A series of resignations at the heart of the British government has followed exposures of the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US, intensifying pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer. What appears as a scandal over a diplomatic post is at essence part of the broader political crisis centred on decision-making, accountability, and the concentration of authority within Downing Street.

The most senior departure came when Morgan McSweeney resigned as Starmer's chief of staff on February 8, saying he accepted responsibility for advising the prime minister to appoint Mandelson in 2024 despite Mandelson's past association with Jeffrey Epstein, the late US financier and convicted sex offender. McSweeney said the decision had undermined public trust and that stepping down was the "only honourable course". His resignation was widely seen as an attempt to absorb political blame and stabilise the prime minister's office.

The scandal escalated after the Epstein files suggested that Mandelson, while serving as business secretary during the 2008 financial crisis, shared sensitive government information with Epstein. Other documents referred to financial transactions from Epstein to accounts linked to Mandelson in the early 2000s [1]. These disclosures have not yet resulted in criminal charges.

Starmer has acknowledged that the vetting process identified a continuing friendship between Mandelson and Epstein after Epstein's 2008 conviction, but said officials were unaware of its full extent. He apologised for relying on what he described as misleading assurances from Mandelson and promised to release government emails and records relating to the appointment.

Mandelson had been dismissed from his ambassadorial role in September following earlier revelations. While he has not been arrested or charged, the Metropolitan Police have confirmed that they are investigating potential misconduct in public office, though stressing that he is not accused of any sexual offences.

The fallout widened further with the resignation of Tim Allan, Downing Street's director of communications, shortly after McSweeney's departure. Starmer accepted both resignations and praised McSweeney's role in Labour's 2024 election victory. Then on February 12, the prime minister announced that Chris Wormald was stepping down "by mutual consent" after just over a year as cabinet secretary, a civil service post [2]. Together, the departures have been used to reinforce perceptions of instability within No. 10. In an attempt to use the Mandelson affair to undermine the government's senior leadership, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said responsibility ultimately lies with the prime minister for the appointment.

Beyond its immediate party-political impact, the affair brings to the fore the present state of the arrangements of the British executive. Central to this is the constitutional status of the Downing Street chief of staff. This is a role with no statutory basis and no formally defined responsibilities, deriving its authority from delegation by the prime minister.

The role sits at the centre of No. 10's hybrid structure - simultaneously a political headquarters, policy hub, communications operation, and executive command centre - and involves overseeing the prime minister's private office, controlling the flow of information and access, managing senior political advisers, and aligning party strategy, government messaging, and legislative plans. Working alongside, but not subordinate to, the cabinet secretary, the chief of staff acts as the prime minister's political counterpart to the civil service leadership, coordinating across departments. In a system where power is highly concentrated in Downing Street, the role of the chief of staff has become decisive, and the chief of staff can exert considerable influence over political strategy and senior appointments.

Ambassadorial appointments, for example, are formally made under the royal prerogative, exercised on ministerial advice, typically that of the foreign secretary with close involvement from the prime minister's office. In reality, such advice is developed at the centre of government, where senior political advisers play a key role. These political advisers are not directly accountable to parliament. While parliamentary committees may seek evidence from them, this depends on convention rather than statutory obligation.

The resignation of Tim Allan further highlights the extent to which prime ministers rely on a small, unelected group of senior advisers. Interim replacements were appointed without any prescribed process, parliamentary scrutiny, or publicly defined remit. Authority was transferred through internal political decision rather than constitutional procedure, underlining the informality of power at the centre.

Taken together, the Mandelson affair illustrates how power within the British executive has become concentrated in Downing Street and mediated through advisers rather than ministers or cabinet. As authority is centralised within the prime minister's office, traditional checks and balances associated with the ostensibly collective cabinet government have been long-since removed. Decisions of diplomatic and political consequence can be shaped by individuals who wield significant influence yet bear no direct constitutional responsibility. At the same time, when advisers are presented as bearing responsibility for controversial decisions, they can play the role of scapegoats.

The way these figures exit office highlights the nature of a system in which decision-making is dominated by factional power struggles within an elite centre. These factions share a determination to control the centre of power, even as the resulting disarray stands in stark contradiction to the broader interests of society and the well-being of the people.

In other words, the affair points beyond individual misconduct to the operation of the cartel-party system, a system that is descending into warring factions. Such a system both fosters and feeds off individual corruption: it is generated by concentrated authority and unaccountability, then managed through resignations and internal adjustments that leave the structure itself intact.

It is clear that the people reject this situation. They are striving to find ways to speak and act in their own name and work out the forms of their own decision-making power. They certainly reject the present situation where those who are elected by them and usurp their name are then unaccountable to them, and decision-making at the heart of government goes on behind a veil. The conclusion is that new mechanisms must be brought into being which guarantee the accountability of the elected, the right of all to elect and be elected, and the end of the party-dominated system of government, which is showing itself to be completely dysfunctional. A new authority of the people is required. It is a problem taken up for solution.

Notes
1. Sylvia Hui, "UK leader Starmer's chief of staff quits over Mandelson-Epstein scandal", Associated Press, February 8, 2026
https://apnews.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-britain-keir-starmer-mandelson-c1e5c7654cc9bd48126b9ba3ea6996ef
2. "Wormald would be the third cabinet secretary to be forced out," King's College London professor of government Sir Vernon Bogdanor said. "Before the departure of Sir Mark Sedwill in 2020 it was generally accepted that the cabinet secretary had security of tenure."

High Court, London, 13/02/2026

This Saturday, February 14, marks twenty-six years since the Terrorism Act 2000 came into force. This inaugurated a new and permanent stage in the anti-democratic direction of the British state. In the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, with its challenge to British colonial rule in Ireland, the British state and establishment responded with legislation for police powers to permanently attempt to criminalise the people's resistance. It was an unconscionable aim to move from the temporary, reactive legislation to a permanent, comprehensive "anti-terrorism" statute for the 21st century [1].

The Terrorism Act was introduced under Tony Blair and the New Labour government as the champion of police powers behind the throne. It was permanent legislation to rip away the last mask of "civil liberties" and implement the means by which the state attempts to maintain its rule, a rule that was being challenged in Ireland, Britain and around the world by the movements of the working class and people for their rights, their security and ultimately the achievement of their own decision-making power. It was an Act presaging the developments of the 21st century in which, as Tony Blair emphasised after 9/11, the main enemy at home and abroad was declared to be "mass terrorism".

Far from being an Act, as it describes itself, to "protect the public", it has served as a cornerstone of a state architecture of police powers, used to suppress dissent and to intimidate the people. Most recently, this has been so starkly revealed in the summary arrests and imprisonment of the youth, the journalists and all the people opposing the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.

Following the Terrorism Act 2000, the Labour, Coalition, and the Conservative governments have all expanded, amended, and fortified this Act. Each revision having been justified with the same list of excuses in the name of "security", "extremism" and "national interest". Over these decades the Terrorism Act has been supplemented by a whole arsenal of repressive measures:

• The 2006 Act, attacking speech and association.
• The 2011 and 2015 Acts, embedding surveillance into every sphere of life.
• The "Prevent" strategy, targeting youth, educators, and entire communities.
• The 2019 and 2023 amendments, further entrenching arbitrary detention and secret evidence.

Presented as "closing loopholes", each new measure has opened the floodgates to the criminalisation of protest, the harassment of political activists, and the intimidation of entire communities - particularly Muslims, migrants, and those who stand in solidarity with the peoples resisting imperialist aggression in the anti-war movements of the people.

London

Yet the lived experience of the people shows that these words are nothing but a cloak for the arbitrary exercise of state power against their rights and their interests and the arbitrary power of the Home Secretary. This experience has thoroughly exposed the police powers of the Act, especially with the huge upsurge of the movement to support the Palestinian people and oppose Britain's support and arming of Israel's genocide in Gaza. This is where the arbitrary use of this Act against the people has been further exposed for what it is - a criminalisation of dissent that has nothing to do with security of the people.

The Act has been used by the Home Secretary to arrest peaceful demonstrators for chanting slogans, displaying Palestinian flags and then - with the proscription of Palestine Action as a "terrorist" organisation in 2025 - for resistance actions against criminal Israeli and British arms industries. The arms manufacturers include Elbit and Rafael, which have been involved in supplying and sending weapons to bomb and kill tens of thousands of men, women, children and babies in Gaza for over two years. This has all added to the British support for the crimes of the Israeli regime against Palestinians for over 70 years. Furthermore, this terrorist law has also been used over recent months to arrest peaceful demonstrators, many of them pensioners and disabled, in their thousands for peacefully displaying signs that oppose these arbitrary powers of the state to ban Palestine Action and those who support the Palestinian people.

In fact, for twenty-six years, the Terrorism Act has been wielded to serve not only domestic repression but also the international aims of British imperialism. The measures in the Act have been constantly used in the support for the Anglo-US invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and their military interventions bombing Libya and Syria and more recently in their escalation of their proxy war as part of NATO against Russia. They have used the Terrorism Act to detain and raid the homes of journalists who stand with Palestine and expose Britain's support in weapons, logistics and intelligence for Israel's war crimes. At the same time, they use the legislation to attack journalists who oppose and expose Britain's involvement and dangerous escalation of NATO's war and its opposition to peace between Ukraine and Russia.

The people reject the criminalisation of the exercise of their rights. The working class and people have never accepted the narrative that these laws are for their protection. They have seen how the state uses "terrorism" as a pretext to ban demonstrations, impose exclusion zones, detain progressive people without charge, seize devices and documents and try to silence those who expose and resist the crimes of the warmongers. The people have also seen how the real threats to their lives - poverty, war, privatisation, the destruction of public services - are ignored or intensified by the very governments that claim to be acting in their name.

A New Direction Is Needed

On this twenty-sixth anniversary, the task before the working class and people is not simply to condemn the Terrorism Act, but to take up the struggle for a modern democratic society and democratic renewal. Rights belong to the people by virtue of being human and are not based on political views, ideology, religion or race or any other consideration. Security is defined by defending the well-being of the people and the rights of all. The peoples have the right to live in a peaceful world, where conflicts are resolved through international co-operation and negotiation among peoples and countries. Security does not lie with these warmongers and their war preparations. Nor does it lie with the prerogatives of the rich, their arms manufactures and their spheres of contention that fuel division and wars among countries, nationalities and peoples.

The Terrorism Act 2000 [2] and its continued arming as a weapon against the people stands as a grotesque monument to a ruling class that fears the people, and must be dismantled. Its continued existence is incompatible with the aspirations of a society in which the people are the decision-makers. Let the 26th anniversary be a call to action. The working class and people must continue to organise, speak out, and resist all attempts to criminalise their struggles. The future does not belong to those who wield police powers in defence of a decaying order. It belongs to the people who are fighting for a society that affirms their rights, their dignity, and their sovereignty. The Terrorism Act must be repealed. The anti-people direction of the state must be dismantled and reversed, and the people must continue to speak in their own name for the new in society. This is the democracy that only they can bring into being.

Notes
1. The Terrorism Act 2000 replaced previous legislation that was a of a temporary nature. Firstly, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which had been rushed through the House of Commons in November 1974 after the Birmingham bombings, and had to be renewed annually. This Act was re-enacted in 1989, again to be annually reviewed, but casting its net wider. There was also the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1996, which was due to lapse in August 2000. The Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act of 1998 was another Act rushed through parliament, this time in response to the Omagh bombing, and this again had to be renewed annually.
2. Terrorism Act 2000 ("Terrorism Act 2000 is up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before 12 February 2026. There are changes that may be brought into force at a future date")
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/contents

February 13, 2026

People welcoming the news outside the High Court, London, February 13, 2026

The Palestine coalition welcomes news of the High Court's historic ruling which declared the British government's ban on Palestine Action unlawful. The judgement is a decisive rebuff to the state's attempts to criminalise political dissent and activism aimed at stopping material support for genocide.

Over the past two years of Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people, millions in Britain have taken action to oppose British support for Israel's atrocities through protests, campaigns and direct action focused on the arms companies supplying it. The British government should have taken immediate action to end its own involvement in genocide, but instead has been cracking down on protest, including through the unprecedented use of anti-terrorism legislation to ban Palestine Action, and attempts to silence all forms of protest through the extraordinary misuse of Public Order legislation.

Today's ruling, and the court victories of the previous weeks in the Filton cases, show that the government's overreach is not only immoral, it is unlawful. We call for the resignation of police commissioner Mark Rowley, as well as former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

In light of this ruling, the Palestine coalition calls on the CPS to drop the charges on all who have been linked to this unlawful proscription and other cases of protest against British complicity in Israel's genocide, including the organisers of the national marches for Palestine facing criminal charges.

Furthermore, we call on the government to accept today's ruling, and to withdraw its connected attempts to silence protest.

Finally, we call on the government to address the root causes of these protests and impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel to put an end to British complicity in Israel's ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Palestinian Forum in Britain
Friends of Al-Aqsa
Stop the War Coalition
Muslim Association of Britain
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

British and Chinese delegations, Great Hall of the People, People's Republic of China - Photo: Vincent Thian

In late January, Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the People's Republic of China. He chose to position his approach in terms of pragmatism, framing the visit as a "pragmatic reset" of UK-China relations after years of tension. Xi Jingping, President of the People's Republic and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, is reported as saying that China and Britain should "look at each other in a positive light" and "respect each other's core interests". He emphasised that co-operation should be the "main theme" of the relationship and praised Starmer for taking a "pragmatic" approach. Reporting to the House of Commons on his visit, which had also included a visit to Japan, Starmer said: "It would be impossible to safeguard our national interests without engaging with this geopolitical reality." This, clearly, is what counts as being pragmatic.

China rolled out a large ceremonial welcome, and gave Starmer high-level access, including a meeting with Xi. Starmer took with him a whole cohort of officials and business leaders, including Business Secretary Peter Kyle. The delegation was 140-strong according to one report, while another put it at nearly 60, including representatives from major British businesses and cultural organisations, including HSBC, GSK, Jaguar Land Rover, and the National Theatre.

The stated goals, according to reports, were the boosting of economic ties developing a "more sophisticated" relationship that balances co-operation with areas of disagreement, strengthening dialogue on global issues such as climate change and international stability, and rebuilding diplomatic channels since the last British visit of Theresa May in 2018. Along these lines, the results could perhaps be described as "modest", as one source put it. The results included the lifting of sanctions on several British MPs and peers, but they certainly did not amount to what was described as serving the fundamental interests of the country - Britain - and its people [1]. Starmer may think of his achievements as delivering new opportunities and growth for the British people. But in reality, were the "brilliant delegation of nearly 60 businesses and cultural powerhouses" an embodiment of the very best of what this country has to offer, as Starmer said in the Commons? The aim is clearly to attract investment and expand export markets. Starmer cannot be a representative of increasing "war readiness" and criminalisation of dissent at home, and at the same time claim to be a peacemaker and champion of human rights abroad. It remains to be seen whether the anti-China rhetoric of the ruling elites will be jettisoned, including the allegations that China has mafia-style "police stations" in Britain. The government had already given the go-ahead to the building of a new Chinese embassy in London shortly before Starmer's visit.

The point is that it is the people who will oppose militarism and the aggression and enmity of which the Starmer government is part. It is in the people's interests to uphold the sovereignty and independence of peoples and resist destruction on a global scale. It cannot be ignored that Starmer's visit to China and Japan [2] took place while the United States, to whom Starmer is subservient, strategically seeks to create rifts between China, Russia and the DPRK. Starmer himself is the promoter of the "coalition of the willing" which is putting its weight behind the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Talk of "expanding mutually beneficial co-operation" sounds somewhat hollow in this context. It is building friendship and solidarity between peoples in their nation-building projects and against imperialist violence which is key, and is an historic task. This is the people's agenda.

Notes
1. In concrete terms, as Starmer reported to Parliament on February 2:
We secured 30-day visa-free travel for all Brits, including business travellers. We secured China's agreement to halve whisky tariffs from 10% to 5%, which is worth £250 million to the UK over the next five years - a significant win for our iconic whisky industry, particularly in Scotland. That lower tariff comes into force today. In total, we secured £2.3 billion in market access wins, including for financial services, £2.2 billion in export deals for British companies and hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of new investments.
In addition, we agreed to work together in some key areas of law enforcement. Last year, around 60% of all small boat engines used by smuggling gangs came from China, so we struck a border security pact to enable joint law enforcement action to disrupt that supply at source. We also agreed to scale up removals of those with no right to be in the UK and to work together to crack down on the supply of synthetic opioids.

2.Starmer said of his Japan visit:
Japan remains one of our closest allies; together, we are the leading economies in the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, and we are partners in the G7, the G20 and the coalition of the willing ... supporting Ukraine as we work for a just and lasting peace, and deepening our co-operation in cutting-edge defence production, including through the global combat air programme. We discussed how we can boost growth and economic resilience by developing our co-operation.