Starmer promised change - but his record tells a different story, writes James Hanson

It featured a large photo of Sir Keir Starmer and a single word: ‘change’. After 14 years of Conservative government, much of which was dominated by infighting, incompetence and breaches of public trust, the Labour leader promised to turn the page.

I didn’t vote for Starmer, but even I expected his premiership to be, at the very least, calm, competent and go some way to restoring standards in public life. I also thought he’d use Labour’s 174-seat majority to attempt bold policy solutions to some of Britain’s biggest structural problems, such as social care, housing and infrastructure.

Instead, the man who promised change has delivered more of the same. Where once Tory psychodrama raged, now constant Labour leadership speculation abounds. Where the last Conservative government squandered its parliamentary majority, this Downing Street has been similarly reluctant to wield its - even greater - power. Most egregiously of all, Starmer’s promise to restore standards in public life has proven to be a lie.

Within weeks of taking office, Labour was embroiled in scandal after it emerged party donor Lord Alli had been showering the PM, his wife, and other senior ministers with free gifts. He’d also been given unrestricted access to Number 10, leading to the ‘passes for glass’ moniker. Was this really any different to Boris Johnson’s behaviour, when he asked a Tory donor to refurbish his Downing Street flat?

Since then, Starmer’s corruption minister, Tulip Siddiq, has had to resign over allegations of corruption; his housing secretary, Angela Rayner, quit after not paying housing tax; and his transport secretary left after being revealed as a convicted fraudster. There was also the case of Rushanari Ali, the homelessness minister, who resigned amid accusations of hypocrisy for evicting tenants to sell a property, only to later re-list it for rent at a significantly higher price - actions the government was in the process of legislating against.

If any of this had happened during the previous Conservative government, Starmer and his colleagues would have been screaming blue murder. Indeed they did (rightly) over partygate, PPE contracts, and a multitude of other scandals. And yet, perhaps blinded by their own self-righteousness, the prime minister and his allies seem completely unaware of the fact they’ve disgraced themselves to exactly the same extent.

Which brings us onto Peter Mandelson. Starmer’s claim that he wasn’t fully aware of the disgraced peer’s links to Jeffrey Epstein is fundamentally dishonest. The PM may not have known about Mandelson’s leaking of government information, but their ongoing friendship - even after Epstein's conviction - was a matter of public record. The truth is Starmer and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, simply decided this didn’t matter.

Instead, Downing Street weighed up the pros and cons of appointing Mandelson as US ambassador, chalked up his Epstein links in the ‘cons’ column, and ploughed on regardless. To pretend otherwise is an insult to our intelligence. And yet Starmer cannot bring himself to admit the truth: that he simply decided Mandelson’s friendship with a convicted paedophile was not a disqualifying factor.

There’s a grim parallel here. In 2022, when deputy chief whip Chris Pincher faced allegations of sexual harassment, it emerged that Boris Johnson had been aware of Pincher’s past behaviour when appointing him. But like Starmer with Mandelson, Johnson simply didn’t care. He failed the country with his lack of judgement.

Ultimately, it was the Chris Pincher affair that finally forced the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership. Whether Starmer’s defenestration happens within days, weeks or months, I suspect historians will view the Mandelson scandal as being the moment this prime minister passed the point of no return. Starmer can have no complaints.

He promised change - but he’s been just as dishonest as the Tories.

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