There's one argument Starmer could make to save his skin but he won't dare do it | Jonathan Freedland

"Everything Donald Trump touches dies. He put his name on the Kennedy Center in Washington, prompting artists and performers to flee in such numbers that the venue will now shut down for approximately two years. The Washington Post under owner Jeff Bezos sought to ingratiate itself with the second Trump presidency; this week it announced 300 layoffs and the withering of that once great institution."

"Which points to a related irony, no less bitter. Because politics is Newtonian, with elections often won by those who represent an equal and opposite reaction to what has gone before, Starmer reached Downing Street in part because he was a boy scout the squeaky clean antidote to the sleaze of Boris Johnson. His pitch to the voters was that he was not exciting, but he was trustworthy, a former prosecutor free of the whiff of scandal."

"For him to be linked, via Mandelson, to the netherworld of Jeffrey Epstein and the vile abusers who filled it is not merely embarrassing or compromising: it destroys his chief claim to the top job. As the Economist asked this week, if this can happen, then What is the point of Sir Keir staying in office? Hence the number of Labour MPs willing to text journalists anonymously declaring the prime minister a dead man walking. The only question, they say, is when, not if."

Donald Trump has damaged multiple institutions through controversy and association. He attached his name to the Kennedy Center, triggering artist departures and a closure of roughly two years. The Washington Post announced 300 layoffs after movements to accommodate a second Trump presidency. Trump's influence prompted Keir Starmer to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington to navigate the administration's backchannels. The Epstein files contain more than 38,000 references to Trump but not to Starmer, yet Mandelson's link ties Starmer to Epstein's network. That association undermines Starmer's clean, prosecutorial reputation and has left many Labour MPs viewing his premiership as unsustainable.

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