{"id":41671,"date":"2026-02-06T08:44:04","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T02:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=41671"},"modified":"2026-02-06T08:44:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T02:59:04","slug":"starmer-apologises-to-epstein-victims-for-believing-mandelsons-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/starmer-apologises-to-epstein-victims-for-believing-mandelsons-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer apologises to Epstein victims for believing Mandelson’s ‘lies’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BBC:<\/strong> Sir Keir Starmer has apologised to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for believing Lord Mandelson’s “lies” and appointing him as the UK’s ambassador to the US.<\/p>\n

The prime minister began a planned speech on funding to improve local communities by addressing the growing anger over how he had dealt with the issue.<\/p>\n

While he acknowledged it had been publicly known for some time that Lord Mandelson knew Epstein, he said: “None of us knew the depths and the darkness of that relationship.”<\/p>\n

However, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the PM’s position was “untenable”, while the Liberal Democrats called for a confidence vote to see if Labour MPs supported him.<\/p>\n

The prime minister is facing calls from some of his own MPs to stand down.<\/p>\n

While the handful of backbenchers to do so publicly are frequent critics of the PM, many more have raised concerns privately.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir’s former political director Luke Sullivan said he thought the PM was “fighting for his premiership”.<\/p>\n

He told the BBC’s Newscast: “I don’t think you can understate how serious the situation and the peril is that the prime minister finds himself in.”<\/p>\n

Seeking to defuse the row in a speech earlier, Sir Keir said he regretted appointing Lord Mandelson and would not have done so if he had known what he knows now.<\/p>\n

Directly addressing Epstein’s victims, he said: “I am sorry, sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him and sorry that even now you’re forced to watch this story unfold in public once again.”<\/p>\n

Reacting to Sir Keir’s apology, Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda said: “I have to commend him for going on national television and admitting he was wrong and apologising to us.”<\/p>\n

Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight, she said: “I think that’s a huge step, right. You have also people here in America that have not even tried to apologise to us.\u00a0“So I have to commend him for that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC: Sir Keir Starmer has apologised to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for believing Lord Mandelson’s “lies” and appointing him as the UK’s ambassador to the US. The prime minister began a planned speech on funding to improve local communities by addressing the growing anger over how he had dealt with the issue. While he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41671"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41672,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41671\/revisions\/41672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}