On Good Morning Britain, Susanna Reid tore apart the weak excuses put out by UK PM Keir Starmer over the ongoing Peter Mandelson scandal.
Susanna Reid: on it
This followed the PM’s latest round of pathetic denials he had any knowledge of disgraced Peter Mandelson failing to pass security vetting before he was appointed as ambassador to the US.
By setting out a clear timeline alongside Keir Starmer’s own past comments on ‘Petie’ Mandelson, Reid shows Starmer’s measly attempts to escape accountability simply do not stack up.
Moreover, this takedown of the UK Prime Minister underscores a serious issue in our democracy, where corrupting influences hold far too much sway in the corridors of power in Westminster. All the while, ordinary people are fed lie after lie and expected to swallow them.
Reid, like many across the country, appears to have had quite enough of Starmer’s nonsense.
Susanna Reid lays it out. Keir appointed Mandelson despite knowing everything about him, he claims he didn’t know Mandelson had failed the vetting, which means he never followed it up & never asked about it, & finally we know no.10 did know months ago so someone is lying
Damning pic.twitter.com/B3XDafRk5H
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 20, 2026
Keir Starmer is a liar
It will hardly surprise many in the electorate to learn that their PM is a liar. Frankly, his career has been littered with lies as he navigated his way to the upper echelons of power. In fact, we only have to look to 2019 Labour under Corbyn to see that lying has quite literally been Starmer’s comfort zone.
Reid makes this reality unmistakably clear by laying out a timeline of what was known and when. That, in turn, will tighten the pressure on Keir Starmer as scrutiny intensifies ahead of the May 7 local elections. Once again, the PM has left himself little room to wriggle out of a political mess of his own making. A mess he will undoubtedly be made to pay for at the ballots in just over two weeks.
Susanna Reid’s takedown in full:
Susanna Reid: It feels like there are three different issues here.
One is the judgment of Sir Keir Starmer right at the beginning, appointing Lord Peter Mandelson. He had been given a due diligence report. And on that report, it said Peter Mandelson had numerous conflicts of interest and described him carrying reputational risk.
A week later. It is announced by Sir Keir Starmer that Peter Mandelson was going to be the ambassador to the States.
So right off the bat, who appoints someone that you have been warned is a reputational risk? Never mind the vetting. You had been given a report that he was a walking red flag. So that’s the first issue.
The second issue is then he goes through this developed vetting. How competent are you as a prime minister that you then are not, as you say, either curious enough to know, well, what happened? Have we cleared him? Is it all safe? Keir Starmer in that position says, well, nobody told me.
As you say, it’s absolutely beggars belief that someone at number 10 wouldn’t have then said, is everything OK? Are we sure that we can now give him the green flag?
And then the third issue, it seems to me. is whether there is any lying going on, because that’s what Kemi Badenoch says. So, the Prime Minister has actually lied about this. As you mentioned, Gillian, there was a report a few months ago in The Independent. Downing Street knew Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting for the US ambassador role seven months ago because the reporter David Maddox at The Independent had… put concerns to Number 10, the then Director of Communications, Tim Allen, and said, I found out, or I’ve got a source that says MI6 had failed to clear Mandelson.
So David Maddox, the Independent, knew, Number 10 knew. So how can the Prime Minister say he didn’t know?
Finally, getting to the far more likely reality at the sinister heart of this sordid saga:
Gillian Keegan: Because he did not want to know.
It seems Starmer has even lost favour from pro-Israel voters, who he really should have in the bag:
Starmer has lost Good Morning Britain https://t.co/HFdsdwo2Fp
— Sandy.
Starmer is a disaster (@AddictScrabble) April 20, 2026
Of course, he bloody well knew – as Susanna Reid pointed out
The optics can no longer be denied, as our own Skwawkbox wrote recently:
In any other walk of life both Starmer and Mandelson would be toast. But it seems running a protection racket for the predatory elite comes with very little in the way of consequences these days. This is a whole lot more than just a typical Westminster sleaze story, isn’t it? Starmer’s Labour is recycling the very worst of Blairite cronyism instead of breaking with it, once and for all.
This is the same Starmer who purged socialists to the glee of the pro-Israel parliamentary Labour party, ditched public ownership, and told poor and working-class voters their demands for wealth taxes and rent controls were unrealistic.
Yet protecting a mate with extremely fucking grubby Epstein ties? That was apparently non-negotiable for Keir Starmer. It can be so very easy to mistakenly assume this is down to Starmer’s incompetence and horrific lack of judgement. But this is elite impunity baked into his DNA.
Cover-Up Keir Always Lies, Always
Make Keir Former PM Now https://t.co/nQTOSNzeZe
— CaseClosed (@wds08) April 20, 2026
Political advantage?
Others have gone further than Susanna Reid, questioning whether Mandelson’s ties to Epstein – and the shadow of the Epstein ‘kompromat’ files – may have played a role in his swift path to the White House. After all, it is becoming clearer by the day that a powerful and seedy few likely shape foreign affairs through damaging information they hold. Seen in that light, it doesn’t take a great leap to suggest that Starmer may have believed he could turn that cynical dynamic to his own advantage.
Here, Reid’s intervention powerfully hits the mark. It also exposes a wider truth: political leaders often prioritise their own advantage over decency, integrity in office, and, frankly, basic morality.
This has all come against the backdrop of our government’s ongoing complicity in the genocide on Gaza and Israel’s terrorism in the West Bank. Therefore, this palpable imbalance hardly surprises anyone.
For many across the UK, it will only change once Labour is out of government.
Featured image via the Canary
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