Contents
The British prime minister remains in jeopardy over his decision to appoint an associate of Jeffrey Epstein as U.S. ambassador — seven months after sacking him.
LONDON — Peter Mandelson is the curse that never ends for Keir Starmer.
Britain’s prime minister accused his own foreign ministry Monday of deliberately concealing the fact that vetting officials recommended Mandelson should be denied full security clearance as U.K. ambassador to Washington.
Starmer — who is facing a fresh round of intense scrutiny over what his top team knew and when — told parliament that even his most senior civil servant, the ex-Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald, was not informed about the recommendation, despite reviewing Mandelson’s appointment last year.
“A deliberate decision was taken to withhold that material,” said Starmer, pointing the finger at the Foreign Office. “This was not a lack of asking. This wasn’t an oversight. It was a decision taken not to share that information on repeated occasions.”
Yet questions still abound about the details of the saga, what it says about the No. 10 operation and the effect all this will have on Starmer’s future relationships — with the civil service, his own MPs and a nation sick to the back teeth of government scandal.
Those questions could grow Tuesday when Oliver Robbins gives his side of the story to a committee of MPs. Starmer sacked the Foreign Office’s top civil servant last Thursday for withholding the information.
Robbins will insist he was legally bound to keep the vetting recommendation private; Starmer insists he was not. For critics this row goes beyond process and to the PM’s judgment.
POLITICO looks at seven ways in which the saga could keep rolling.
1) Political pressure
A key question for Robbins will be how hard he claims No. 10 pushed him — or his predecessor Philip Barton — for Mandelson to get the role come hell or high water.
Starmer’s then-chief of staff Morgan McSweeney was a key ally of the incoming ambassador, a veteran Labour politician, and ditched an earlier recruitment round from inside the diplomatic machine.
This privately irked some Foreign Office officials, who are always keen for one of their own to get the top jobs and are suspicious of outsiders. “The whole atmosphere around the appointment in the Foreign Office was pretty toxic,” recalled one person with knowledge of the process who was granted anonymity to speak frankly.
So it stands to reason that Starmer might have felt the need to impose his will. Mandelson’s appointment was announced shortly after it was leaked to the press and days before his security vetting even began. He was sacked less than a year later over his friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The PM would argue such acute political sensitivity was all the more reason for Robbins to flag any problems. But Robbins may argue he was acting on what he saw as clear direction from No. 10 to get the job done, and trying to avoid causing the PM embarrassment. Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch said of Starmer on Monday: “He had chosen his man; Whitehall had to follow.”
2) A mandarin’s revenge?
No.10 will be on high alert for anything unexpected from Robbins — particularly any evidence that undermines or contradicts Starmer’s defense.
It is already well-established that Robbins chose not to tell Starmer about the vetting recommendation and insisted he had the law on his side. What we don’t know are all the nuances behind his decision. They might not all be bad for the prime minister.
One interesting question is whether Robbins sought his own legal advice before choosing not to disclose the result of Mandelson’s security vetting.
If he did take legal advice — and the result was a recommendation he should keep the failure secret — that would put Starmer in a sticky spot, considering Robbins would be able to argue he duly followed the same process that the-now Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo and Cabinet Office permanent Secretary Cat Little felt was necessary before they ultimately ended up telling the PM last week.
If Robbins did not take legal advice, Starmer and his allies could argue he was a law unto himself and it was right to sack him.
3) The costs add up
Mandelson received £75,000 in severance pay for his ambassadorial sacking — a sum that Robbins himself considered “good value for money,” according to previously released documents, given the ex-envoy had been pushing for half a million.
So the obvious question is what Robbins will be paid, when he was far more deeply established in the civil service and the circumstances of his sacking were more technical.
Robbins has engaged the FDA union for senior civil servants to negotiate on his behalf and allies have made clear he is considering challenging his dismissal at an employment tribunal. If not settled with a payoff, that would lead to protracted legal battles that may only add to the cost of this saga to the taxpayer.
4) What Labour MPs do next
Even some hostile Labour MPs believe Starmer has a strong defense on the details and the process. But they are weighing up what they see as the more pressing question of his judgement.
MPs sat largely silent behind Starmer as the former chief prosecutor effectively acted as his own defense barrister, denying misleading parliament and apologizing for appointing Mandelson despite the risks.
Badenoch reversed the old roles too as she echoed the words Starmer used against Tory ex-PM Boris Johnson for breaching Covid lockdown rules: “Is it one rule for him and another for everyone else?”
All this is painful for Starmer’s MPs, who remain undecided on whether to move against him after crunch elections on May 7. One said: “If you’re saying you appointed the friend of a pedophile, you’re losing votes no matter what happens.”
Some of his MPs have raised the old accusation that he is incurious. Starmer faced repeated questions Monday on whether he asked directly if Mandelson had failed his vetting.
Starmer’s allies insist this is unfair and he would not have got the information simply by asking the “right” questions of the Foreign Office, given it chose to grant Mandelson security clearance despite the recommendation. One government official said: “If you are told he passed the vetting, it would be weird to ask ‘did he actually, though?’”
5) The technocrat loses the technocracy
Central to Starmer’s pitch was always that he is a professional — a career public servant, who can whip an unwieldy organization into shape through sound management. His 18 months in government have shown that is easier said than done with the British state — and it can quickly come to resent you.
Starmer’s relationship with the civil service was first soured by his claim, back in December 2024, that far too many of them are happy bathing “in the tepid bath of managed decline.” A long line of dismissed advisers have only added to the sense that a scapegoat can always be plucked from officialdom, when the true problem may well lie at the very top.
On Monday, Starmer cited former Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald several times during his defense to MPs. Where is Wormald now? Dismissed from government.
The PM finds himself closely aligned with Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo and Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary Cat Little for the time being, but they may well be asking how long until they, too, fall out of favor. In the meantime, there could be a chilling effect in which civil servants become more defensive and suspicious. Plenty of PMs have discovered that the “Rolls-Royce” civil service is capable of growling, not just purring.
6) National security implications spread
The revelations of the last week mean that a man appointed to handle what is perhaps Britain’s most sensitive of foreign relationships — and an ally in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance — was doing so despite a recommendation that he be denied security clearance.
The government has kept private why Mandelson was unsuccessful — but plausible concerns span from his relationship with Epstein to his business links to China or Russia.
Starmer announced Monday that he had commissioned a review into any security concerns raised during Mandelson’s tenure. That in itself means the scandal could deepen.
MPs are also asking about just how high a level of top secret documents Mandelson was allowed to see under Britain’s “STRAP” protocol. Access to these highest-level documents is complicated and varies case by case, with each one having an assigned “compartment” of people who see it on a need-to-know basis. Therefore we may never find out what Mandelson saw.
7) What else is waiting to come out?
One row that dominated Monday shows anything can come out of left field and disrupt the prime minister’s plans.
This time it was a memo to Starmer in November 2024 from former Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, already released by the government weeks ago but not widely seized upon. It recommended Starmer should let civil servants obtain security clearances, due diligence and flag any other issues “before confirming your choice” of ambassador.
MPs bombarded Starmer with questions about the Case memo. He had a response ready — that Wormald had since reviewed the process and said it was normal to only vet external appointees after they were announced.
But officials who worked on the advice from Case to Starmer believed they were telling the PM that vetting should be completed before the new ambassador was appointed, according to a person familiar with the matter, granted anonymity to speak about a sensitive matter.
One huge potential curveball is still to be thrown — the planned release of thousands of emails, text messages and WhatsApps between Mandelson and government figures in the coming weeks. Not even Starmer can be sure how the story will evolve from there.
Additional reporting by Tim Ross.