The disgraced peer has now left the Labour Party after the latest Epstein Files showed that he used his position in the Cabinet to share insight with the sex offender financier, who died by suicide in 2019.
On 13 October 2008 Mandelson was created Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham.
Having already removed him from his role as ambassador to the US after previous links to Epstein emerged, Starmer is now being called on to remove Mandelson's life peerage.
It is over 100 years since a Bill of such a nature has been introduced. The Titles Deprivations Act of 1917 named specific peers who had sided with the enemy in World War 1. A Bill now naming only Mandelson would be an error, in my view.
A more sensible move would be to give His Majesty the right to remove ANY peerage from any disgraced peer, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's hereditary dukedom, earldom and barony.
The King, 'fount of all honour' - is empowered to elevate any of his subjects to the peerage but cannot thereafter take such peerages away. He can strip knighthoods, and orders of chivalry, and so surely the removal of peerages should be added to that list?
Such an act would enable the monarch to strip titles from peers found guilty of serious crimes as in the case of Lord Ahmed, a life peer, jailed for serious sex offences.
Some organs of the Press are under the false impression that all of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s peerages were removed by the King in October last year. Not so. Andrew was dropped from the Roll of Peers in the House of Lords, but his peerages remain extant.
In my opinion, the instances where a hereditary peer is stripped of his title - the succession those titles should not be affected, and on the death of the erring peer his successor would inherit, as in the cases where the heir to disclaimed peerage succeed.
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