, which, given his track record, looks increasingly unlikely. Why he appointed a serial resignee in the first place is a mystery but it has certainly come back to haunt him now. He couldn't have foreseen the embarrassing scenario that will now play out at Windsor Castle next week when Donald Trump, with his own Epstein issues, meets King Charles whose brother has a similar cloud hanging over him. Mandy will hover over the proceedings like Banquo's ghost. Awks doesn't begin to cut it.
He could (and probably now wishes he had) have been less fulsome in his support of Mandelson, especially after the recent Angela Rayner debacle, but he seems not to learn from his mistakes. Quick thinking and fleet-footedness seem not to be personality traits he enjoys - and I'm not sure they can be taught, or learnt. Surely, though, as a senior lawyer, he mastered the art of circumspection?: if you're not sure, fudge it. Maybe he was sure, which calls his judgment even more severely into question. He just looks like a bit of a plodder, if not an utter plonker.
With the annual Labour Party Conference coming up in Liverpool from 28 September to 1 October now might be a good time for members to take a leaf out of the Tories' playbook and ruthlessly dispatch Starmer. I suspect the only reason the Tories won't try to do the same to Kemi Badenoch at their bash in Manchester in early-October is that nobody wants the job right now - maybe even the current incumbent - though you can bet there'll be some fierce plotting regardless.
The Labour Party needs to consider its future and act while there's still time. The local elections next year are bound to give Nigel Farage's Reform UK an even bigger boost and, providing Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana get round to it before 2029, the launch of their as yet unnamed new left-wing offering could seriously upset Labour's applecart. If it isn't clear to Labour by now that they're highly unlikely to win again with Starmer at the helm they don't deserve to.
Maybe they don't - and, at this rate, they won't.