Konstantin Kisin

Revelations that Prime Minister Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson as Britain's ambassador to the US, despite knowing that he'd maintained his friendship with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, have had and will continue to have a series of long-running consequences.

First, and most obviously, Starmer's goose is cooked.

He will likely survive the week for the very same reason he's extremely unlikely to survive the year.

His rivals can read the tea leaves.

As I predicted in the wake of Starmer's supposed landslide, which was in reality merely the British public punishing the Tories without any enthusiasm for Labour whatsoever, things were inevitably going to get worse for Labour with every day they spent in power.

The pretenders to Starmer's wobbly throne know they're likely to get trounced in the Gorton and Denton by-election later this month, having hemorrhaged votes to reform and the Greens' emerging Green-Green alliance, on which more later.

They also know that local government, mayoral, as well as Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections are coming in early May.

A scapegoat will be needed to explain the inevitable disaster that will unfold for Labour at those elections.

Why depose Starmer now, only to be fed into the mincer for his mistakes a few months down the line?

This is why the odds for Starmer leaving vary so widely between him leaving in the next couple of months, unlikely, and leaving by the end of the year, very likely as high as 70 odd percent in some cases.

Secondly, and equally obviously, this entire scandal confirms something that anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear already knew.

Labour is utterly devoid of talent.

Even a weak and damaged prime minister will linger on because his potential replacements are, hard as that may be to believe, even less impressive.

Indeed, his appointment of Mandelson was itself a symptom of the same problem.

The Labour Party is so sure of serious operators that appointing a convicted paedophile's best friend seemed like a good idea.

David Lammy, who in opposition described President Trump as a tyrant and a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath, was this country's foreign secretary, whose most important job was to establish a productive working relationship with the U.S.

administration.

Most of Labour's front bench should be stacking shelves at Lidl.

Instead, they're running the country.

Finally, and still equally obviously, the fallout from the Mandelson-Epstein episode has revealed in writing something that we all knew logically but had not previously heard a senior labor figure say out loud.