‘Keir Starmer cannot escape his responsibility for Mandelson scandal’

Sir Keir Starmer is fighting for his political life and former Foreign Office chief Sir Olly Robbins is battling for his reputation – but the nation can see the plain facts of this scandal, which has gripped the Labour Government. The Prime Minister was warned that Peter Mandelson had maintained his relationship with billionaire sex predator Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction, and Sir Keir went ahead and handed him the coveted post of ambassador to the United States.

Due diligence was done, Sir Keir was warned of the “reputational risk”, and yet he sent the former Labour peer, who had twice been forced out of Tony Blair’s Government, to be Britain’s man in Washington DC. That now looks like a horrendous error of judgment. The Prime Minister has apologised but seems determined not to take full responsibility for this fateful decision. Sir Olly has lost his job, but the Labour leader is determined to cling onto his own.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has accused Sir Keir of throwing “his staff and officials under the bus”. He argues that he would not have gone ahead with the appointment if the Foreign Office had not withheld information that Mandelson had failed security vetting. The public will groan at yet more evidence of chronic dysfunction at the heart of Whitehall. But Sir Olly is determined he will not be the fall guy for this fiasco.

In his letter to the Foreign Affairs select committee, he points out that by the time he took over at the Foreign Office the Cabinet Office had already completed its duel diligence checks, approval had been granted by the King, the appointment had been announced, the United States had given the green light, and Mandelson already had access to the Whitehall headquarters.

He claims Number 10 took a “dismissive approach” to the stage of the vetting process intended to assess whether someone is a security risk. He claims the Cabinet Office asked whether this type of vetting “was actually necessary”. The impression is that the Prime Minister’s team was hellbent on getting Mandelson in post. The public has every right to be bewildered why the PM was so determined to have someone who has found himself at the heart of controversy throughout his career in this most sensitive of positions.

Sir Keir’s job is to make decisions, and the polls suggest the country is deeply unimpressed with his judgments so far. The latest YouGov poll has Labour in fourth place on 16%, behind the Greens (17%), Conservatives (17%) and Reform UK (27%). Labour MPs are unlikely to move to oust the PM before the May 7 elections but these contests have been presented as a referendum on Sir Keir. Historians for generations to come will study how a PM who secured a landslide victory torched the trust of the country.

If Sir Keir is seen to pass the buck and scapegoat underlings on the Mandelson scandal, the country will despair at the refusal of the political class to accept their choices.