By Irishexaminer.com

Copyright irishexaminer

First, he lost his deputy and the housing secretary over a stamp duty scandal.

Then he lost his director of political strategy for misguided remarks about party elder Diane Abbott and, finally, he lost Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US.

Mandelson’s sacking came amid accusations of what Starmer knew about his associations with Epstein and when he knew it.

The pressure has piled on since Labour’s former ‘Prince of Darkness’ got his P45.

Questions about Starmer’s judgement in appointing Mandelson in the first place, especially as everyone — apart from the prime minister, apparently — knew of his close links with a man now known to have been a paedophile sex trafficker.

In America, Mr Trump, long known to have been a close friend of Epstein, has for months now been fighting off a growing clamour to release the so-called ‘Epstein files’ in which US attorney general, Pam Bondi, has revealed he is mentioned at length.

Right and left activists have been pressing for the release of the files for two reasons: Firstly, Trump promised to do so during his election campaign; and, secondly, his failure to do so is indicative he has something to hide.

With characteristic bluster, Trump has so far avoided having to release the files despite the background noise and there is no lacking in irony that the same matter has now engulfed Starmer, despite the fact he had nothing ever to do with Epstein.

This was a man who’s type Trump’s Maga base are convinced runs the world and, unforgiving lot that they are, will take some convincing to the contrary.

That the president has somehow maintained his aura of invincibility thus far is something of a miracle.

His time in the UK and his surveillance of the wreckage of the Starmer administration in the wake of the Epstein revelations, may just give him some thought about his own apparent inviolability.

Robert Redford: A starry career

Undoubtedly suave and unquestionably handsome, Robert Redford brought much more to life other than those shallow Hollywood prerequisites.

The death of the actor this week closed off a career that incorporated many more threads than simple star quality.

Although the recipient of only one Academy award (for directing), Redford’s was a richly diverse career and although he initially appeared to be a throwback to a different era — one in which the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Tyrone Power were matinee idols — the canon of work he was involved in as an actor, director, and producer was much more nuanced.

He made his breakthrough in George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid in 1969 that he made his breakthrough.

Alongside Paul Newman — who he would star alongside again a few years later in The Sting— Redford played a devil-may-care outlaw and he wowed audiences and critics alike.

A stellar career in the movie business followed, but it was his role as the gatekeeper and guardian of the commercial/indie US cinema genre, though the Sundance Institute and its annual Sundance Film Festival in Utah, that marked him out as being so much more than a mere film star.

His is a rich legacy which others, rightly, will strive to emulate.

Truly he was so much more than a simple Hollywood idol.

He was not just simply a pretty face.