Can Peter Mandelson be stripped of his peerage over Epstein links?
Keir Starmer has said he wants Peter Mandelson out of the House of Lords, after the peer was found to have deeper links with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, including emails which suggested Epstein had sent thousands of pounds to Lord Mandelson’s husband.Others appeared to show confidential market-sensitive information from inside No 10 was shared with Epstein while Mandelson was business secretary.But removing Mandelson’s peerage is exceptionally complex – and there are many different routes it could take.No.He has said he “believes that Peter Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords or use the title”.
But he has said the Lords should implement changes to make it easier to expel peers.In the meantime, it is the hope of No 10 that Mandelson resigns of his own accord.Mandelson is on a leave of absence from the Lords and has resigned from the Labour party.Under the 2014 House of Lords Reform Act, Mandelson could resign from the Lords and relinquish his peerage.But this would not strip him of the title – he would still be free to call himself Lord Peter Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool.
There is another way he could go quietly without resigning.His current leave of absence from the Lords lasts until the end of the parliamentary session in May.He is no longer US ambassador, the reason for his absence, so he needs to come back and retake the oath in the Lords in the next session.If he does not do so by the end of that next session, his membership automatically lapses.But again, he would keep the title.
It may be possible for Mandelson to be expelled if he is found to have broken the Lords code of conduct – under the 2014 Act – but it is not simple.A complaint must be made and reviewed and there is a question mark over whether the current code of conduct can be retrospectively applied, as the code has been significantly strengthened in recent years.This is clearly what the government is hoping will happen if Mandelson does not resign.Asked if Starmer wanted Mandelson out of the Lords “by hook or by crook”, the prime minister’s spokesperson emphatically said yes.The Labour manifesto says the government intends to strengthen the powers to remove disgraced members.
This is not part of the current programme of work in the Lords – and no preparatory work seems to have been done on how to achieve this.It is the crown that grants a peerage and, according to the bible of Lords procedure, Gadd’s Peerage Law, it is then “very difficult to deprive the holder of it”.A peerage can only be removed by an act of parliament.This has taken place before – the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 – which removed the peerages of a group of lords who had aided Britain’s enemies during the war.We are far from those circumstances.
No 10 believes it would be exceptionally constitutionally difficult to go down that route, even with a large Commons majority.Many former peers who have left still use the title lord, even hereditary peers who were removed in the late 1990s.Under the current system it seems near impossible that even the most egregious acts can lead to a peer losing their titles.
Top players reject offer to have greater say in running of major tennis championships
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Wolff urges Mercedes rivals to ‘focus on themselves’ amid 2026 engine row
Toto Wolff has dismissed claims from rivals over the legality of his team’s new engine, insisting it is within the regulations. The Mercedes team principal said that the onus lay with the other manufacturers who had missed an opportunity and that they should get their “shit together”.The row over whether Mercedes and Red Bull have stolen a march on the opposition in their engine design has dominated the buildup to the new season and Wolff notably did not rule out other teams protesting against the legality of their engines after they are used competitively for the first time at the Australian Grand Prix on 8 March.The disagreement centres on Mercedes and Red Bull having taken advantage of the regulations in increasing the compression ratio of their engines, set at 16:1 but measured when the car is at rest. It is believed both teams have made use of the thermal expansion of certain components to increase the compression ratio to as much as 18:1 when the car is running – equating to potentially as much as a 0
Winter Olympics 2026: what you need to know if following from Australia
The 2026 Winter Olympics officially open in the early hours of Friday 7 February, Australian time, with the opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium. The Games run for two weeks, culminating in the closing ceremony on 23 February in Verona at the same time of 6am AEDT.Several sports with packed schedules, including curling and ice hockey, begin a couple of days before the opening ceremony. Australia’s mixed curling team just missed out on qualifying, despite being ranked No 1 in December last year, while Australia won’t be represented in ice hockey in Italy. The ice hockey will be the final event of the Games with the men’s gold-medal game at 12
Team GB slider Matt Weston: ‘I don’t ever stand at the top aiming for anything less than gold’
The 28-year-old has rebuilt from crushing disappointment in the skeleton four years ago to become Britain’s best hope for Winter Olympic gold at Milano Cortina“Excitement is definitely the word I’d use,” Matt Weston says as the world No 1 and the reigning world champion in the skeleton looks ahead to the start of the Winter Olympics this week. Weston has just won the skeleton World Cup, winning five out of seven races and finishing second to his teammate, Marcus Wyatt, in the two others.The 28-year-old is clearly Team GB’s strongest hope for a gold medal at Milano Cortina and enthusiasm and belief pour out of him. “I’m just so excited,” he says. “The pressure is higher, it’s a bigger event, and there are a lot of eyes on me
Alcaraz makes strong case for being the best young male player tennis has seen | Tumaini Carayol
There were many things that could have rushed into Carlos Alcaraz’s mind following his attainment of a goal he has chased his entire life, the career grand slam, achieved by defeating Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open.He could have thought about the immense hard work and discipline it took to achieve all of this, his comically large, tight-knit team and family that faithfully follows him around the world or even how close he came to losing his semi-final two days earlier.Instead, as Alcaraz navigated the long line of post-slam interviews for the seventh time, while tightly holding the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, his thoughts cast back to … his haters. “I’m thinking about the people who said I wouldn’t make it, who thought I’d come here to Australia and not even make it past the quarter-finals,” he told Eurosport Spain.“That I’d come here to Australia and not play good tennis
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