GUBU Is the Perfect Acronym for Britain's Political Meltdown

During his recent trip to the Persian Gulf, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer predicted that the Iran war would define his time in office, as much as the 2007/8 global financial crisis had for Gordon Brown and the pandemic for Boris Johnson. Unless Starmer puts on a convincing performance in the House of Commons on Monday and in days to come, his time in office may be defined instead by his worst self-inflicted error: the disastrous appointment of Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the US.

Starmer is facing calls to quit after it emerged that Mandelson was given the job despite failing his security vetting. The prospective ambassador’s intimate friendship with the convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein was already well known when his name was first floated. But Downing St claims that until last Tuesday, when a newspaper was about to reveal the story, the Foreign Office kept Starmer in the dark that the former Labour grandee had been denied official clearance in a second and deeper security vetting. The Foreign Office also let the prime minister assure Parliament on several occasions that due process had been observed. It seems almost incredible.