The pair clashed over Keir Starmer’s appointment of Peter Mandelson.
Jon Kay went head-to-head with Jacqui Smith on BBC Breakfast (Picture: BBC)
Jon Kay issued a damning verdict over Keir Starmer’s appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson because the UK’s ambassador to the US. The BBC Breakfast presenter was joined by Baroness Jacqui Smith on Monday’s (February 9) programme, simply sooner or later after Starmer’s Chief of Employees Morgan McSweeney introduced he was resigning. Questions stay over whether or not the prime minister will do the identical.
This follows per week of intense backlash over his appointment of Mandelson, after it emerged that Starmer was conscious of his friendship with convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein. Through the interview, Kay highlighted that Smith was steadily mentioning Epstein’s victims, main him to ask: “The prime minister and Morgan McSweeney knew about Epstein’s victims final summer time after they appointed Peter Mandelson, his good friend, to that job in Washington.
“Why weren’t they pondering and speaking in regards to the victims then?”
When Smith claimed that Mandelson “lied in regards to the extent of his relationship” with Epstein, Kay raged: “All of us knew!”
He added: “The prime minister knew he was a good friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s.”
Smith solely doubled down on her claims, responding: “Peter Mandelson lied in regards to the extent of the depth of the assist that he offered for Jeffrey Epstein. When that turned evident, final September, the prime minister sacked Peter Mandelson.
“He sacked him in the midst of the night time and he is taken accountability each having made the unsuitable choice in appointing him, and in addition now, in making certain that sooner or later, public appointments are stronger by way of the best way wherein they’re carried out and that concentrate on tackling violence in opposition to girls and ladies stays on the coronary heart of the federal government that he is main.”
Jacqui Smith defended Keir Starmer’s appointment of Mandelson (Picture: BBC)
Kay then questioned if Smith would have made the identical choice in appointing Mandelson, regardless of figuring out that he was the good friend of a convicted paedophile.
She hit again: “There’s loads of us who’re ready, with the good thing about hindsight, to say…”
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Interjecting, the BBC host fumed: “It isn’t hindsight. They knew on the time. You knew on the time.”
The squirming minister replied: “No. no. What was recognized on the time was that Peter Mandelson had an ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. What was not recognized on the time was the extent and nature of Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. When it turned clear, the prime minister fired him.”
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