Starmer blames Foreign Office over revelations Mandelson failed security vetting

Downing Street has blamed Foreign Office officials for clearing Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to Washington despite the peer failing security vetting.

Sir Keir Starmer has faced calls to resign over revelations that specialists from UK Security Vetting had recommended against giving Lord Mandelson the necessary security clearance.

The Prime Minister has said he was “absolutely furious” and described the failure to inform him that the Foreign Office had overruled the vetting team was “staggering”.

Downing Street appeared to lay the blame with the Foreign Office on Friday, insisting nobody in Number 10 had been told Lord Mandelson had failed the vetting process despite repeatedly asking the department for “assurances”.

The Foreign Office’s top civil servant, Sir Olly Robbins, has already been sacked over the scandal.

But Ciaran Martin, a former senior civil servant and friend of Sir Olly, said he could not understand the sacking, telling the BBC ministers are “never” told the details of vetting assessments.

Mr Martin said: “There’s no abuse of process, there’s no failure of process.

“Not only is there no duty to disclose the details of a vetting case, there is a duty not to disclose them.”

He added: “The one thing you don’t do is go to the Prime Minister’s office and start telling the details of probably the most personally intrusive process there is in the country.”

Sir Olly himself is yet to comment publicly on the scandal, but the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has called for him to give evidence in Parliament next week.

Sir Keir will face MPs on Monday, and he has pledged to set out “all of the relevant facts” and offer “full transparency and full accountability”.

He has denied knowing Lord Mandelson failed security vetting, saying no ministers were told and launching an investigation into the matter.

But opposition politicians have called for his resignation, accusing Sir Keir of lying to the Commons when he told MPs that “full due process” was followed in Lord Mandelson’s appointment.

At a press conference in Westminster, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the Prime Minister’s position was “untenable”, and she accused him of trying to “blame everyone but himself”.

She said: “This is a national disgrace. The buck stops with him, and the only decent response is to resign.”

Asked whether she would call a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, she said she did not have enough MPs to win such a vote and called on Labour MPs to “do the right thing”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Sir Keir “must go” if he had lied, and called for the Commons Privileges Committee to consider whether the Prime Minister had misled Parliament.

Sir Ed’s party also urged Sir Keir’s ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, to investigate, while the SNP, Green Party and Reform UK have all called for the Prime Minister to resign.

Meanwhile, a YouGov poll of 6,000 adults found only 16% believe Sir Keir had been honest about Lord Mandelson’s appointment, while 53% feel he had not been honest.

Even among Labour supporters, 37% believe the Prime Minister had not been honest – more than the 31% who feel he had been.

The latest revelations about Lord Mandelson’s appointment will only increase the pressure on Sir Keir, with Labour’s poll ratings plummeting and the prospect of heavy losses in May’s elections in Scotland, Wales and English councils.

Lord 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.

Sir Keir was already under fire over the decision to give Lord Mandelson the job, despite it being known that his dealings with Epstein continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.

Questions over his judgment intensified after the first batch of documents related to the decision, published last month, showed Sir Keir was warned before announcing Lord Mandelson’s ambassadorship of a “general reputational risk” over his association with Epstein.

That warning stemmed from the first part of the checks, carried out by the Cabinet Office, which was based on information in the public domain at the time.