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Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of scapegoating officials and wilful ignorance over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, as he fended off calls for him to quit in a chastening House of Commons debate.
The prime minister insisted on Monday he had been “deliberately” and repeatedly kept in the dark by the Foreign Office over Mandelson’s failure of a vetting check. He said this had been “absolutely unforgivable”.
MPs listened in stunned silence to Starmer’s account of a massive security failure at the heart of the British state, in which he took responsibility for the ill-fated appointment of Mandelson.
But MPs broke into mocking laughter when the prime minister said: “I know many members of this House will find these facts to be incredible. To that, I can only say that they are right.”
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle opened the session warning MPs not to accuse Starmer of lying — the charge is deemed unparliamentary — and Reform UK MP Lee Anderson was ejected from the chamber for doing so.
But Starmer was still subject to withering criticism about his handling of the affair and his attempt to cast the blame on Foreign Office civil servants and an alleged cover-up.
Kemi Badenoch, Conservative leader, said the prime minister had “thrown his staff and officials under the bus”. She said Starmer had failed to ask more questions about Mandelson because he “didn’t want to know”.
Sir Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, said Starmer had made a “catastrophic error of judgment” and should resign, adding: “He gives every impression of a prime minister in office but not in power.”
Dame Emily Thornberry, Labour foreign affairs select committee chair, said it seemed that “for certain members of the prime minister’s team, getting Peter Mandelson the job was a priority that overrode everything else and that security considerations were very much second order”.
Diane Abbott, the veteran Labour MP, said Starmer had talked a lot about not being told about the vetting failure, but to Tory cheers she added: “The question is why didn’t he ask?”
Mandelson was appointed Britain’s ambassador to the US in December 2024 by Starmer, who believed the Labour grandee’s political nous and business experience would be invaluable in dealing with Donald Trump.
At the start of his statement Starmer said: “At the heart of this, there is also a judgment I made that was wrong. I should not have appointed Peter Mandelson.
“I take responsibility for that decision and I apologise again to the victims of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who were clearly failed by my decision.” Starmer sacked Mandelson last September.
The prime minister doubled down on his criticism of Sir Olly Robbins, whom he sacked as head of the Foreign Office last week, claiming that senior Foreign Office officials tried to conceal the vetting failure from him and from parliament.
“A deliberate decision was taken to withhold that material,” Starmer claimed. “There was not a lack of asking. This wasn’t an oversight. It was a decision. It was a decision taken not to share that information on repeated occasions.”
Starmer’s Commons grilling has left Labour MPs depressed after a few weeks in which the prime minister’s handling of the Iran war seemed to have earned him some political breathing space.
“This has just made everyone more pissed off,” said one senior cabinet member. “But the party isn’t ready to move against Keir at the moment.”
Other Labour MPs agreed that while Starmer had been left badly damaged by the affair, for the moment the party should keep him as leader. But the local elections on May 7 will be another flashpoint for the prime minister.
Earlier it emerged that Starmer ignored advice in November 2024 that any political appointee for the job of ambassador to the US should undergo national security vetting before being formally appointed, government documents suggested.
The revelation increases scrutiny of the prime minister’s decision to announce Mandelson’s appointment in December 2024 before security vetting had taken place.
Papers published by the Cabinet Office last month include a letter from the then head of the civil service, Lord Simon Case, on November 11 2024, setting out the process before the appointment.
Case’s note said: “You should give us the name of the person you would like to appoint and we will develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential conflicts of interest or other issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice.”
Starmer told MPs it was usual for political appointees to big public jobs to undergo vetting after they had been proposed for the job, but added that the government had now ended that practice.
Robbins, who is taking legal advice over his dismissal, will give his account of the vetting scandal in evidence to MPs on Tuesday morning.
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