Why did Starmer ignore the evidence against Mandelson?
Rock & Roll Politics with Steve Richards
Podmasters
4.7 • 909 Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The release of the Mandelson documents shows the degree to which his appointment was a huge risk. Why did the lawyerly, cautious Starmer overrule the warnings and press ahead despite all the consequences?
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Written and presented by Steve Richards.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast with me, Steve Richards. |
| 0:20.6 | Thank you for tuning in |
| 0:22.0 | and as ever we've got a lot to cram in in our time together but i'm quite busy as well i'm doing |
| 0:27.6 | this from edinburgh i'm going to be giving a talk later on leadership in edinburgh and uh yeah it's wild |
| 0:36.9 | here as i record in my hotel rooms, storms battering. I assume |
| 0:41.2 | all trains will be cancelled within five minutes and I'll be here for the rest of my life. |
| 0:47.1 | Meanwhile, if it's okay with all of you, I'm going to reflect on just what is partly an interesting psychological question. |
| 0:57.8 | Why did Keir Stama, a former director of public prosecutions, a lawyer, absolutely immersed in the world of reading evidence and so on, ignore the warnings, clear, clear warnings about Peter Mandelson |
| 1:14.0 | in the context of the appointment to this key job in Washington. |
| 1:20.3 | And we need to delve deep, but I'm not even sure as we delve deep in the cooperative |
| 1:25.5 | quite what the answer is, which is always interesting, |
| 1:29.6 | like analyzing a Shakespeare play, you can return to it again and again and again. |
| 1:34.2 | I'm not comparing Kirstama to Lear or Hamlet or these characters, but it is fascinating. |
| 1:41.2 | Then we've got some brilliant emails, obviously, on the ongoing situation in the Middle East, |
| 1:47.7 | and other themes too. So we'll come to them. Just a few notices. I'm speaking at the York |
| 1:56.7 | Book Festival. I think it's next week, or is it the week after. I will put the date in the blurb for |
| 2:03.2 | the podcast. Then the show, the rock and roll politics show is live at the Cambridge Book Festival |
| 2:10.5 | in April and King's Place on May the 11th. All the tickets are available on the respective websites and in the blurb for the |
| 2:19.1 | podcast. So there we are. Those are speedily announced assembly notices before we now move on to |
| 2:28.0 | that question of Stama. Because what is clear, but we knew it already, actually. And Kier Starrma has said at |
| 2:35.8 | Prime Minister's questions, he knew that Peter Mandelson had maintained a relationship with Epstein |
| 2:43.3 | after his first incarceration, Epstein's incarceration. And there we saw in a two-page summary |
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