It shouldn't be down to the wrongdoer to take action

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It’s unclear whether Mandelson has committed any crimes or not in relation to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, although – to date, at least – I’ve seen no serious suggestion that he has. Folly, yes, plenty of that. Failing to declare income to parliament, maybe: he says that he can’t remember receiving money from Epstein, and it’s just about possible that there’s some other explanation for the relevant lines on bank statements. Lobbying other ministers to reduce the tax bill for a friend, yes, that seems pretty clear cut. Leaking sensitive government documents to his friend, again, yes that also seems pretty clear cut. None of it, however, appears to be criminal. It’s enough, though, for people to be demanding that he should be stripped of his peerage as well as standing down immediately from the House of Lords.

It is a ‘feature’ of the English system of governance that people appointed to the Lords cannot easily be stripped of either their membership or their title. Apparently, it requires a specific act of parliament in each and every case, and Sir Starmer appears to have concluded that that is just too much trouble and is instead simply appealing to Mandelson to voluntarily relinquish his seat, and voluntarily stop using his title, while formally retaining it. It’s the sort of compromise and cop-out which bedevils a constitution which assumes that all parliamentarians, in whichever House, are inherently honourable people.

It’s a silly assumption to make – and it’s not as if there haven’t been previous cases to underline the point. The one which immediately leaps to mind is, of course, Jeffrey Archer. Unlike (so far) Mandelson, Archer really did commit criminal acts and was sentenced to four years as a guest of Her Majesty as a result. On his release in 2003, and although not a very active member, he remained a member of the House of Lords until he voluntarily stepped down in 2024. He remains a peer today.

It’s true that the law was subsequently changed – but it took more than ten years, until 2014 – to make it easier to sack a member of the House of Lords for serious crimes (although being sentenced to prison for less than twelve months, which one might think is still rather more serious than anything Mandelson has so far been found to have done, is still considered insufficient grounds for expulsion). The point here is not to defend Mandelson – on the contrary, he deserves to be kicked out. It is, rather, to highlight the arbitrary and inconsistent way in which things work, and the laziness and incompetence which means that successive governments would prefer to leave things alone than address an obvious failing. Demanding that the man accused of poor behaviour takes action himself rather than ensuring that he could be dealt with swiftly and effectively is a less than honest political response.