The Mandelson scandal has erupted yet again in spectacular fashion and Keir Starmer’s job is once more on the line.
There are more holes in his reasons for making Peter Mandelson our man in Washington – despite failing his security vetting – than there are in a Swiss cheese.
But the coming week should fill in at least some of them.
Starmer will make a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, followed by extensive questioning, and Oliver Robbins, top mandarin at the Foreign Office until the PM fired him on Thursday night, is scheduled to be grilled by the Commons’ Foreign Affairs select committee on Tuesday.
MPs, usually not the best of inquisitors, must not let us down. They should start doing their homework now. Their probing needs to be focused, forensic and informed. Here’s what they should be asking.
Starmer claims he didn’t know Robbins had ignored Mandelson’s failure to be granted security clearance. His private office didn’t know. No 10 Downing Street didn’t know. The Cabinet Office didn’t know.
Robbins had proceeded with the appointment entirely off his own bat. Not for the first time we see in action a know-nothing administration of startling ignorance. Yet when Mandelson was forced to resign earlier this year, Starmer justified his decision to appoint him with repeated and extensive reference to the vetting system. He claimed due process had been followed at every stage and ‘categorically’ stated Mandelson had passed the security vetting.
On what basis did Starmer make these claims? Had he ever inquired how the vetting process had gone? If not, how could he be so sure everything was hunky dory – especially since it wasn’t.
Starmer even posed as something of an expert on the vetting. When asked in the Commons if it had included Mandelson’s links with Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious paedophile, he replied, ‘Yes, it did’, implying a knowledge of the content.
Yet now he feigns ignorance. Is that really credible? Given all the concerns swirling round Mandelson, surely it was a dereliction of duty not to ensure the vetting process was watertight?
After all, the government ethics unit had raised concerns about Mandelson’s links not just with Epstein but with Russia and China before the vetting began. So surely it would have been entirely legitimate to inquire if the vetting had thrown up any further cause for concern?
Moreover, is it really the case that nobody around him knew Mandelson had flunked the vetting? Starmer’s head of communications in 10 Downing Street was approached early last September by journalists suggesting he had been. Stories to that effect ran in a couple of papers.
Did nobody in Downing Street or the Cabinet Office bother to check out if they were true? Didn’t they raise even the flimsiest of red flags? Didn’t your comms director, Prime Minister, ever raise the matter with you?
Interestingly, he didn’t deny Mandelson had failed the vetting. He just batted inquiries away with a few pro forma words about process. Are we also expected to believe the Cabinet Office was in the dark until this week? The unit which did Mandelson’s vetting is based there. When its findings were knocked back by the Foreign Office – an unprecedented act in the circumstances – was there really no discussion about it? No anger or recriminations? No talk of further action?
In fact, I’m told the Cabinet Office knew about it for some time. It would certainly have known about it by early February when Parliament forced the Government to release all papers relevant to Mandelson’s appointment, including a specific request for documents relating to the vetting process.
These must have been among the first the Cabinet Office retrieved. Yet 10 weeks later they have still not been made public. Why? It looks increasingly risible that the Cabinet Office knew nothing until this week.
Now ponder on this, the most damning and dangerous sentence in the Guardian’s exposé of this scandal: ‘Senior government officials have been considering whether to withhold from Parliament documents that would reveal that Mandelson was not given vetting approval from officials.’
There you have it – the makings of a cover-up to stop Parliament and public from knowing the truth. Were you in the dark about that too, PM? Yet another matter that didn’t cross your desk? Folks are starting to wonder if you even have a desk.
Let’s move on. Can the PM now tell us why Mandelson failed the vetting process? Has he bothered to find out? Much has been made of his close connection to Epstein, which is bad enough.
But I understand those doing the vetting were much more concerned about his Global Council lobbying/consulting group, which involved lucrative contracts with various Chinese and Russian companies. There was especial worry about his Chinese connections.
Is that Starmer’s understanding too? Were you aware, PM, of these specific China concerns? If so, it makes your original decision to appoint him all the more foolhardy – for a lot of this information was already in the public domain – and the decision to override the vetting decision unconscionable. Would the PM care to explain himself?
Of course, it’s all Robbins’ fault. He’s the fall guy. Westminster is agog with speculation about what he might say on Tuesday.
If he can show he did not singlehandedly overrule the security vetting – that he informed or consulted others at the heart of government close to Starmer (if not Starmer himself) – then the PM is toast. But he might decide to say very little, for whatever reason. So questions to him must also be robust.
Why did he overrule the security vetting? Did he really take such a monumental decision on his own, involving no one else? Not even the famously intrusive Foreign Office lawyers?
Why did he not seek ministerial cover? Or consult the Cabinet Secretary, the country’s most senior civil servant. Did he really leave the Cabinet Office in ignorance? Robbins had only been the Foreign Office top cat for three weeks when Mandelson was formally appointed at the end of January 2025. He hadn’t been involved in the run-up to it. What made him think it was his place to take this decision – or that he was qualified to do so?
After all, Mandelson wasn’t the Foreign Office candidate. Why go out on a limb for him?
Technically the Foreign Office had the power to overrule the vetting as the department sponsoring the hiring. But it is a power rarely used, inadvisable for a novice head to deploy. Mandelson’s real sponsor was Starmer. It was a political not a civil service appointment. Surely the decision should have been the PM’s?
Did you take it just to please the boss? Had Starmer or his henchmen made it clear he wanted Mandelson in Washington come hell or high water? Did 10 Downing Street insist speed was of the essence – it would brook no further delay (even for national security reasons)?
Perhaps. As the new kid on the block, maybe Robbins wanted to please his master. But those out to impress the boss usually let the boss know they’ve done something helpful. In this case, if Starmer is to be believed, Robbins did it without the PM knowing. It just doesn’t add up.
Moreover, Starmer was repeatedly claiming, in public and Parliament, that Mandelson had passed the security vetting. So why didn’t Robbins quietly correct him? Why did he allow the PM to continue telling untruths (even if unwittingly)? Was he trapped in a lie of his own making?
Here’s where the questions must become particularly forensic for Robbins. Security vetting decided against Mandelson on January 28. Only two days later (January 30) you, Robbins, proceeded with the formal hiring letter. Talk us through your detailed thought processes during that 48 hours.
What went through your mind? Did you really consult with nobody? When exactly did you decide to ignore the security vetting? Your department’s employment letter to Mandelson told him ‘your security clearance has been confirmed by the vetting unit’. Were you responsible for that lie?
Above all did it never cross your mind the damage you’d do to US–British security and intelligence cooperation, which remains deep and extensive despite all the flak from the current White House, by sending to Washington someone who had failed his security vetting?
Did you really think it could be kept secret? Surely national security considerations demanded you raised this with the PM?
‘The country needs a credible, reliable and strong PM,’ said one of Starmer’s flunkies yesterday, arguing why he should stay in post. The problem is Starmer is none of the above.
At a time of growing global peril we are led by a man who staggers from crisis to embarrassment to impotence. Next week Parliament must hold him to account. It is long overdue.
