Peter Mandelson has at last left the Labour Party. Brought down by the Epstein dossier, his reputation in tatters, his de parture follows his earlier resignation as British ambassador in Washington and his more recent departure from the House of Lords. This week’s finale was an inevitable but grudging acceptance by Tony Blair’s chief henchman that his political career is over. No one cares.

No one is going to miss this venal schemer who wore his corruption as a badge of honour throughout the Blairite days when he was known as the “Prince of Darkness” by friend and foe alike.

His enemies, and they are legion, rejoice at his downfall. His ‘friends’, such as Starmer who relied on Mandelson and the other ageing Blairites to keep him in office, now disown him. Mandelson was an icon for the right-wing social democrats that hounded Corbyn, Livingstone and thousands of others out of the Labour Party.

Now Starmer claims he didn’t know the extent of Man delson’s dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted brothel keeper who supplied young girls to prominent politicians and businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic and died in unusual circumstances in a New York jail in 2019.

Starmer thinks he can weather the storm if he can hold on to Gorton & Denton in the by-election this month. But he’s got the Faragists and the Greens snapping at his heels while the Tories clamour for a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons to bring down his floundering government. Starmer, of course, must go. And the sooner the better. But who will replace him?

Starmer’s cohorts, who dominate the Parliamentary Labour Party, are in a dilemma. They argue that the only alternative to a Labour government is one led by Nigel Farage – who is certainly no friend of the labour movement. They liken the Corbynistas and the Greens to the ‘lunatic fringe’ and still believe in Blair’s ‘New Labour’ mantras of ‘new world order’ capitalism and crawling to American imperialism – even though capitalism doesn’t work except for the immensely rich and the Americans neither need nor want their “special relationship” these days.

Their chosen successor, Wes Streeting, was a protégé of the disgraced Mandelson. And none of the others in Starmer’s faction are capable of holding the highest office in the land.

Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. But though they can campaign on the street – unlike the totally useless Starmer – their outlook differs little from the general right-wing Labour milieu they came from in the first place. They pay lip-service to the trade union bureaucrats who run the TUC and most of the unions in the country. But that’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. That’s where the struggle for socialism must begin anew – and it must start now…