Starmer rejects calls to quit as pressure mounts over Mandelson vetting
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Starmer on Friday maintained that he was kept in the dark about the Foreign Office’s decision to overrule the recommendation of security officials not to give the job to the Labour Party grandee, who was fired in September over his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Starmer, who has asserted he knew nothing about the vetting outcome, said that the Foreign Office’s failure to inform him, as prime minister, was “staggering” and “unforgivable”, pledging to “set out all the relevant facts in true transparency” to Parliament on Monday.
The beleaguered prime minister said he only found out about the botched process on Tuesday, just before the revelations were published by The Guardian on Thursday, with top Foreign Office civil servant Olly Robbins ousted on the same day.
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said Friday that “the recommendation was to not appoint Peter Mandelson to the role,” and that the Foreign Office ignored it. He said that was “astonishing”, but within the rules.
He said no government minister had been told of the security assessment, carried out by a department known as UK Security Vetting. People familiar with the process told The Associated Press that is standard practice because of the sensitive personal information involved, including “financial, personal, sexual, religious and other types of background information”.
Starmer has repeatedly insisted that “due process” was followed in the appointment, which was announced in December 2024, with Mandelson taking up the post in February, 2025.
He was sacked just seven months later, after documents released by a US Congressional committee revealed new details about the depth of his ties to Epstein.
Police have opened a probe into allegations of misconduct in office by Mandelson, who was arrested and bailed in February. Investigators are looking at allegations he leaked sensitive documents to Epstein when he was a government minister, including during the 2008 financial crash.
