Half of British voters now believe Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer should step down over his handling of the Epstein scandal — and the numbers inside his own party aren't much kinder.
A YouGov poll found that 50 per cent of voters think Starmer should resign as leader, while just 24 per cent say he should remain. Among those who voted Labour in 2024, 37 per cent want him gone. Only 40 per cent of his own voters still back him to stay.
The crisis traces directly to Starmer's decision to appoint Lord Peter Mandelson — the veteran Labour operative once dubbed the "Prince of Darkness" — as Britain's ambassador to the United States. That appointment has now detonated spectacularly.
U.S. Department of Justice documents allege that Mandelson provided convicted child prostitution offender Jeffrey Epstein with confidential government information that could have been used to game financial markets. The documents further allege that Mandelson and his husband received thousands in payments from Epstein.
Starmer made what has been described as an explosive admission this week: he knew Mandelson had continued a relationship with Epstein after Epstein served prison time — and appointed him ambassador anyway.
That admission alone would wound most leaders. What happened next made it worse.
London's Metropolitan Police announced a formal investigation into Mandelson. On Friday evening, officers raided his properties in London and Wiltshire.
A sitting prime minister's handpicked ambassador to Washington — a man entrusted with the most consequential diplomatic relationship Britain maintains — is now the subject of a police raid linked to a convicted child sex offender. The appointment wasn't an inherited obligation or a bureaucratic accident. Starmer chose this, as Breitbart reports.
A separate YouGov survey commissioned by the Times of London delivered numbers that should terrify Labour strategists. Fifty-one per cent of voters now see Starmer as just as sleazy, or sleazier, than Boris Johnson. Nearly one in three voters view the Labour government as sleazier than the previous Conservative government — and 25 per cent of people who voted Labour in the last election agree.
On the specific question of Starmer's handling of the Mandelson affair, the verdict is decisive:
The Boris Johnson comparison carries a particular sting. Starmer personally led the charge demanding Johnson resign over Downing Street lockdown gatherings. He built his political brand on probity — the serious lawyer who would clean up after the Tories. Now, voters look at him and see something worse than the man he replaced.
Johnson, for all the chaos of his premiership, was ultimately brought down by a sex scandal involving his former deputy chief whip, Christopher Pincher, who faced allegations of groping two young men at a London private members' club. The Epstein connection is a scandal of a different magnitude entirely. Johnson's downfall involved an appointee's personal misconduct. Starmer's crisis involves his own decision to elevate a man tied — allegedly through money and confidential government information — to a convicted child sex offender.
Starmer even had his own lockdown party scandal to weather. The man who savaged Johnson for breaching COVID rules faced the same accusation. Voters noticed.
Inside Labour, the knives are out. Angela Rayner, Starmer's ousted ex-deputy, is all but openly maneuvering for his job. Starmer has reportedly attempted to rally Labour backbenchers by invoking the specter of Nigel Farage taking power — a sign of how thin the ice has become when the best argument for keeping a leader is fear of the opposition.
That argument may not hold. All polling over the past year has pointed toward Labour facing a potential electoral wipeout at the hands of Reform UK. Starmer's politically disastrous first year in office had already weakened him. The Epstein scandal didn't create his vulnerability — it exposed it.
There's a pattern with Labour's governing class that deserves attention. Mandelson served in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before Starmer brought him back from political exile and handed him one of Britain's most important diplomatic posts. The same small circle recycles endlessly. The same operative who allegedly took money from a convicted child sex offender and passed him confidential government information was deemed the right man to represent Britain in Washington. This isn't a staffing error. It's a culture.
Starmer is hanging on, but the structural math is brutal. When half the country wants you gone, and more than a third of your own voters agree, political survival becomes a matter of time rather than strategy. The Metropolitan Police investigation into Mandelson has only just begun. Whatever emerges from those raids in London and Wiltshire will land on Starmer's desk — because he is the man who made the appointment, knowing what he knew.
He demanded that Johnson resign from the parties. Voters are now asking what the standard is for knowingly installing an Epstein associate as your top diplomat.
So far, Starmer hasn't offered them an answer.
