British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s recently appointed communications director resigned on Monday, just hours after the departure of his chief of staff, as the government struggles to survive the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Tim Allan, a veteran of the former Labour government of Tony Blair, who was brought into Downing Street in September to help the already-struggling Starmer administration, resigned on Monday.
“I have decided to stand down to allow a new No. 10 team to be built. I wish the PM and his team every success,” he said in a statement per the Times of London.
His resignation comes just hours after Morgan McSweeney stood down as Starmer’s chief of staff on Sunday as he took “full responsibility” for advising the PM to appoint Lord Peter ‘Prince of Darkness’ Mandelson — another Tony Blair operative — as ambassador to the United States despite his ties to convicted paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The appointment came under further scrutiny this month following the massive document dump from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in which apparent communications between Epstein and Mandelson were made public.
According to the released files, the longtime Labour spin doctor allegedly used his previous government positions to pass confidential, potentially market-moving information to Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis. Mandelson, who described the American paedophile as his “best pal”, also reportedly received some $75,000 in payments from Epstein.
To make matters worse for the current government, during a disastrous Prime Minister’s Questions, Starmer admitted last week in the House of Commons that he was personally aware that Mandelson had continued his friendship with Epstein, even after he was convicted on child prostitution charges.
While the Prime Minister has attempted to cast blame on Mandelson for “lying” about the extent of his ties to Epstein and on the security services for failing to properly vet the veteran political operative, it was McSweeney who ultimately took the fall for the decision.
McSweeney, an anti-Breitbart activist who orchestrated Starmer’s rise to power while purging leftist loyalists to former leader Jeremy Corbyn from the party, was described just days prior by the PM as being “essential” to his government. With McSweeney gone, Starmer not only loses a key ally in Downing Street but also the last big card to play before his own resignation.
According to The Times, Starmer changed his mind about McSweeney over concerns that “hundreds of thousands” of WhatsApp messages and emails between his former chief of staff and Lord Mandelson would be made public and further embarrass the government by showing the extent of the Labour grandee’s influence over McSweeney and Downing Street as a whole.
It remains to be seen if offering up McSweeney as a sacrificial lamb will suffice to save Starmer’s skin. The PM is reportedly set to hold crunch talks with Labour lawmakers on Monday to persuade them to continue backing his premiership. Starmer’s strategy so far has been to raise the prospect of the party losing power to Nigel Farage if he is ousted as PM to warn off a Labour rebellion.
Mr Farage, whose Reform UK party has consistently led in the polls over the past year, has predicted that Starmer will not last past the upcoming local elections in May, which are likely to see Labour lose significant ground to the insurgent populist party.
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