The Croydon MP and friend of Morgan McSweeney is ‘disingenuous’ in his claims over how his aide blocked debate about the controversial appointment of Ambassador to the United States.
By STEVEN DOWNES, Editor, Inside Croydon
Scandal: the role of Morgan McSweeney in the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the US could bring down the Prime Minister
Mostly, here at Inside Croydon, we report the news. But sometimes, we make the news, as was the case when ITV’s Good Morning Britain quoted from our pages as they put a cabinet minister on the spot over his part in the cover-up over the traitor Peter Mandelson.
The scandal around Mandelson, his links with the convicted paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his then appointment as His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States threaten to end Keir Starmer’s time as Prime Minister.
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday Starmer finally admitted, far too late, that Mandelson’s continuing links to Epstein after the latter’s conviction were known when the decision was made to appoint the Blairite peer to the important Washington job.
Starmer’s excuse? That known liar Mandelson had lied to him and his team. And this despite a supposedly watertight vetting process overseen by the country’s top spooks from MI6.
It was public knowledge that Mandelson had twice been sacked from government during the Blair and Brown years. The Epstein Files now show that when he wasn’t sacked, but was back in the cabinet as business secretary, Mandelson was forwarding confidential government documents to his mate, New York financier Epstein.
And yet somehow Starmer agreed to make Mandelson Ambassador to the United States.
It has been reported that when Labour won their General Election landslide in 2024, Mandelson wasn’t on the shortlist to be Britain’s next Ambassador to the United States, probably the most prestigious and important role in the country’s diplomatic corps. In fact, there wasn’t even a vacancy. Karen Pierce, a career diplomat, had been doing a decent job.
Making the news: no one followed up our September 2025 report. Until today
Pierce was also known to have experience of being able to “handle” Donald Trump. Mandelson, meanwhile, had just been a guest at Epstein’s notorious parties, some of which had also been attended by Trump.
But when he was appointed as Starmer’s chief of staff at No10, Morgan McSweeney tore up the advice of his predecessor, Sue Grey, and pushed Starmer to make the Mandelson appointment.
McSweeney and Mandelson are known to have long been friends and colleagues, working together within the Labour Party and on its fringes. Paul Holden’s book, The Fraud, provides an in-depth account of how McSweeney used nearly £1million in donations fraudulently to get Starmer selected as Labour Party leader.
And one of McSweeney’s closest collaborators over the past 20 years or so, from their days working together at Lambeth Town Hall, has been Steve Reed, the MP for Streatham (and Croydon North if he can be bothered).
Reed is now the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in Keir Starmer’s cabinet.
That’s the same Steve Reed who threatened to sue Inside Croydon after we reported from Lambeth Council documents that he ordered paid officials to spy on his Labour councillor colleagues’ emails. Reed never did sue, of course; it was an idle threat, perhaps intended to intimidate us. He never had a case, as our reporting was solid and based on public documents.
Reed was among those implicated in the 2021 hack of this website, after he was sent documents that had been illegally obtained, and which were used to discredit colleague Labour councillors. He was shadow justice minister at the time, but he is not thought to have acted to uphold the law by turning in the stolen documents to the police.
And today, in the Good Morning Britain hot seat to field questions about the government’s Mandelson crisis was Steve Reed.
Hot seat: Steve Reed was left squirming by questions about the conduct of his SPAD
The split screen video of the interchange, at the top of this page, shows very well the government minister’s discomfiture as presenter Susanna Reid mentions Inside Croydon, “a local paper” (oh dear).
His face turned a shade of beetroot as interviewer Reid went through a report we published last September, which recounted how Reed’s aide, Oscar Harman, had used his powers as chair of the local Labour Party to stop a member’s motion from even being debated, before possibly being referred to the forthcoming Labour Party Conference.
“Twisted half-truth,” MP Reed lied when questioned on national television.
He then sought to justify his and his aide’s actions in blocking the motion by saying that it was allowed to be discussed at the CLP’s next meeting. Which, as Reed knew all too well, was irrelevant, because by then it was too late for the motion to go for debate to Labour Party Conference.
Presenter Reid spotted this, and she pressed minister Reed on the point. “According to Inside Croydon…,” she said, “that was a call for an inquiry from your local constituency party which was blocked back in September.
“Was that motion discussed at Labour Party Conference?”
Reed was floundering, going through the motions.
Reid came back at him. “It’s just that, obviously, the issue of Lord Mandelson, his appointment as US Ambassador, is now threatening the position of the Prime Minister, and people might wonder [if] it had been discussed , and put forward to Labour Party Conference.
“But it wasn’t,” she said.
Reed’s best line? Mandelson, a proven liar, lied.
The motion – put to Steve Reed’s local Labour Party six months ago – called for a thorough investigation into who knew what and when about Mandelson’s association with Epstein, “out of commitment to justice and accountability for all survivors of sexual violence”.
The motion called on “the government to launch an inquiry into the circumstances of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US Ambassador, to make findings on the following issues:
“What vetting and due diligence process was followed regarding Mandelson’s appointment?
“What advice did the government receive from the Civil Service and other relevant bodies regarding the links between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein?
“How did the government respond to any advice received regarding links between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein?
“How amends can be made to victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein?”
Party animals: Oscar Harman (seated, centre) and Steve Reed manage the agenda of their local party very carefully
All reasonable enough. But blocked by Steve Reed’s aide at his local Labour Party.
It was unfortunate that Good Morning Britain’s Susanna Reid never got to ask Steve Reed why anyone would block such a motion.
The motion was written by Dominic Curran, a solicitor living in Thornton Heath.
Today, Curran confirmed that his motion was eventually allowed to be discussed by members at the following month’s CLP meeting, by which time it was impossible for it to go forward to Conference.
Curran told Inside Croydon: “It is disingenuous to excuse the blocking of the motion by saying it was passed at the next constituency meeting, because it was drafted as an emergency motion to Labour Party Conference 2025. The chair…,” meaning Oscar Harman, a MHCLG aide to Reed, “… only allowed it to be discussed once conference was over, thus saving Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney from embarrassment.
“If Thornton Heath branch had been listened to in September 2025, perhaps the Labour Party could have started to put things right earlier. But they chose not to.”
Since the events at the Streatham and Croydon North CLP in September 2025, Oscar Harman has been effectively promoted at work, seconded to Downing Street for a month to oversee the Prime Minister’s diary.
Meanwhile, Dominic Curran, who drafted the motion calling for a proper investigation into the Mandelson appointment has, like so many tens of thousands of others, resigned from the Labour Party.
Read more: Steve Reed’s aide blocks members’ vote on Mandelson scandal
Read more: The Fraud: how Reed’s Labour spied on Croydon councillors
More Reed: Reed group fined for slow declaration of £800,000 donations
More Reed: Now Labour suspends selections in MP Steve Reed’s backyard
Read more: #TheLabourFiles: MP Reed, Evans and the Croydon connection
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Oh dear. This won’t help Councillor Rowenna “Blue Labour” Davis win her bid to become the next Mayor of Croydon
I reckon they’ve sewn up the votes of both genocide fans and besties of convicted nonces.
What are the two red horns on Reed’s forehead??? Are they telling us something 🤔
bbcradio4 Today 08.10 this morning. Reed getting another turning over.
It was clearly his turn to do the morning circuit of media interviews. Given his part in bringing down the previous Labour leader and undermining Labour’s 2019 General Election campaign, it is no more than he deserves.
And on LBC. Nick Ferrari eviscerated him. Reed came across as defensive, with no real answers. Mandelson’s lobbying on behalf of Epstein and JP Morgan is a new low – is it treason? Certainly criminal.
Reed plumbing new depths of uselessness I see. Never mind, he’ll be posting thumbs-up selfies of himself in local Turkish restaurants again soon enough. Anything to avoid actually doing anything for his constituents, the absolute plum.
As someone who has undergone ‘Developed Vetting’ myself, I can say that it is absolutely inconceivable that Mandelson was able to just lie and bluff through that process. These people know what you had for breakfast yesterday.
It’s clear that Starmer, McSweeney and the rest of that cabal knew full well what Mandelson’s association with Epstein had been, and that any investigation would reveal this. No wonder Steve Reed and his acolytes sought to block it.
Indeed, but one doesn’t have to call in Mycroft Holmes to find the facts about Epstein and Mandelson. Back in 2023 the Financial Times reported uncovering an internal JP Morgan dossier from 2019, which found ‘Epstein appears to maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew the Duke of York and Lord Peter Mandelson, a senior member of the British Government’ and suggested Lord Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s house in Manhattan (the one full of pornographic art) in June 2009, whilst Epstein was in prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Still, we’ve all house-sat for sex traffickers by mistake. And the photos of Epstein and Mandelson shopping next to an enormous ugly glass vase and Mandelson attending Epstein’s birthday party in the early 00s have been doing the rounds of the tabloids and the internet for years. Still, who hasn’t been to a party on a peadophile island by mistake? That Mandelson should never have been appointed is not a three pipe problem. The question is what magical powers did the Prince of Darkness have to allow him to defy political gravity…? All the recent revelations have done is turn the already small mountain of evidence against him into a volcanic archipelago but there was undeniably a mountain already… Perhaps this why was he made Ambassador to the United States? My theory is the Cabinet would not wear the Lord as an unelected cabinet member anymore after Brown and no CLP would take him on as a candidate and no constituency would elect him again so Starmer was forced to invent some kind of job to keep McSweeney happy but Mandelson at arms length by inserting an Ocean between Peter and the PLP… and one he hoped would put enough distance between himself and the Lord of Darkness that if the skeletons fell fully out of the closet again then… There was however, a tiny flaw in the plan…
Starmer isn’t really the leader of the Labour party. Up until now, Mandelson and Morgan were pulling the strings on behalf of Blair (who has kept quiet about the Epstein connection).
The whole lot need to be flushed down the pan, along with Glasman and Reed and all the other “blue Labour” Richard IIIs
Well done Inside Croydon!
Thanks, Moya.
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Brown-nosing ‘Yes man’ Steve Reed in trouble? Couldn’t happen to a nastier slime-ball !?!
Poor old Steve, all that Starmer ‘brown nosing’ for nothing. Weep, baby, weep!
Is Steve Reed so much of a brown-nosing yes man that he hasn’t jumped on the latest Labour bandwagon and joined the rats deserting the sinking Starmer ship ?!
That would mean Reed leaving the Labour party that he’s spent over three decades using as a means to domineer people for his own benefit