Keir Starmer Accused Of Using Andrew's Arrest As A 'Smoke Screen' To Hide Mandelson-Epstein Links

The detail that sticks isn't the spectacle of a fallen royal. It's the timing: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, 66, in police hands on suspicion of misconduct in public office—while Westminster, with its usual predatory instinct, swivels to a different target within minutes.

Here's the knot, in plain terms, before the shouting drowns it out. A former prince is being investigated and denies wrongdoing; the opposition says the prime minister is sheltering behind that drama to avoid answering awkward questions about Lord Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein; Downing Street won't publish the full vetting material critics say might settle the argument.

Andrew was arrested on Thursday and later released 'under investigation,' after Thames Valley Police confirmed searches were carried out as part of the inquiry. But by Monday morning the story had acquired that peculiarly modern second life: less about what police will be able to prove, more about what politicians can plausibly insinuate on television before breakfast.

Keir Starmer And The Mandelson-Epstein Question

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, went for the jugular on ITV's Good Morning Britain, accusing Keir Starmer of hiding behind the royal uproar rather than dealing with Mandelson's record and the choices around his return to high office. 'This distracts from the real issue, which is what the prime minister did with Lord Mandelson,' she said, adding that Starmer 'would much rather we were focusing on Prince Andrew than on him.'​

It's a line designed to do two things at once: keep Epstein's name attached to Labour's front door, and frame Starmer—who sells himself as the sober, prosecutorial sort—as evasive. The political charge is blunt: that Mandelson, one of New Labour's chief architects, has a documented association with Epstein, and that the government's vetting and appointment decisions around him don't look like a squeaky-clean break with the past.

The Guardian has reported Conservatives pushing for disclosure of documents linked to Mandelson's appointment as ambassador to the United States, using the 'humble address' procedure—an obscure Commons mechanism that can compel the release of papers. It's the kind of parliamentary plumbing most voters never need to understand; Badenoch's bet is they'll grasp the bigger picture anyway: powerful men, closed files, and the uneasy sense that accountability is optional if your contacts are good enough.

Keir Starmer, Andrew's Arrest, And The Politics Of Distraction

Then there's the arrest itself—extraordinary, still, even in a country that has spent the last decade learning to live with 'unthinkable' headlines. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's detention on suspicion of misconduct in public office has been reported by multiple outlets, with the allegation in circulation that it relates to his conduct while holding a public role, and he has denied wrongdoing.

Misconduct in public office is a notoriously knotty, old common-law offence, generally reserved for serious abuse of public power; legal explainers note it can carry severe penalties, but prosecutions are complex and fact-specific. Police, for their part, tend to hate politics anywhere near an active file—because it pressures witnesses, contaminates narratives, and turns evidence into theatre.

The symmetry Badenoch is exploiting is hard to miss. Mandelson's name has been linked in reporting to past lobbying on Andrew's behalf for a trade-facing role, and now Andrew's police trouble lands right as Mandelson's vetting is being argued over in Parliament and on air. Even if the two tracks never meet in a courtroom, they collide perfectly in the public imagination: Epstein as the connecting shadow, and the suspicion that establishment Britain always tries to manage scandal rather than confront it.

There are, however, two separate questions that shouldn't be blurred just because it's politically useful to blur them. One is evidential—what Andrew did or didn't do, and what the police can prove. The other is governmental—what checks were done, what ministers were told, and why the public should accept 'trust us' when the names involved long ago burned through the benefit of the doubt.

In the meantime, lawyers for victims' interests and commentators are already treating the arrest as a moral marker, not merely a procedural step—an emotional response that speaks to how toxic, and how enduring, Epstein's afterlife remains in politics on both sides of the Atlantic.​