Mandelson out of the House of Lords
The shameful saga of Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein raises key questions at the highest levels of government and underlines why we need to abolish the antidemocratic House of Lords, says Scottish Green MSP Patrick Harvie.
Patrick said:
“The revelations of recent days and weeks have been truly shocking. They demonstrate the extraordinarily bad judgement of Keir Starmer and others at the highest levels of government.
“Peter Mandelson spent 30 years in some of the most powerful and influential positions in the UK, working for three Labour Prime Ministers and being appointed ambassador to the US despite huge concerns about his suitability.
“He has rightly been sacked from his post in Washington, but it is indefensible that he can still hold a seat in the House of Lords. It is a position to which he was never elected and through which he is utterly unaccountable.
“We also need full accountability to find out what other efforts he made on behalf of his super-rich pals against the public interest. It’s inconceivable that Epstein was the only one.
“The House of Lords is part of a system that rewards cronies, donors and supporters and puts totally inappropriate people in positions of immense power without consequence.
“For generations Labour has promised to reform the Lords but whenever they have had the chance they have stuffed it with even more of their friends.
“It’s clear that Peter Mandelson should resign his peerage, but he should never have been put in such a position in the first place.
“The House of Lords is a broken, discredited and antidemocratic relic of an institution that is besieged by scandal. It’s time that it was finally abolished.”