Appointing Lord Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US was the boldest move of Sir Keir Starmer’s time as Prime Minister. It is also the most disastrous.
The decision to send the Prince of Darkness to Washington DC to wrangle the new Donald Trump presidency seemed out of character for the cautious Starmer. Now it has gone so bad that, at the very least, it raises searching questions about the Prime Minister’s judgement and competence.
Of course, the blame for the grave harm he has done to Labour lies overwhelmingly with Mandelson. At the time he was appointed around Christmas 2024, I was one of those who hailed his appointment as a gamble worth taking, on the basis of the man I thought I knew then. I was wrong.
Mandelson should never have put himself forward for the job. Only he knew the extent of his “toe-curling” friendship with Jeffrey Epstein – the money taken, the UK Government secrets betrayed. The often boastful Mandelson never bragged to his friends about his special paedophile pal. Epstein was Mandelson’s useful dirty secret.
We now know that the civil service did its job. Deep vetting sniffed out a rat, deeming Mandelson a security risk, but incredibly, the Government, which Starmer heads, chose to give him the keys to the Lutyens Mansion in Massachusetts anyway. The Prime Minister’s excuse is “nothing to do with me, guv”. Although he boasted about his new hire afterwards, Starmer claims he never spoke to Mandelson before giving him the job prematurely, while the vetting process was still underway. Nor, he says, did he know until this week that Mandelson had failed the vetting.
On Friday morning, Starmer said he was “absolutely furious”. He added: “It is totally unacceptable that the Prime Minister making an appointment is not told that security vetting has been failed.”
We have seen this before. When things go wrong, this Prime Minister blames others. Sir Olly Robbins, the civil service head of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), has now joined the long list of public servants personally hired by this Prime Minister, only to be dispensed with. That roll call includes two chiefs of staff, Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney; the cabinet secretary Chris Wormald; and two media heads, Tim Allan and Matthew Doyle. And, of course, Mandelson himself.
Even if Starmer has been poorly served by his hirelings, he must surely be a catastrophically bad judge of the character and potential of his employees. The nation deserves better of a chief executive.
Mandelson is still insisting vehemently that he never lied outright to Starmer or anyone else when he was being considered as ambassador. He is furious that the chief accusation against him made by Starmer is that he “lied repeatedly”. Since Starmer now says he never spoke to him at the time, he may not even have had the chance to lie.
What Mandelson seems to have been guilty of is being “economical with the actualité”, in the words of that Westminster cynic Alan Clark. By not disclosing salient facts, a wily operator can effectively mislead. Mandelson did not give the gruesome details of his dealings with Epstein, which would have shown him unfit to be ambassador – presumably because he was not asked specifically. We are still waiting for No 10 to publish the three questions about Epstein put to him.
Starmer preens himself for his lawyerly integrity and scorns politicking, yet, incredibly, since the Epstein files disclosures forced Mandelson out, the former director of public prosecutions has himself deployed the same technique of being economical with the truth. He repeatedly stated, inside and outside Parliament, that “due process” was followed in appointing Mandelson.
The Prime Minister’s get-out is another political ploy: deniability. That process concluded Mandelson was not fit for the job, but Starmer could not have lied because he did not know. His useless civil servants, headed by Robbins, did not tell him. The problem is that on 5 February, Starmer claimed he did know. “There was… security vetting carried out independently by the security services,” he told a press conference in Hastings, “which is an intensive exercise that gave him clearance for the role.”
On the contrary, we now know that the deep vetting did not give Mandelson clearance. Inadvertent or not, this statement by Starmer seems to be a lie.
If the Prime Minister did not know, he surely should have – any other prime minister would have been laser-focused on an existential threat to his job. At the very least, any competent civil servant would have put a note in his red briefing box. Robbins has fallen on his sword rather than dispute No 10’s claim that the FCDO reported Mandelson had “cleared” his vetting. Depends what you mean by “cleared”, I suppose.
As to the suggestion that the Prime Minister was not told about the vetting conclusion, Westminster veterans have their doubts. Former Conservative foreign secretary and Home Secretary Sir James Cleverly MP comments: “It is inconceivable that Olly Robbins would have made a judgement call about overruling a vetting recommendation like that without instructions. Someone political would have said something like: ‘No 10 wants this to happen, just sort it out’.”
Starmer has a lot of explaining to do when he makes his statement to MPs on Monday. In the meantime, over this crucial pre-local election campaigning weekend, Labour MPs must explain to voters on the doorstep that the Prime Minister isn’t a liar – he’s just incompetent.
Hence then, the article about starmer couldn t run a bath let alone the country was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Starmer couldn’t run a bath – let alone the country )
Also on site :