If Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar‘s desire to dislodge Sir Keir Starmer had had public accomplices, that could have been it.
There was a crucial pivot point on Monday afternoon when things could have gone in one of two ways.
If others had said Sir Keir should go, he might not have got to the end of the day without announcing his departure.
But instead, there was a rallying of support from the cabinet and from various wings of the Labour Party.
The Scottish Labour leader made the intervention in a press conference in Glasgow this afternoon as he attacked the „failures“ in Downing Street in the wake of revelations surrounding Peter Mandelson‘s links to Jeffrey Epstein and fears over damage the scandal may do to his party‘s chances at the Holyrood elections in May.
He told reporters his first priority is to Scotland and that he did not want to “sacrifice” the country to a third decade of an SNP government.
(February 6, 2026)
Now attention is turning to the ramifications of the scandal in Scotland ahead of the Holyrood election in May.
Anas Sarwar could prove another casualty of the spectacular fallout from the collapse of Lord Mandelson’s reputation.
Lord Mandelson’s continued friendship with Epstein has been public knowledge since the Financial Times reported in 2023 that the peer stayed at the convicted paedophile’s home in Manhattan in 2009, while he was in prison for child sex offences.