Poor personal and political judgement is now a pattern

Foreign minister Stephen Doughty had barely got back to his seat after dramatically announcing the sacking of Lord Mandelson as Britain's ambassador to the US over his ties to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and my WhatsApp inbox was filling up with messages mostly asking variations on one question:

- DAVID MADDOX

“Why does Keir Starmer have such appalling judgment in making his key appointments?”

While the now disgraced Labour peer is off into the wilderness (not for the first time in a long career), the chaos he has left behind is enveloping the prime minister. After all, this is the second big resignation in about a week, at a time when Sir Keir’s umpteenth reset in the shape of a major reshuffle was meant to relaunch his government.

Only last Friday, he lost his deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner - whom he appointed as housing secretary - because she had failed to pay £40,000 in stamp duty on her second home.

Now, a mere six days later, he has lost the man he had tasked to look after the most important relationship in Britain’s foreign policy - the ambassador who has to charm and deal with Donald Trump in the White House - over alleged (and what Downing Street is insisting is) “new information” over his relationship with Epstein.

Both went after he had already wasted political capital attempting to defend them at Prime Minister’s Questions.