Ruptly
"UK opposition leader Kemi Badenoch accused Keir Starmer's side of 'acting like sheep' - after it emerged the embattled PM had ordered his lawmakers to vote against referring him to an influential committee for 'sleaze' inquiry over his Epstein-linked former US ambassador. "They've all been told to come here today, tell everybody it's a stunt," she told the House of Commons in London on Tuesday. "Tell everybody it's a stunt. Why are they acting like sheep? Why are they acting like sheep? They should be better than that." "They will end in disaster, Mr Speaker, as everything the Prime Minister touches does," she went on. "Why should Labour MPs ruin their reputations to save a man who has never shown loyalty to them? He has shown that he will throw everybody under a bus." She also accused those opposing a probe of being "on the side of Peter Mandelson, of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein". Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said it was 'ironic' that Labour MPs who voted for former PM Boris Johnson to face the same probe, which eventually saw his downfall, were now calling the mechanism 'stunt' - as Johnson had done in his time. "Ironic. Alanis Morissette could probably write a whole album about it. It wasn't a stunt then and it isn't a stunt today. It is, as the Prime Minister said back then, a motion that, and I quote, seeks to defend the simple principle that honesty, integrity and telling the truth matter in our politics. Honesty, integrity, telling the truth," he said. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn added: "When he (Starmer) stood up just there and in response to the Leader of the Opposition said that he knew, that he knew, he knew that Peter Mandelson had maintained a relationship with the world's most notorious paedophile and child trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. And when he stood up at that despatch box and said he knew, he admitted, he finally admitted that he knew. That should have been it. That should have been curtains for him." It comes as Starmer is under pressure to quit over the Mandelson appointment - and claims his office put huge pressure on the foreign office, which he denies. Mandelson was sacked after his links to the late paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein came back into the spotlight. He denies wrongdoing. Starmer faces a vote in the Commons following the debate about whether he should be referred to the influential Commons committee for allegedly 'misleading parliament'. "
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