The Prime Minister said on Friday it was “unforgivable” that he had not been told his former ambassador to Washington failed security vetting before taking up the post — a revelation that has handed his opponents fresh ammunition and triggered renewed calls for his resignation barely three weeks before what is expected to be a bruising set of local and regional elections.
Keir Starmer, speaking to reporters in France where he was holding talks on the Iran crisis, said he would return to parliament on Monday to “set out the relevant facts”. A Downing Street spokesperson confirmed the Prime Minister had no intention of stepping down.
How the vetting failure stayed hidden
The central question now consuming Westminster is how Starmer could have assured parliament that proper process had been followed in appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States in 2024, when it has since emerged that Mandelson did not pass the security vetting conducted ahead of the role.
Starmer’s team has insisted that neither the Prime Minister, nor any minister, nor anyone in his Downing Street office was aware of the vetting failure until this week. Downing Street moved late on Thursday to dismiss the Foreign Office’s most senior official, Olly Robbins. However, friends of Robbins told Sky News that the rules governing vetting procedures meant he could not have passed the concerns to the Prime Minister or disclosed what had been weighed during the approval process.
The explanation has done little to settle the matter. Opposition leaders were quick to press their advantage. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called Starmer’s defence “preposterous”, while Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accused the Prime Minister of “blatant dishonesty”.
A letter from the Foreign Office in January last year formally offering Mandelson the ambassadorship, released by parliament last month, had suggested that vetting had been completed satisfactorily.
The Mandelson affair — from ‘stroke of genius’ to ‘litany of deceit’
Starmer initially championed the appointment of the Labour veteran as a masterstroke. Mandelson was removed from the post in September after the full extent of his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became clear through documents published in the United States. He is now the subject of a police investigation on suspicion of leaking government documents to Epstein, though he has made no public comment on the allegations. His lawyer declined to comment on the vetting process.
Starmer has since apologised for the appointment, accusing Mandelson of constructing a “litany of deceit” about his relationship with Epstein.
The political fallout ahead of May’s elections
Labour’s defence dilemma: when ambition outruns the budget
The revelation lands at an acutely difficult moment for the Prime Minister. Labour is widely expected to suffer significant losses in the English local elections on 7 May, as well as in regional votes in Scotland and Wales. Starmer had won a brief reprieve from internal critics after limiting Britain’s involvement in the Iran war, but the vetting scandal has reopened questions about his grip on government.
One Labour MP, speaking anonymously, said the party was unlikely to move against the leader for now but described the saga as “a gift that keeps on giving”, ensuring Starmer would face sustained scrutiny in the run-up to polling day. Another backbencher argued that David Lammy — now Deputy Prime Minister, and Foreign Secretary at the time of the appointment — should resign, saying “the choice is incompetence over deceit”.
Under Labour’s rules, Starmer could face a formal leadership challenge if 20 per cent of the parliamentary party — currently 81 MPs — backed a rival candidate. George Foulkes, a Labour peer, urged colleagues against any such move, telling Reuters it would be “reckless” and that the Prime Minister’s wider record deserved recognition. “We need to keep things in perspective when there are so many issues he has been dealing with well,” he said.
Whether that perspective holds may depend on what Starmer tells the Commons on Monday — and whether his account satisfies those who suspect he knew more, and sooner, than he has so far admitted.
