Britain has an alarming casualty rate as far as prime ministers are concerned. It has lost five in the last decade. It could be about to lose a sixth.
The Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer entered Number 10 after a landslide general election victory only a year and a half ago, yet he has been mired in almost continual scandals, U-turns, and mishaps since the day it emerged in the summer of 2024 that he had failed to declare gifts, including designer clothes, glasses, and accommodation from the Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli, who received a Downing Street security pass.
Now he is in trouble again over security, this time for appointing Lord Mandelson as U.S. ambassador, Britain’s top diplomatic post, despite the former Labour minister’s failure in security vetting. Monday, with his back to the wall in the House of Commons, Starmer insisted that the top official in the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, had “deliberately” withheld from him the fact that Mandelson had been deemed a security risk. Starmer sacked Robbins last week.
The prime minister said it “beggared belief” that he was not told that Mandelson had not been cleared by the Foreign Office vetting agency, UKSV. But MPs wanted to know why the PM was so eager to install “the Prince of Darkness,” as Mandelson is often called, in the first place. And in summarily sacking Robbins, was he not simply seeking a convenient scapegoat for his own lack of judgment?
Lord Mandelson came with more baggage than Heathrow Airport. In 1998, he was forced to resign from his cabinet post as trade and industry secretary after it emerged that he had failed to declare a loan of £373,000 from the Labour donor Geoffrey Robinson. He was restored to the cabinet by Labour’s then–Prime Minister Tony Blair as Northern Ireland Secretary, only to resign again in 2001 after improperly intervening in the attempts by another wealthy individual, Srichand Hinduja, to secure a UK passport. Even then, Blair nominated the twice-disgraced politician to be the UK’s European commissioner for trade.
While in this post, Mandelson cemented his association with one Jeffrey Epstein. He became such a close friend that Mandelson started to share with him intelligence on important matters of state. According to the Epstein files, Mandelson, back in the Labour government in 2008, emailed Epstein on market-sensitive issues such as imminent European Union bank bailouts and UK infrastructure sales. He also kept his close relationship with the financier even after Epstein was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution.
The main reason Starmer is in deep trouble is because he knew all about this, and about Mandelson’s continued relationship with Epstein, before he appointed him U.S. ambassador and before there was any issue about his formal security vetting. Starmer also knew that Mandelson’s lobbying company, Global Counsel, had a long history of advising Russian state-linked companies and networking with Chinese state-linked businessmen.
He knew because this had been flagged by his own cabinet secretary, Sir Simon Case, in a memo on November 11, 2024, pointing out the reputational issues and “potential conflicts of interest” if Mandelson were appointed. Starmer went ahead anyway and appointed Mandelson, now ennobled, as U.S. ambassador a month later without security clearance, in December 2024. This is what even his own Labour MPs find so difficult to understand.
Starmer complained in his statement to MPs yesterday that it was “staggering” he had not been told by the civil servant in charge of the Foreign Office that Mandelson had failed his security vetting in January 2025 after Mandelson was in post. “So why didn’t the Prime Minister ask?” replied the former Labour MP Diane Abbott, who called on him to resign. The Labour chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Emily Thornberry, said Number 10 had been so desperate to appoint Mandelson that it treated national security as “very much second order.”
Those were just the responses from the PM’s own side of the House. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, both demanded that the Prime Minister step down immediately because of his catastrophic misjudgment. Either he misled Parliament when he claimed earlier this year that Mandelson had been appointed after “full due diligence,” in which case he broke the ministerial code. Or he didn’t know about the security vetting and is not in control of his own government. Ed Davey compared the PM unfavorably with the former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who resigned after misleading Parliament over the so-called “Partygate” affair during the coronavirus pandemic.
The reason this scandal is so dangerous for Starmer is precisely because previous prime ministers have been forced to resign over much less serious issues. Johnson resigned, essentially, because he briefly attended a birthday party held for him by his staff during Covid lockdown. There was never any suggestion that he had endangered national security by eating a slice of cake.
Yet as U.S. ambassador, Lord Mandelson was given access to the very top tier of intelligence briefings, the so-called STRAP material. This is only given to the PM and a handful of senior ministers because it includes intelligence of vital interest to allies like America—and also to enemy powers if any leaked. Given his networking with figures close to the Russian and Chinese governments, Mandelson’s record of resignations and sharing sensitive information with Jeffrey Epstein, it is not only opposition MPs who are deeply disturbed by Starmer’s decision.
For his part, Robbins, the Foreign Office civil servant sacked by Starmer, claimed in evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Tuesday that he had been placed under “constant pressure” from Number 10 to get Mandelson in post in December 2024. He received calls saying “make it happen…get on with it.” Number 10 appeared “dismissive” of vetting procedure. He also let it be known that Starmer appointed Mandelson not just against Case’s advice, but also Robbins’s predecessor as permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Philip Barton.
Yet Starmer is sticking to his claim that “a deliberate decision was taken to withhold that [negative vetting decision]” from him. In other words, that Robbins, for obscure reasons, actively suppressed the fact that, according to the Foreign Office vetting service UKSV, Mandelson was effectively a risk to national security and that clearance had been denied.
To be fair to the PM, this does seem inexplicable, even if (as Robbins insists) it is standard procedure to keep the vetting process secret. The details of security vetting by the Foreign Office agency UKSV are of course confidential, but the result is not—otherwise what would be the point of the vetting in the first place?
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Did Robbins fail in his duty to inform the PM that Mandelson had not made the cut? Newly in post in December 2024, the permanent secretary evidently believed that Number 10 had already made its decision and it was his job to ensure it went through. But it is fair to say that the committee was not satisfied with that account.
However, many MPs believe that the Robbins issue is a diversion. Starmer knew enough already about Mandelson’s character, not least from Case, his own top official in the Cabinet Office. The PM made a mistake and, instead of owning up to it, chose to “throw Robbins under a bus,” as Badenoch put it. Robbins, of course, appears to agree.
Any way you look at this, it is another fine mess for a prime minister who has few friends even in his own party or in the country. Keir Starmer has been the most unpopular PM of recent times in opinion polls. Off the record, many Labour MPs lament his lack of direction and poor performance not just today but since he was elected. “There have been too many mistakes,” said the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar, who has been the most senior figure so far to openly call for Keir Starmer to resign. He said that in February. His wish may be about to come true.
