The Mandelson affair is a tale of arrogance and entitlement - the privileged them and the furious us, writes Andrew Marr

Sir Keir Starmer said Lord Peter Mandelson's "deceit is incompatible with public service…he portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew, and when that became clear and it was not true, I sacked him.

Such deceit is incompatible with public service…no one is above accountability, and no one, however well connected, however experienced, however senior, should hold public office if they cannot meet the basic test of honesty.

Very good words. Will they be enough?

As I said yesterday, I also think the Prime Minister is a decent person who entered public life for the right reasons.

Being lied to is not a capital offence; but naïveté, when you’re Prime Minister, is pretty serious.

Let’s be clear.

The country is freshly disgusted by the Mandelson affair, doesn’t want to listen to Starmer, and the country remains disgusted by the way the Tories behaved when they were in power.

So today, the obvious conclusion, the overwhelming likelihood, is that we are heading towards a plague on both their houses election and a Reform government.

What, short of resigning, can Starmer do to save himself and to save Labour?

He must stop disdaining politics and start to think harder about what real politics means.

Example. He said today he wanted the country to be fairer, safer and more secure.

But the politics of Peter Mandelson, who he now regards as the viper he took to his bosom, is all about the interests of the super-rich, the corporate bankers, the big American tech companies digging themselves ever deeper into our public life. It wasn’t new labour or old labour it was anti-labour.

The Mandelson affair wasn’t just about one guy making a mistake about another guy.

It was about the arrogance and entitlement of the privileged them and, these days, the increasingly furious us. 

That’s why even though Epstein was deeply involved in the far right across Europe, and the Russians, populism hasn’t been set back by this affair.

It may be unfair, but Nigel Farage remains in a very strong position. We are heading for wild political upsets.

And it’s not about one man’s greed or lies, as the prime minister suggested today.

It’s about profound social unfairness.

It’s time, as somebody said once, to get back to basics. But is it even possible these days to take on the biggest corporate interests?

Well, today Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez said he would ban social media for children.

He called it a place of "addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation and violence”.

Elon Musk responded: “Dirty Sanchez is a tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain….Taking on the big guys means being ready for some proper fights…"

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Andrew Marr is an author, journalist and presenter for LBC.

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