Keir Starmer has seen off an opposition attempt to refer him to a standards committee over Peter Mandelson’s appointment, after Downing Street deployed its full weight to force Labour MPs to shore up the prime minister.
However, the Labour leader bore the brunt of anger from some of his own backbenchers who accused him of creating a situation where they would be perceived as being complicit in “a cover-up”.
The vote – tabled by the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch – was on whether the privileges committee should consider if the prime minister misled the Commons in relation to the disgraced peer taking the role of British ambassador to the US.
While it united opposition parties, including the Liberal Democrats, Scottish National party, Reform and others, there will have been relief in the government that Labour figures such as Angela Rayner opted to keep their powder dry. The government won the vote by 335 votes to 223, a majority of 112.
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Fifteen Labour backbenchers supported the motion, mainly from the left of the party and with track records as rebels, including John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Nadia Whittome, Andy McDonald and Cat Smith.
However, there will be concern that 53 Labour MPs did not vote , though some were absent for government business, such as the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, while others will have received permission by whips to be absent.
The rebels included Emma Lewell, the Labour MP for South Shields, who said the government’s handling of the privileges motion suggested to the public there was something to hide, and she could not understand why Starmer would not agree to it.
“The fact that MPs like me are being whipped into voting against this motion is, in my view, wrong. It has played into the terrible narrative that there is something to hide, and good, decent colleagues will be accused of being complicit in a cover-up.”
Lewell said she “will not be voting against this motion”, adding: “I can’t understand why the prime minister doesn’t refer himself to the committee with a clear statement that he is doing so to clear his name. One quick session of the committee could surely see this matter concluded.”
Badenoch had opened the debate by accusing the Starmer of forcing his MPs to come out to assist him “to avoid scrutiny”.
“They are being whipped today to exonerate him before the facts have even been tested,” she added.
Badenoch said the motion rested on “facts” such as that the prime minister had appointed Mandelson before security vetting was complete, in contravention of advice given to him in November, and that his own national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, had described the appointment as “weirdly rushed”.
“We also know that this latest information about the problems with the security vetting did not come from the humble address [the mechanism used by her party to force the release of relevant documents]. It came from a leak to the Guardian,” Badenoch said, citing the Guardian’s revelation that the Foreign Office had granted Mandelson clearance to take up the ambassador role despite having been advised by UK Security Vetting (UKSV) that it should be denied.
The Liberal Democrats leader, Ed Davey, likened Starmer’s response to the motion to that of Boris Johnson, when the then Conservative MP faced a similar vote that paved the way for an inquiry into whether he misled parliament over alleged breaches of lockdown rules when he was the prime minister.
“The prime minister called this motion a stunt, that is not why I put my name to it. But it’s funny though, because ‘stunt’ is exactly the same word Boris Johnson used about the motion the prime minister and I tabled four years ago, referring Boris Johnson to the privileges committee,” said Davey.
Closing the debate for the government, Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said: “In recent weeks some have accused the prime minister of dishonesty, saying there was no way that Foreign Office officials would have given Peter Mandelson clearance against the vetting agency’s recommendation, let alone without checking with the prime minister himself.”
However, he insisted that those accusations had been “disproved” by the testimony to a Commons committee by Olly Robbins, the former Foreign Office permanent secretary who was sacked by Starmer after the Guardian disclosed the civil servant had overturned the UKSV recommendation to deny clearance for Mandelson.
There was also lacerating criticism of the prime minister from figures including Sorcha Eastwood, the Alliance MP for Lagan Valley, who challenged Labour allegations that those supporting the motion were engaged in a stunt. “I have had two car bombs at the edges of my constituency in the last five weeks, so believe me, there are much bigger things that I would prefer to be talking about at this time,” she said.
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