Labour fat-shaming row after Peter Mandelson tells Starmer to ‘lose a few pounds’

Wes Streeting has hit back at Peter Mandelson’s “fat-shaming” after the former Labour spinner told Sir Keir Starmer to “shed a few pounds”.

Lord Mandelson told the How to Win an Election podcast that Rishi Sunak and the Labour leader could better present themselves to win over voters.

Discussing the prime minister’s notorious slim-fit suits and skinny ties, the ex-Labour comms chief said they “diminish him rather than expand him”.

And, in a bid to be even-handed, Lord Mandelson said: “I think Keir Starmer needs to shed a few pounds, and that would be an improvement.”

“Ties and appearance are not unimportant,” Lord Mandelson added.

Asked about the comments, Mr Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said he was “against that kind of fat-shaming”.

“Peter Mandelson should know better,” he added.

Mr Streeting told LBC: “And let me tell you… We’ve seen the odd paunch [a large or protruding belly] from Peter over the years, so people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

Lord Mandelson’s decision to criticise Sir Keir’s appearance raised eyebrows, with critics online poking fun at his thick bushy moustache in the 1980s.

The comments will have also surprised those who know Sir Keir as someone who regularly exercises.

The football mad 61-year-old Labour leader takes part in a weekly football match.

It is not the first time Lord Mandelson has offered Sir Keir unsolicited advice, with the peer using the eve of Labour conference to join grandees Alastair Campbell and David Miliband in calling for him to set out a clearer policy platform to win voters’ trust.

At the time Mr Campbell, Tony Blair’s former director of communications, told The Guardian: “I sometimes worry that the Labour party today doesn’t. I don’t often get that sense of that sort of relentless, restless, obsessive attention to detail focusing on everything that you need to focus on.”

Meanwhile Lord Mandelson told the paper: “Do I think the Labour party under Keir Starmer is ready for government? Well actually, I don’t. But then the election isn’t going to take place tomorrow or the day after. They have another year.”

The figure added: “I just implore people [in Labour] to realise, not just that they shouldn’t be complacent … but just how much detailed, hard slog and work is involved in preparing the programme of government. Not just a vision, but a real programme of government policies that flow from it that you have to have in place if you’re going to hit the ground running on day one after that election.”

Last June a shock report detailed Lord Mandelson’s “particularly close relationship” with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The dossier laid bare the senior political figure’s ties to the late paedophile – who was close enough to the former Labour cabinet minister to call him “Petie”.

The report also suggests that Lord Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s New York home in June 2009 – when he was still Gordon Brown’s business secretary and the financier was serving 18 months in prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

The internal JPMorgan Chase “Project Jeep” report from 2019, first reported on by the Financial Times, was filed to a New York court this week as part of the bank’s tentative settlement deal with some of Epstein’s victims.

It found that “Jeffrey 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”.

Lord Mandelson’s spokesman has said he “very much regrets” the connection with Epstein.