UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to step down after a scandal surrounding former ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson, who appears in the files of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, triggered a serious political crisis in the government. Reuters reports this.
Source: Gazeta.UA
Amid calls for his resignation, including from the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Starmer said he has no intention of leaving office and is ready to continue the fight.
“After I fought so hard for the opportunity to change our country, I am not prepared to give up my mandate and responsibility to the state or plunge us into chaos, as others have done,” the prime minister said at a meeting with party colleagues.
Starmer emphasized that his key task remains preventing the populist Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage, from coming to power.
“This is my fight, this is a fight for all of us, and we are in it together,” he stressed.
Earlier, the prime minister’s spokesperson denied rumors of Starmer’s resignation, which intensified after the dismissal of his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and the government’s director of communications Tim Allan.
The prime minister’s position weakened after the U.S. Department of Justice released the Jeffrey Epstein files. They suggest that Peter Mandelson, appointed by Starmer as ambassador to Washington, may have passed sensitive details of British government economic discussions to Epstein.
The scandal has become one of the most serious challenges to Starmer’s premiership since Labour came to power.
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