A crunch week for Keir Starmer is set to continue on Monday as he updates the House of Commons on the latest revelations about Peter Mandelson’s appointment.
No 10 on Friday night released a readout of a meeting between the British Prime Minister and senior civil servants that appeared to corroborate that Starmer only found out on Tuesday that Mandelson was cleared for his role as Britain’s representative in Washington against the advice of security officials.
The British Foreign Office has been blamed for clearing the peer in January 2025 to begin as US ambassador, despite him failing a secure vetting process.
The British Prime Minister has said he was “absolutely furious”, and described the failure to inform him as “staggering”.
Olly Robbins, who was only weeks into his job as Foreign Office permanent secretary at the time, was sacked on Thursday as he had lost the confidence of Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.
He is expected to speak to the Foreign Affairs Committee as early as next Tuesday, a day after Starmer will update the Commons on the latest twists in the saga.
The committee on Saturday published correspondence showing that Cooper had asked the FCDO to conduct a “full review” of all the information the department had provided to the committee.
Simon McDonald, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office from 2015-2020, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Sir Olly was “thrown under the bus” and that Number 10 “wanted a scalp and they wanted it quickly”.
The Guardian reported on Friday that Antonia Romeo, the head of the civil service, and British Cabinet Office permanent secretary Catherine Little, had found out before the British Prime Minister about Mandelson’s failure to gain vetting.
The readout of Tuesday’s meeting gave credence to this, as Ms Little had received information about the vetting as part of the process to release files related to Lord Mandelson’s appointment, which MPs voted for in February.
“On reviewing the file she had therefore learned that the recommendation from the vetting officer had been that DV (Developed Vetting) should not be granted to Peter Mandelson,” the readout said.
The Cabinet Office denied that this meant the senior civil servant had sat on the details, while a Government source said: “Cat has been the one doggedly fighting Olly Robbins to get the documents out of his clutches and into the public domain.
“This is a laughable attempt to shift blame from the actual person who kept the PM in the dark.”
The leaders of the major opposition parties have all called for Starmer to resign over the latest revelations, with Kemi Badenoch claiming the British Prime Minister had misled Parliament and the public.
Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney said it was the British Prime Minister’s “incompetence” that was “staggering”.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said that Starmer must publish the advice he received on Mandelson’s appointment.
Former foreign secretary James Cleverly told The Independent it is “inconceivable” that the British Prime Minister and David Lammy were unaware of Mandelson’s failed security vetting.
Peter Mandelson, a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role last September when more details emerged about his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019.
Starmer was already under fire over the decision to give Mandelson the job, despite it being known that his dealings with Epstein continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.
