Kemi Badenoch yesterday accused Keir Starmer of lying about Peter Mandelson’s appointment, amid growing claims of a cover-up.
The Tory leader demanded a sleaze inquiry into whether Sir Keir misleMPs over the disastrous decision to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador.
And she claimed that incriminating documents were removed from this week’s Mandelson files to avoid further damage to the Prime Minister’s battered reputation. Sir Keir yesterday issued another grovelling apology over his decision to send Mandelson to Washington despite knowing he had stayed friends with Jeffrey Epstein for years after the financier’s child-sex conviction.
But Mrs Badenoch called for him to go, saying: ‘I am astonished the Prime Minister can actually look himself in the mirror right now. It is very clear that he told lie after lie after lie about the appointment of Peter Mandelson. He has been dishonest with Parliament and with the country.
‘And Labour MPs, in good conscience, should be looking at whether or not this man should be leading our country.’
The Conservatives called on the PM’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus to investigate the ‘serious deficiencies in the released material’. He was also asked to examine evidence that Sir Keir may have misled Parliament when he claimed that ‘full due process was followed’ throughout Mandelson’s appointment.
On Wednesday, Downing Street finally published the first batch of documents surrounding Mandelson’s appointment in December 2024. But although they confirm Sir Keir was warned about the disgraced peer’s ‘particularly close’ relationship with Epstein, his response is not recorded. The documents contain no record of what Sir Keir thought about Mandelson or why he pushed through the appointment after being told it was a ‘reputational risk’ to the Government.
Mrs Badenoch said ‘a lot of information is missing’ from the files. She said it was not credible that no record was kept of why Sir Keir wanted to appoint Mandelson or how he responded to being told the Labour grandee had remained friends with Epstein following his conviction for procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008.
‘I’ve been a minister and a secretary of state,’ she said. ‘The comments which Keir Starmer would have put on the (red box) notes – those are the cover notes where you explain what you want to happen – are missing. They have been removed. We need the full details of what the Prime Minister did. There is still a cover-up going on.’
The Conservatives also claimed that ministers broke government rules on public spending in handing Mandelson an extraordinary £75,000 golden goodbye after sacking him over his friendship with Epstein. One senior figure described the pay-off as ‘hush money’. In his first public comment since the files were published, Sir Keir said he took ‘full responsibility’ for the appointment, which was made against the advice of his national security adviser Jonathan Powell.
He said: ‘It was me that made a mistake, and it’s me that makes the apology to the victims of Epstein, and I do that.’ Downing Street rejected claims of a cover-up and Whitehall sources denied that documents had been redacted. But the PM’s spokesman was unable to explain why Sir Keir apparently offered no comment on the notes contained in his red box.
No 10 also stuck by the PM’s claim that the full procedures in place at the time were followed. But this week’s documents record Mr Powell saying that Mandelson’s appointment was ‘weirdly rushed’.
In a letter to Sir Laurie, Tory frontbencher Alex Burghart said this week’s documents ‘contradict’ statements made by Sir Keir to Parliament. He added that the revelations about the ‘rushed’ appointment and the bypassing of vetting procedures contradicted the PM’s claim that proper procedures were followed.
Labour’s former deputy leader Harriet Harman, who pursued Boris Johnson over claims of misleading Parliament, said Sir Keir had to expect the same treatment.
The revelations have triggered anger on the Labour backbenches – and there are growing fears about what might emerge in the next, much bigger, batch of files in the coming weeks.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell accused the PM of allowing Labour to be ‘dragged into the gutter’ by Mandelson and his allies.
Fellow Left-winger Nadia Whittome said: ‘Victims of child sexual abuse deserve our moral consistency. How did the PM think Mandelson’s appointment would make them feel? Factional politics took priority above everything else, and that is disgraceful.’
