Keir Starmer would not have appointed Peter Mandelson as US ambassador if he had known security officials did not grant the peer a high-level vetting status, a senior minister has said.
The British Prime Minister is under fire amid the latest revelations in the scandal related to Mandelson’s appointment to the Washington DC posting, perhaps the most coveted role in British diplomacy.
Mandelson was sacked last year, less than a year into the job, because details of his association with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein emerged in files published by the US government.
The Guardian this week revealed that Mandelson was not granted a special security clearance status, Developed Vetting (DV), by officials during the appointment process.
But this was overruled by the Foreign Office, the newspaper reported, and the Government department’s chief civil servant Olly Robbins has been sacked after ministers blamed him for not telling Starmer about the vetting failure.
Ministers have lined up to defend Starmer before his appearance on Monday before the House of Commons to explain the latest twists in the scandal.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said: “He (Starmer) was told that he’d (Mandelson) been granted developed vetting status.
“That’s the objective of all of this, and if he had known that UK Security Vetting hadn’t cleared him, he would not have made that appointment.
“I think it’s just really important to be clear about it.”
Kendall’s claim echoed the words of Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, who said the same to the Guardian on Saturday night.
Starmer is facing calls to resign from the Conservatives, and to subject himself to an investigation by the Lib Dems, over suggestions he misled the Commons about Mandelson’s vetting.
In February, the British Prime Minister told the Commons that the vetting process gave Mandelson clearance for the role, adding that “full due process” was followed.
A memo released by Downing Street on Friday revealed two senior civil servants, including the head of the Civil Service Antonia Romeo, had learned of a discrepancy in Mandelson’s vetting as part of an evidence gathering exercise triggered by MPs voting for the release of files related to the peer’s appointment.
The document also reinforced No 10’s claim that the British Prime Minister had only learned about the vetting failure on Tuesday night.
Asked why Starmer had not come to the Commons as soon as possible to correct any possible errors in his previous statements to MPs, Ms Kendall suggested the British Prime Minister had wanted to establish the facts.
She told the BBC: “I think one thing we’ve learned from this whole torrid episode is the need to get the facts absolutely clear and right. That’s really important.
“I certainly want it as a member of the Government, but the public much more importantly want that, which is why the Prime Minister, on Monday – tomorrow – will go to the House.”
Earlier, she was asked why Starmer was not losing his job over the scandal, as a growing list of civil servants have done.
Kendall replied: “Because the Prime Minister on the big calls facing this country has made the right calls.”
She also insisted to Sky News that the British Prime Minister had not gambled with Britain’s national security by appointing Mandelson as US ambassador.
“I completely refute that the Prime Minister would do anything to put the UK’s security at risk. The precise opposite,” she said, adding: “And of course people knew that Peter Mandelson had been sacked from the Cabinet twice. I mean, that’s a statement of the fact.”
Conservative shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said the Prime Minister has “got to take responsibility” for Mandelson’s appointment.
Asked if the Tories would be laying a no confidence motion in Starmer , he replied: “Well, we have a number of tools in our parliamentary arsenal, and we will choose our moments appropriately.”
Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey said Starmer has shown “catastrophic misjudgment” on “many levels”.
He told Sky News: “The thing that I think Labour MPs should think about quite carefully now is their Government has been a bit of a failure, frankly, on the economy, on so much, and it’s in chaos, in the way that Conservatives were in chaos, in perpetual crisis, and I don’t think they can get out of that unless Keir Starmer moves aside.”
Reform UK Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick, meanwhile, said the British Prime Minister’s judgment is “terrible”, adding: “He (the Prime Minister) should be gone.”
