British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is again fighting for his political life this week, thanks to a scandal that’s becoming emblematic of Britain’s national dysfunction. Mr. Starmer’s woes boil down to a crisis of incompetence.
Ostensibly the scandal concerns the vetting of a high-profile appointee—the long tail of the release in the U.S. of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Those files exposed a friendship between the convicted sex offender and Peter Mandelson, a Labour Party grandee and Mr. Starmer’s choice for ambassador to Washington.
Britons asked why this connection hadn’t been caught when Mr. Mandelson was vetted for that appointment. Mr. Starmer said in September that the normal checks had cleared Mr. Mandelson for duty. Evidence has emerged over the past week that this may not be true. Media reports say an intrusive vetting process raised serious red flags. What those flags were hasn’t been released to the public, but media reports suggest they may have included Mr. Mandelson’s business dealings as a consultant with Chinese and Russian firms.
Mr. Starmer on Monday said civil servants didn’t inform him of the results of the vetting process, supposedly because the process was so intrusive and sensitive that it might have violated some sort of data-privacy rule to share the results with anyone. This explanation is so wrong-headed, yet so consistent with official Britain’s neuroses about data protection and process-following, that it may even be true. An alternative is that civil servants were reluctant to raise the alarm about Mr. Mandelson because Mr. Starmer already had announced the appointment and withdrawing it would have been embarrassing.
The scandal resonates because it so neatly encapsulates what has soured voters about Mr. Starmer’s administration. His pitch to the electorate was that he’s a competent manager more than a bold visionary, but it turns out he’s no better at managing. His tenure has been marked by one policy flip-flop after another.
Voters are particularly sour over the poor economy, which Mr. Starmer seems incapable of addressing and often makes worse. His struggle to deploy a poorly equipped Royal Navy in the Iran war, or to be much of a global player as the conflict unfolds, compounds the sense that the country is on the wrong track and rapidly losing global prestige.
A scandal of this magnitude might ordinarily create an opportunity for a reset. Lying to Parliament, if anyone proves Mr. Starmer did, usually is a resigning offense. But Labour is deeply divided between centrist and far-left factions that would struggle to coalesce behind a replacement. Mr. Starmer may find a way to limp on, even if Labour fares as poorly as expected in local elections next month.
This is fascinating as political spectacle, but it’s no way to run a country. Mr. Starmer owes voters a clearer explanation of how the Mandelson mess happened. More important, he or someone else needs to offer at long last a convincing plan to revive British confidence and economic vitality.