Morgan McSweeney, the man who served as Prime Minister Keir Starmer's chief of staff, resigned Sunday after taking responsibility for one of the most damaging appointments in recent British political memory — recommending Peter Mandelson as the United Kingdom's ambassador to the United States.
The resignation caps a weeks-long implosion that began when documents released by the Justice Department in January revealed the depth of Mandelson's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Those ties weren't peripheral. They were financial, prolonged, and — if newly surfaced documents are accurate — potentially involved the transfer of sensitive government information.
In a statement obtained by The Guardian, McSweeney called the appointment decision:
"Wrong."
He continued:
"In the circumstances, the only honourable course is to step aside."
And he didn't mince words about Mandelson himself:
"He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself."
That last line lands differently when you remember it was McSweeney who recommended him in the first place.
The timeline here matters. Epstein was convicted in 2008 on two felony counts of soliciting prostitution, one involving a minor. That conviction was public knowledge — not a secret, not buried in sealed filings. It was the baseline any competent vetting process should have flagged.
But the newly released documents painted a far darker picture. Between 2003 and 2004, Epstein transferred a total of $75,000 to accounts connected to Mandelson or his husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva. After Epstein's 2008 conviction, Mandelson maintained contact with him. And according to AP reporting, newly surfaced documents indicate Mandelson may have passed along sensitive government information to Epstein in the period following the 2008 global financial crisis.
This is not a case of a politician shaking the wrong hand at a fundraiser. Financial transfers. Continued contact after a felony conviction involving a minor. The possible sharing of government intelligence with a convicted sex offender. Each detail worse than the last.
Starmer eventually asked Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty to pull Mandelson from the ambassadorship. On Sept. 11, Doughty addressed the House of Commons and explained that what was now known about Mandelson's relationship with Epstein was:
"Materially different"
from what the government understood at the time of the appointment. Doughty continued:
"In particular, Lord Mandelson's suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein's first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information. In the light of that and mindful, as we all are, of the victims of Epstein's appalling crimes, Lord Mandelson has been withdrawn as ambassador with immediate effect."
Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party on Feb. 1. The withdrawal was immediate. The damage was not.
McSweeney, to his credit, didn't try to spread the blame sideways. He accepted full responsibility for recommending Mandelson and called for a fundamental overhaul of the government's vetting and due-diligence process. He also pledged continued support for Starmer and Labour's agenda.
But the call for better vetting raises an uncomfortable question: what vetting was done in the first place? Epstein's 2008 conviction was a matter of public record for nearly two decades. The financial transfers to accounts connected to Mandelson were discoverable. The continued contact after conviction was known in political circles. None of this required the Justice Department's January document release to surface.
The British government didn't lack the tools to vet Mandelson. It lacked the will — or the interest.
This is what happens when political loyalty outweighs basic scrutiny. Mandelson is Labour royalty, a fixture of the Blair era and a figure whose connections and influence made him a perennial player in party politics. The kind of man who gets appointed to things because of who he is, not because anyone bothered to ask who he's been associating with.
That instinct — promoting insiders, rewarding allies, treating ambassadorships as patronage — isn't unique to Labour. But Labour made this particular bed. They chose to place a man with documented financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein into one of the most important diplomatic posts their country has. And they did it while their party positioned itself as the moral alternative to Conservative governance.
The contradiction writes itself. This is the same Labour Party that lectures endlessly about accountability, safeguarding, and institutional integrity. The same political movement that treats every conservative misstep as evidence of systemic rot. Yet when it came to their own appointment process, a cursory search engine query would have raised red flags they apparently never bothered to check.
McSweeney is gone. Mandelson is gone — from the ambassadorship and from the party. Starmer remains, carrying the political weight of an appointment he approved and a chief of staff whose judgment proved catastrophic.
The question now isn't whether the vetting process will be overhauled. McSweeney called for it on his way out the door, and the political pressure makes some reform inevitable. The question is whether Starmer's government treats this as a genuine institutional failure or simply moves on once the news cycle turns — the way governments always do when the scandal belongs to them.
Seventy-five thousand dollars flowed from Epstein to accounts connected to the man Labour chose as its face in Washington. That fact sat in discoverable records for years. Nobody looked — or nobody wanted to see.
