The Mandelson-Epstein crisis proves Labour’s next leader must be a woman

It didn’t matter, of course, that it was well documented Mandelson had a long association with Epstein at the time of his appointment. Instead, Westminster suddenly decided this was the wrong kind of embarrassing, after the latest tranche of Epstein files were released by the US Department of Justice. So, the cardinal sin: Starmer has revealed himself to be bad at politics. He should have seen this coming.

But this should not be reduced to a story about political miscalculation. It is about the moral elasticity of our politics, and a culture in which decisions like this have become routine. 

Mandelson’s rehabilitation (and the prime minister’s willingness to brush it aside) is an indictment of what we are prepared to tolerate. For some, it is the political system behaving as it always does: with a short memory and a high tolerance for ruthless compromise. For others, it exposes a politics shaped by a masculinised realpolitik, where loyalty trumps principle and influence outweighs integrity. 

What this fallout exposes is not merely the existence of abusers in politics – of course, we already know that – but the masculine ecosystem that sustains them. Abuse is enabled by friends who look away, colleagues who downplay, and institutions that prioritise reputations over the harm done to women and girls. Complicity is almost never dramatic. It’s quiet pragmatism; men covering for men because it helps their careers, a culture where access and influence mean more than the women who are exploited, discarded and silenced.

If Labour learns anything from this moment, it should be this: the party cannot credibly rebuild trust while reproducing the same conditions that made this kind of moral blindness possible in the first place. That is why the next Labour leader must be a woman.

This is not an argument that women are morally superior. Of course, Britain has had its share of disastrous female prime ministers. But politics shaped, over and over again, by male interests, masculine risk-taking and ruthless hierarchy will continue to produce the same ethical failures, and then act surprised when the public recoils.

The Epstein files are a case study in how “everyone knew” has become a defence rather than an indictment, a statement that should leave us all reeling. It is not radical to suggest that if a woman, statistically far more likely to have experienced sexual violence or harassment, had been in the room when these decisions were taken, there might at least have been more discomfort and hesitation, more resistance to brushing concerns aside. Instead, what we have is a government that operates with cold calculations and then seems baffled when the public reacts with disgust.

This instinct has defined Labour in office. Winter fuel payments cut with barely a murmur of consultation; a bruising and entirely avoidable row over disability benefits that might have been mitigated by listening to backbenchers or campaigners who see firsthand poverty and illness. Decisions are taken fast and hard, justified as tough, and only begrudgingly reconsidered once the human cost becomes impossible to ignore.

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None of this is accidental, it reflects a leadership culture resembling a closed boys’ club at the heart of No 10, in which backbench concerns are waved away as inconsequential when compared to the “bigger picture”. It is no coincidence that many of the most high-profile resignations from this government have been women expected to fall on their sword, while protective bubbles form around the men whose judgment has repeatedly led the party into crisis. 

So who could lead Labour into a new era? Rumours swirl around Wes Streeting, but it is Angela Rayner who embodies the kind of leadership the party urgently needs. The machismo at the heart of government has created successive failures of legitimacy and accountability, leaving the public exhausted and crying out for a politics that listens, empathises, and prioritises fairness over dominance and division. 

But Rayner has repeatedly demonstrated this approach in practice: holding the government to account in the Commons, driving legislation that challenges vested interests, and bringing backbenchers into decision-making rather than shutting them out. She has often acted as the antithesis of the closed boys’ club, showing that power can be wielded with principle, empathy, and accountability.

A woman leading Labour would not magically fix Britain’s broken politics. But perhaps it would mark a decisive break from a culture that has normalised looking the other way, and could finally put an end to the boys’ club that keeps failing us.