Starmer apologises to Epstein victims as he seeks to weather Mandelson scandal
Keir Starmer has attempted to reboot his faltering premiership, apologising for appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and urging his MPs to unite behind him.The prime minister gave a lengthy speech on Wednesday about community cohesion, but faced a barrage of questions about his leadership after one of his most turbulent days since entering Downing Street.With his authority over the Labour party and the Commons looking shakier than ever, the prime minister insisted he understood MPs’ concerns and issued a frank apology to victims of Jeffrey Epstein.Starmer said he regretted appointing Mandelson in Washington given his relationship with the financier and convicted child sex offender, about which he said the Labour peer had repeatedly lied.“The victims of Epstein have lived with trauma that most of us could barely comprehend, and they have to relive it again and again.
They have seen accountability delayed and too often denied to them,“I want to say this,I am sorry – sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed, sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him, and sorry that even now you’re forced to watch this story unfold in public once again,”Seeking to reassert his reputation for probity in office, Starmer added: “I entered politics because I wanted to change our country for the better, to make it fairer, safer, more secure,“I still believe that most people who serve in public life, whether as civil servants or elected politicians, do so for the same reason, because they believe in service, because they believe in duty, because they believe in the public good.
But that is not why some people do it and that is not why Mandelson did it.”Starmer was speaking from Hastings after a dramatic day in the Commons on Wednesday, during which Labour MPs prompted yet another government U-turn after threatening to rebel over Starmer’s plans to publish documents related to Mandelson’s appointment.The prime minister had wanted the country’s most senior civil servant to oversee the release of those documents but decided to allow it to be overseen by a parliamentary committee instead after a widespread backlash from his own party.Starmer said on Thursday he had wanted to release those documents a day earlier, but had been prevented from doing so by the police, who warned it could prejudice an investigation into Mandelson’s communications with Epstein.Starmer’s decision to appoint Mandelson in the first place, coupled with what many MPs see as his mishandling of the aftermath, has prompted several of them to call for the sacking of his most senior adviser Morgan McSweeney, or his own resignation.
“It’s like Chris Pincher on steroids,” one MP said on Wednesday, referring to the scandal that eventually brought down Boris Johnson.A former minister added: “We were meant to be the ones who didn’t do this stuff.It’s time for a fresh start, the sooner the better.”Speaking to the Guardian on Thursday, Labour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, said: “The most important thing is that when we all make mistakes – we’re all making judgments all the time, sometimes you get those wrong – the most important thing is that you absolutely learn from that and you make sure that those things don’t happen.Don’t make the same mistake again.
”Starmer said on Thursday that he understood MPs’ concerns, though insisted they were directed at Mandelson and not himself.“I understand their anger and frustration,” he said.“I am angry and frustrated like them, because nobody wants to see these deceits in public life.They are angry about his association with Epstein, as am I.”Referring to recent documents that appear to show Mandelson sharing sensitive government information with Epstein while he was a minister in Gordon Brown’s government, Starmer added: “They’re angry about what he did at the tail end of the last Labour government.
”The prime minister had intended to focus on his “Pride in Place” scheme, a £5bn programme of investment in deprived neighbourhoods to which he is allocating an additional £800m,He warned during his speech that without such investment, local communities risked fracturing and being exploited by the far right,And he took specific aim at Matthew Goodwin, the Reform candidate in the upcoming Gorton and Denton byelection,“Politicians like the Reform candidate for Gorton and Denton, who look at people like Rishi Sunak, Shabana Mahmood, and presumably Marcus Rashford, Shirley Bassey and Anas Sarwar, and say they can’t really be English or Welsh or Scottish because they are not white – [that is] an affront to British values,” he said,But he admitted his message of unity and cohesion was likely to be overshadowed by the lack of unity in his own party.
“My message [to MPs] is that every minute we spend talking about anything other than the cost of living, pride in place, how we stabilise our economy, how we make the massive argument we need to make – the argument that we must unite this country, understand what it is to be British, to be tolerant, reasonable, compassionate and diverse and fight for it, against the toxic division of Reform – every minute you spend not talking and focusing on that is an absolute minute wasted,” he said.Additional reporting by Josh Halliday
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘We are now at the women-should-smile-more stage of his presidency’
Late-night hosts dug into Donald Trump’s deflections from the Jeffrey Epstein files and the backlash to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show.Jimmy Kimmel kept the focus on the Epstein files on Tuesday, because it’s “a story that Donald Trump wishes would go away. But it won’t just go away. It’s the kind of story that makes headlines, and he knows that. So what he does is he bombards us with a dozen other crazy things to try to flood the zone
The Guide #228: Against my better judgment, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has me back in Westeros
Just when I thought I was out … just when I thought I would no longer have that sweeping, ever so slightly irritating theme tune ringing around my head for hours on end, or feel the need to remember the difference between House Tyrell, Tully or Arryn, I suddenly find myself pulled back in to the Game of Thrones extended universe. The blame for this goes to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the likably low-key Game of Thrones spin-off series about a cloth-eared hedge knight and his shrewd child squire currently ambling through its first season on HBO/Sky Atlantic.Before its arrival, I had departed Westeros for good. My faith had first been shaken by that rushed, badly plotted final season of Game of Thrones proper, which bashed to bits six previous seasons’ worth of finely tuned political intrigue and fascinating character dynamics in a succession of endless (often badly lit) CGI-laden battles, before flambéing them in dragon fire. Worse came with House of the Dragon, a dreary, po-faced, endlessly withholding slog of a prequel series, the enjoyment of which seemed to rest entirely on whether the viewer was familiar with deep lore buried within a Westeros history book that George RR Martin wrote instead of cracking on with that sixth novel
Jon Stewart on Epstein files: ‘I’m just not sure anybody is going to be held accountable’
Late-night hosts reacted to the latest batch of Epstein files, which failed to redact several victims’ names and photos while still protecting Donald Trump.Jon Stewart returned to his Monday night desk at the Daily Show fuming at the lack of consequences for the men named in the files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – which still have not been fully released, though the justice department published another somewhat redacted batch on Friday.There have been consequences for “none of these dudes”, he said. “They’ve been on the plane. They’ve been on the island
Sydney Biennale 2026: Hoor Al Qasimi unveils expansive program for 25th edition
The Biennale of Sydney has revealed the final lineup details for its 25th edition, scheduled to open mid-March across five key venues, including White Bay Power Station, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Penrith Regional Gallery.Featuring 83 artists, collaborations and collectives from 37 countries including Australia, the 25th Biennale of Sydney is titled “Rememory” – after the term coined by author Toni Morrison – and will “[explore] the intersection of memory and history as a means of revisiting, reconstructing, and reclaiming histories”.It represents the vision of artistic director Hoor Al Qasimi, the first Arab appointed to the role and the eighth woman in the festival’s 53-year history.Highlights announced on Tuesday include a giant functioning clay oven at White Bay Power Station in Rozelle, created by Argentinian sculptor Gabriel Chaile, which will be activated for the Biennale’s opening weekend and at key moments through the festival to serve visitors Peruvian cuisine. Also for food lovers is a large vat of tabbouleh, created by Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh as part of a community-based performance in Granville
Meryl Streep is as withering as ever in first full-length trailer for Devil Wears Prada 2
The first full-length trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 has been released, and given more details on David Frankel’s hotly anticipated follow-up. In the promo, Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly and her right-hand man Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, are seen reuniting with Anne Hathaway’s Andy and, later, Emily Blunt’s Emily.Priestly remembers neither, nor even her habit of referring to all her fashion magazine assistants as Emily – presumably on account of her withering alpha-editor status rather than, say, dementia.The film’s teaser trailer, which was released in November, was reportedly the most-viewed comedy trailer in 15 years, with 181.5m views on YouTube in its first 24 hours
Wil Anderson: ‘I honestly believe being mistaken for Adam Hills is one of the great gifts of my life’
Do you have a nemesis?I know Adam Hills did one of these and he chose me as his nemesis because we often get confused. He said it in a nice way – but I wouldn’t say Adam, because I honestly believe being mistaken for Adam Hills is one of the great gifts of my life. Even at the peaks of my career going well, it was always quite a good reminder that people never care as much about anything that you care about. Sometimes you’d have moments where you think: “Everyone thinks this or that about me” – and then someone would say, “Hey, I love you Adam!” Adam’s a very well-known comedian, I’m a very well-known comedian and yet, half the time when somebody comes up to say g’day to us, they don’t even know who it is. There’s something really nice and humbling in that
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