For UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, it's just one thing after another.
On Thursday, it was the image of the former Prince Andrew slumped at the back of a police car, looking shell-shocked. On Monday, it was the turn of a stony-faced Peter Mandelson, his disgraced ex-ambassador to Washington, being escorted out of his luxury home in London by plain-clothed officers.
The back-to-back humiliation of well-known British public figures is the last thing that the embattled Labour leader needs with polling already showing him as the most unpopular UK prime minister in modern times and a series of key local and regional election tests on the horizon.
The fact that the latest blow is coming from a one-time kingmaker inside Starmer's own party makes the current state of affairs that much more painful for the knighted human-rights barrister who returned Labour to power after 14 years in the wilderness on a promise of cleaning up politics.
Starmer never met Jeffrey Epstein - but the ties that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Mandelson had with the convicted sex offender run deep. With their defenestration, Starmer had hoped to put the crisis behind him. Instead their arrests over misconduct in public office threatens to engulf his administration less than two years after a landslide general election.
Though Starmer fired Mandelson in September after a Bloomberg News investigation revealed the depths of his relationship with Epstein, fresh emails from the US Department of Justice this year allegedly showed him forwarding potentially market-sensitive government information to Epstein.
Starmer's chief of staff and communications chief both quit in the wake of the new revelations and Labour's leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, held a press conference urging the premier to step down.
Starmer had just about managed to weather the storm - helped by swift public support from his entire cabinet.
This week's development puts the controversy firmly back in the public consciousness in the same week that his party faces an election in Manchester.
It was once a stronghold for Labour. The party now risks losing the seat to either Nigel Farage's Reform or the Green party as a result of a sharp decline in support since the 2024 general election. A YouGov poll earlier this month found that 95% of Britons said they were aware of the Mandelson scandal, with 44% saying they were following developments closely.
"This is an enormous scandal," political historian Anthony Seldon told Sky News. Having helped get the party elected under Tony Blair, Mandelson now "seems to be playing a significant part, not in destroying the Labour Party - obviously it's going to carry on - but very significantly damaging it."
Mandelson was widely seen as one of the architects of the "New Labour" movement during the 1990s and 2000s. His reach was such that he earned and wore with pride the moniker "Prince of Darkness" for his ruthless deployment of the dark political arts.
His time in government, however, was not without setbacks. He twice resigned from Blair's cabinet at the turn of the century over relationships with wealthy businessmen. Its his checkered history that has critics now questioning the judgment call in bringing him back into government, one that positioned itself against the so-called sleaze that had ended a long run of Conservative rule.
Despite that early brush with bad newspaper headlines, he was made European Commissioner for Trade before returning to become Business Secretary in the government of Blair's successor, Gordon Brown. He was later made a life peer in the House of Lords.
Following the loss of the 2010 election, he co-founded lobbying company, Global Counsel. That went into administration last week due to an exodus of clients after the full extent of his association with Epstein became clear.
His arrest fuels a controversy already weighing on Starmer's administration. The government has now told the House of Commons that the first tranche of thousands of documents it has been forced to publish relating to Mandelson's appointment as ambassador will be disclosed early next month.
The contents are likely to further embarrass the government and even risk diplomatic relations with the US, given they will lay out communications between Mandelson, ministers and officials for the six months prior to his appointment and throughout his seven-month tenure as envoy.
The decision to drip-feed them over several weeks rather than in one go may soften their impact but also means that Starmer cannot hope to put it all behind him. The ongoing police probe will impact which of the documents can be released and limits how much control he has over shaping the narrative.
"An allegation of misconduct in public office against a senior political figure is a grave matter," said Jonathan Fisher KC, Barrister at Red Lion Chambers, of Mandelson's arrest. "The offense is akin to corruption, as it involves serious abuses of power by those entrusted with public responsibilities."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
