Starmer’s Mandelson statement to MPs – snap verdict
Andrew Sparrow
It wasn’t much of a win, but as Keir Starmer heads back to Downing Street he will probably count that as a sort of success. Labour MPs did not turn on him; there was no one on his side calling for his resignation, and those who did speak out were mostly from the Corbynite left (whose views are discounted by No 10 anyway), and who were more keen to aim their fire at Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson.
If Kemi Badenoch thought there was more mileage in this, she could have tabled a no confidence motion on this which would have to be debated tomorrow, but she didn’t. She can be brutal in the Commons, but her speech today did not cause the PM any difficulties.
Last week she was saying he was clearly lying. If he is, then he is doing it quite well, because neither she, nor any other MP, made a convincing job this afternoon of establishing that he has not been telling the truth about what he was told about by the Foreign Office about the Mandelson vetting process.
On the narrow process point – it is really plausible that No 10 did not know, and could not find out, that Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting interview?– Starmer may even have won some people around this afternoon. He sounded believable.
But, in other respects, the process point (as well the issue about whether he inadvertently misled parliament) is irrelevant. Starmer’s problem is that he decided to approve the appointment of Mandelson in the first place, when it was already clear that there was ample evidence that his business record and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein made him suspect. That, presumably, is why Olly Robbins decided to facilitate the appointment by using his discretion to overrule the vetting recommendation.
It seems the argument of some in Downing Street might have been that Mandelson should get the job not despite being the sleazy former best friend of a paedophile, but precisely because he was this sort of character. They weren’t appointing him ambassador to the Vatican. There seems to have been the assumption that this was the sort of interlocutor Donald Trump (another ex-Epstein best friend) might like. You can understand why Starmer won’t put it like that in public.
Whatever the reason, it turned out to be a colossal misjudgment. Starmer may have seen off Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey and all the others this afternoon, but this controversy has only added to the long list of reasons Labour MPs have for wanting him out before the next election and nothing he said this afternoon changes that.
That is all from me now. Aneesa Ahmed is taking over.
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Just now, prime minister Keir Starmer has ordered an investigation into any security concerns relating to Peter Mandelson’s tenure as UK ambassador to the US, our political correspondent Peter Walker reports.
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“I know many members across the house will find these facts to be incredible,” Starmer told jeering MPs, after setting out how the Foreign Office opted to overrule the initial decision to refuse Mandelson’s security vetting without informing him and other ministers.
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He said: “To that I can only say they are right. Throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system in government. That is not how the vast majority of people in this country expect politics, government or accountability to work, and I do not think it’s how most public servants think it should work either.”
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He added that the Foreign Office had been stripped of its powers to overrule vetting decisions.
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You can read the first take of the story below.
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It wasn’t much of a win, but as Keir Starmer heads back to Downing Street he will probably count that as a sort of success. Labour MPs did not turn on him; there was no one on his side calling for his resignation, and those who did speak out were mostly from the Corbynite left (whose views are discounted by No 10 anyway), and who were more keen to aim their fire at Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson.
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If Kemi Badenoch thought there was more mileage in this, she could have tabled a no confidence motion on this which would have to be debated tomorrow, but she didn’t. She can be brutal in the Commons, but her speech today did not cause the PM any difficulties.
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Last week she was saying he was clearly lying. If he is, then he is doing it quite well, because neither she, nor any other MP, made a convincing job this afternoon of establishing that he has not been telling the truth about what he was told about by the Foreign Office about the Mandelson vetting process.
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On the narrow process point – it is really plausible that No 10 did not know, and could not find out, that Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting interview?– Starmer may even have won some people around this afternoon. He sounded believable.
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But, in other respects, the process point (as well the issue about whether he inadvertently misled parliament) is irrelevant. Starmer’s problem is that he decided to approve the appointment of Mandelson in the first place, when it was already clear that there was ample evidence that his business record and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein made him suspect. That, presumably, is why Olly Robbins decided to facilitate the appointment by using his discretion to overrule the vetting recommendation.
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It seems the argument of some in Downing Street might have been that Mandelson should get the job not despite being the sleazy former best friend of a paedophile, but precisely because he was this sort of character. They weren’t appointing him ambassador to the Vatican. There seems to have been the assumption that this was the sort of interlocutor Donald Trump (another ex-Epstein best friend) might like. You can understand why Starmer won’t put it like that in public.
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Whatever the reason, it turned out to be a colossal misjudgment. Starmer may have seen off Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey and all the others this afternoon, but this controversy has only added to the long list of reasons Labour MPs have for wanting him out before the next election and nothing he said this afternoon changes that.
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That is all from me now. Aneesa Ahmed is taking over.
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The Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has also been thrown out of the Commons. She called Starmer a “barefaced liar” and refused to withdraw when Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, asked her to withdraw.
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But, unlike with Lee Anderson (see 4.45pm), Hoyle had to “name” Sultana. She did not leave the chamber when he asked her to. Instead, after he “named” her, a motion was passed suspending her from participation in the proceedings. That means she is out for five days, and will also lose pay as a result.
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Hoyle only named her reluctantly, after she refused his request to leave without being named. Suspensions like this are relatively rare.
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Before she was interrupted, Sultana said:
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n
We all know that the prime minister appointed Mandelson because he owes his job to him. He appointed him, he defended him and now he claims to know nothing. He is gaslighting the nation. So let’s call this out for what it is. The prime minister is a barefaced liar.
n
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Starmer told MPs that he did not mislead the Commons when he said that due process was followed.
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At the No 10 lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson implied that Starmer would accept he inadvertently misled MPs. (See 1.01pm.) On Friday morning last week Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, said he did not think the PM had misled MPs on this issue. Later, at the morning lobby briefing on Friday, No 10 was not willing to repeat this line. On Friday night Downing Street released minutes of a meeting saying officials discussed “whether ministers, having been provided (incorrectly) with assurances about the process, had inadvertently misled parliament when commenting on the process which had been followed”.
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But today, when the Tory John Lamont asked Starmer if he accepted he had “inadvertently misled the House of Commons”, Starmer replied:
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n
I did not mislead the House of Commons. I accept that information that I should have had, and information that the house should have had, should have been before the House.
n
But I did not mislead the House, and that’s why I’ve set out the account in full.
n
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Andrew Mitchell, the former Tory cabinet minister, said Robbins was “a fine and experienced civil servant” who should not be made to take the blame.
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Starmer said he lost confidence in Robbins because he did not share the vetting information. But, he went on:
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n
That doesn’t mean [Robbins] hasn’t got a distinguished career. He does have a distinguished career.
n
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Lee Anderson, the Reform UK, told Starmer that no one believed him, not the public, nor opposition MPs, nor Labour MPs. “Does the prime minister agree with me he’s been lying?”
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Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, told Anderson he would have to withdraw that. Parliamentary rules do not allow MPs to call each other liars.
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Anderson said he wouldn’t. He went on:
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n
I will not withdraw. That man couldn’t lie straight in bed.
n
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Hoyle told Anderson to leave, which he did.
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John McDonnell (Lab) said he welcomed Starmer’s apology. He went on to claim that, when Keir Starmer wanted to become Labour leader, he became dependent on Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson to organise and fund his election. He went on:
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n
When he became prime minister, the reward for McSweeney was control of No 10 and, for Mandelson, the highest diplomatic office.
n
And the message, that unspoken message to civil servants, was what Mandelson wants. Mandelson gets.
n
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He said Starmer should clear this “toxic culture” out from Labour. And he called for an inquiry into Labour Together, the thinktank that was founded by McSweeney and subsequently criticised for smearing journalists writing critically about it.
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Simon Hoare (Con), chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, said he did not understand why nobody asked what had happened in the light of David Maddox’s story in the Independent last September. (See 11.44am.)
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Starmer said questions were asked.
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n
The FCDO was repeatedly asked … The same answer came back because a clear decision have been taken that this information was not going to be disclosed and it wasn’t as close to me, let alone to anybody else.
n
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Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, also linked Keir Starmer to Boris Johnson. He said that, when Johnson was PM, Starmer said the public wanted honesty and accountability. Davey went on:
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n
I’m afraid the fact that [Starmer] even had to make the statement today shows how badly he has failed, how badly he’s let down the millions of people across our country who are so desperate for change.
n
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UPDATE: Davey said:
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n
The prime minister knew that appointing Mandelson was an enormous risk, he decided it was a risk worth taking – a catastrophic error of judgment, and now that it’s blown up in his face, the only decent thing to do is to take responsibility.
n
Back in 2022, the prime minister rightly accused Boris Johnson of expecting others to take the blame while he clung on. That was not acceptable then, and it’s not acceptable now …
n
After years of chaos under the Conservatives, we needed a government focused on the interests of the people – the cost of living crisis, the health and care crisis, our national security. We needed a government of honesty, integrity and accountability. So will the prime minister finally accept that the only way he can help to deliver that is to resign?
n
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Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, suggested that Peter Mandelson leaked the news of his likely appointment, bouncing No 10 into confirming it.
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And she goes on:
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n
Doesn’t this look like, 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.
n
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This was a reference to Morgan McSweeney, who as the PM’s chief of staff when Mandelson was appointed and who is thought to have been the person who pushed the appointment through. He and Mandelson were friends and allies.
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In response, Starmer did not accept that No 10 downgraded national security concerns.
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Badenoch criticised Starmer for sacrificing his officials.
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n
The prime minister has thrown his staff and his officials under the bus.
n
Yet this is a man who once said, “I will carry the can for the mistakes of any organisation I lead.”
n
Instead, he has sacked his cabinet secretary. He has sacked his director of communications, he has sacked his chief of staff and he has now sacked the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office.
n
All of these people fired for a decision he made.
n
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Badenoch also criticised Starmer for not asking enough questions
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n
[Starmer’s] defence is that he, a former director of public prosecutions, is so lacking in curiosity that he chose to ask no questions about the vetting process.
n
He asked no questions about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein. He asked no questions about the security risk Mandelson posed. Apparently, he didn’t even speak to Peter Mandelson before his appointment. It doesn’t appear that he asked any questions at all. Why? Because he didn’t want to know.
n
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Kemi Badenoch started her response to Keir Starmer by claiming that No 10 said earlier that Starmer would admit that he inadvertently misled the Commons. But Starmer did not say that in his statement, she said.
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n
I will remind him that, under the ministerial code, he has a duty to correct the record at the earliest opportunity. The prime minister says he only found out on Tuesday that Peter Mandelson failed the security vetting. The earliest opportunity to correct the record was prime minister’s questions on Wednesday almost a week ago. This is a breach of the ministerial code.
n
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Starmer went on:
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n
Many members across the House will find these facts to be incredible.
n
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That generated lots of ironic jeering from opposition MPs.
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Starmer went on:
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n
I can only say they [the MPs jeering] right. It beggars belief that throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system, in government.
n
That is not how the vast majority of people in this country expect politics, government or accountability to work. And I do not think it’s how most public servants think it should work either.
n
I work with hundreds of civil servants, thousands all of whom act with the utmost integrity, dedication and pride to serve this country, including officials from the Foreign Office who, as we speak, are doing a phenomenal job representing our national interest in a dangerous world in Ukraine, in the Middle East and all around the world.
n
This is not about them, but yet it is surely beyond doubt that the recommendation from UKSV that Peter Mandelson should be denied development and clearance was information that could and should have been shared with me on repeated occasions, and therefore should have been available to this House and ultimately to the British people.
n
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Starmer again says it is staggering that ministers were not told what happened.
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n
As I set out, I do not accept that I could not have been told about UKSV’s denial of security vetting before Peter Mandelson took up his post in January 25th.
n
I do not accept that the then cabinet secretary could not have been told in September 2025, when he carried out his review into the process.
n
I do not accept that the foreign secretary could not have been told when making statements to the select committee again in 2025.
n
On top of that, the fact that I was not told even when I ordered a review of the UKSV process is frankly staggering.
n
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Starmer says he sacked Mandelson in September last year after Bloomberg revelations showed that Mandelson had given answers that were “not truthful” to the Cabinet Office’s vetting process (which took place before the UKSV vetting process, and was different).
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In September he asked for a review of the process, he says.
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It was carried out by Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, who told Starmer in a letter that the “appropriate processes were followed in both the appointment and the withdrawal of [Mandelson].”
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Starmer says Wormald was not told that Mandelson had failed the UKSV interview.
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He goes on:
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n
I do not accept that I could not have been told about the recommendation before Peter Mandelson took up his post.
n
I absolutely do not accept that the then cabinet secretary – an official, not a politician – when carrying out his review could not have been told that UKSV recommended that Peter Mandelson should be denied develop vetting clearance.
n
It was a vital part of the process that I had asked him to review. Clearly he could have been told, and he should have been told.
n
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Starmer says Olly Robbins also told the foreign affairs committe that “Peter Mandelson’s security vetting was conducted to the usual standard set for developed vetting in line with established Cabinet Office policy”.
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Starmer says the foreign secretary also signed off on this statement, without being told Mandelson failed the vetting interview.
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n
That the foreign secretary was advised on and allowed to sign this statement by Foreign Office officials without being told that UKSV had recommended Peter Mandelson be denied vetting clearance is absolutely unforgivable.
n
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Starmer says he would not have appointed Mandelson is he had known about the UKSV decision.
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n
So let me be very clear; the recommendation in the Peter Mandelson case could and should have been shared with me before he took up his post.
n
Let me make a second point. If I had known before he took up his post that UKSV’s recommendation was that developed vetting clearance should be denied. I would not have gone ahead with the appointment.
n
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Starmer says he accepts that details of the security vetting process should be kept confidential. But he says he does not see why ministers should not be told the conclusions.
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n
I accept that the sensitive personal information provided by an individual being vetted must be protected from disclosure. If that were not the case, the integrity of the whole process would be compromised.
n
What I do not accept is that the appointing minister cannot be told of the recommendation by UKSV.
n
Indeed, given the seriousness of these issues and the significance of the appointment, I simply do not accept that Foreign Office officials could not have informed me of UK’s recommendations, whilst also maintaining the necessary confidentiality that vetting requires.
n
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Starmer says he found out on Tuesday that the security vetting process had advised against appointing Peter Mandelson.
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Ministers had not been told. And even the cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, was not told.
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Starmer says the fact he was not told was “staggering”.
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He says he should have been told months ago.
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Keir Starmer opens his statement by saying he accepts the decision to make Mandelson ambassador to the US was wrong.
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n
I want to be very clear with this house that while this statement will focus on the process surrounding Peter Mandelson’s vetting and appointment, at the heart of this, there is also a judgment I made that was wrong.
n
I should not have appointed Peter Mandelson.
n
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.
n
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Lindsay Hoyle says this is a serious topic. He says he expects questions to focus on the topic in hand. He says MPs cannot accuse each other (he means accuse the PM) of lying. MPs can only do that if they are debating a motiong accusing someone of lying, he says, which they are not able to do today.
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Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, has told MPs that a former employee in the Houses of Parliament was arrested last week under anti-hacking laws.
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In a statement to MPs at the start of business today, Hoyle said:
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n
I want to make a brief statement about a security matter.
n
I’ve been informed by the police that a former parliamentary employee was arrested last week under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
n
The police investigation is ongoing. As you know, we do not discuss the details of such issues on the floor of the house.
n
This is an ongoing criminal investigation. I do not intend to take any further point of order on this matter. I will update members when I’m in a position to share more information.
n
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Here are some more lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning covering the Peter Mandelson controversy.
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- n
- n
Keir Starmer would not have appointed Mandelson ambassador to the US if he had known he had failed the security vetting interview, the PM’s spokesperson said. The spokesperson told journalists:
n
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n
It’s absolutely the case that had the prime minister been aware that UK security vetting had recommended against his security clearance, then clearly he would not have appointed Peter Mandelson.
n
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- n
- n
The spokesperson said that, when it was announced that Mandelson was being appointed, that was subject to security clearance. Asked about the revelation that Simon Case, the then cabinet secretary, told Starmer not to announce the appointment of a politician as an ambassador prior to security vetting (civil servants have been vetted anyway, so this would not have been an issue if a diplomat had got the job – see 12.34pm), the spokesperson said:
n
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n
As is normally the case with external appointments, both to the Foreign Office and to the wider civil service, appointments are made subject to obtaining security clearance.
n
Obviously, what is now known is that that security vetting process, UKSV [UK Security Vetting] recommended against his security clearance, and the Foreign Office obviously still granted that security clearance.
n
As part of the review into security vetting the chief secretary to the PM announced, we have stopped that practice whereby these appointments can be made before the security vetting is obtained.
n
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- n
- n
The spokesperson claimed No 10 repeatedly asked for assurances that vetting had been carried out properly. Asked if No 10 had asked about Mandelson’s security vetting, the spokesperson replied:
n
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n
Repeated questions were asked, whether it was by No 10 or indeed the Cabinet Office, in order to be assured that the proper process was followed in the appointment of Peter Mandelson, and the cabinet secretary at the time led a review of the appointment process, including the vetting process, and throughout that process he was not informed the UK Security Vetting had recommended against the security clearance.
n
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John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has claimed that Keir Starmer is not tackling the cost of living crisis because he is distracted by the Peter Mandelson crisis.
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Speaking on a visit to Shetland, Swinney said:
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n
The cost of-living-crisis is hurting people right across the country – and when people in Scotland look to their governments for help, the UK government is asleep at the wheel.
n
With people paying through the nose at the petrol pumps and on their energy bills, Keir Starmer and the UK Labour government are so weak and so distracted by the Mandelson scandal that they are doing nothing.
n
Right now, the UK Labour government could put in place a series of practical measures that the SNP has been calling for – scrapping their hike to fuel duty, removing VAT from fuel and introducing a household energy price cap to save people hundreds of pounds.
n
Instead they have done nothing, and are more concerned with saving Keir Starmer’s career than helping people.
n
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Swinney with his campaign bus in Dundee on Saturday.”,”caption”:”John Swinney with his campaign bus in Dundee on Saturday.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Mike Boyd/PA”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1776692280000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”09.38 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1776692546000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”09.42 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1776692546000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”09.42 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”09.42″,”title”:”Swinney claims Starmer not tackling cost of living crisis because he’s distracted by Mandelson scandal”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Mon 20 Apr 2026 14.11 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Mon 20 Apr 2026 04.21 EDT”},{“id”:”69e624b38f08b6bcfa479e49″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
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Nigel Farage has been trying to put distance between himself and Donald Trump – a relationship which polls show is one of the greatest impediment to many Reform-curious voters – while talking up Barack Obama’s immigration policies.
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At his press conference today, unveiling Reform UK’s latest proposed asylum crackdown (see 3.35pm), Farage said:
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n
All this focus on ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Trump sort of raises the temperature of everything.
n
Actually, there’s a lot of ways in which Obama did it, that we think we can learn from.
n
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Farage was referring to the fact that, while some aspects of Obama’s immigration policies were liberal, during his presidency deportations reached a record high.
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A poll last month by More in Common showed that Trump is now underwater in terms of his favourability even with Reform voters, who were previously the only set of UK party supporters who saw him positively.
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On Monday, Farage also denied that he or Reform UK had anything to do with the pardon which the White House gave last year to Ben Delo, a British billionaire convicted in the US for failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering controls in his cryptocurrency business. He has given £4m to Reform since then.
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Farage said:
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n
Ben Delo has been supporting a variety of conservative causes for a very, very long time … and yes he has become very strongly supportive of us, but there have been no conversations with the Trump administration about that, or frankly about anything for quite a considerable period of time.
n
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Ben Quinn is a Guardian political correspondent.
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Plans unveiled by Reform UK that would see a government led by Nigel Farage reviewing all asylum claims going back five years and potentially deporting hundreds of thousands of people have been condemned by the Refugee Council and the Green party.
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All claims would be reviewed to find if they entered the UK illegally, overstayed a visa or if their country of origin is now deemed safe, said the party. Leave to remain would be revoked for the individuals involved and their dependents if one or more of those criteria applied. (See 11.09am.)
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Farage told a press conference this morning:
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n
I’ve already got provisional agreements in place with France – If [Jordan] Bardella [president of the far-right Rassemblement National party] becomes the next president, and with Afghanistan.
n
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A Reform government would in some cases pay for people to return – but not as much as what the home secretary has proposed, Farage said.
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Asked if the policy would also affect the children of those facing deportation said: “We will come to the detail closer to the time but this is about establishing the principle.”
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However, the plans were condemned as “unworkable” by the Refugee Council which said the proposals targeted men, women and children who had already been recognised as refugees because they had fled humanitarian disasters and brutal regimes. Imran Hussain, its director of external affairs, said:
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n
Reopening and reassessing hundreds of thousands of asylum decisions would overwhelm the system which is already struggling, tie up the courts for years, and cost taxpayers tens of billions.
n
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And, for the Greens, Rachel Millward, one of the party’s co-deputy leaders, said:
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n
Another superficial, ill-thought-out and cruel announcement by Reform UK, which will fail to tackle the roots of the asylum crisis whilst making sure more suffering is heaped on the most vulnerable.
n
We do not want to see people risking their lives crossing the channel in small boats. What we need is strong international cooperation to address the reasons that people are having to seek asylum in the first place: war, poverty and the climate crisis, and to provide safe and managed routes that would offer a real alternative to people smugglers.
n
We must remember our basic humanity. Many of those seeking asylum have endured horrendous trauma. They include mothers and children. We have a duty to offer compassion and sanctuary, not insecurity, fear and intimidation.
n
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Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has said that, if his deputy Richard Tice owes money to HM Revenue and Customs, it will be paid. He was speaking at his press conference in response to a story published by the Sunday Times yesterday saying that some of Tice’s companies failed to almost £100,000 in corporation tax.
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In his reply, Farage did not challenge the substance of the story, just as Tice did not seriously contest the detail of it in a statement about it he issued about it yesterday. Farage joked about being “more confused” having got to the end of the story (which covered Tice’s corporate tax affairs in considerable detail) than he was at the start. Farage also claimed that Tice was only being targeted because of role with Reform UK.
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Farage went on:
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n
As Richard says, all of this was done by professional accountants, and he has spoken to HMRC about it. If there’s a problem, he will pay …
n
All I would say to you is the Richard Tice has had a long, distinguished career in business, and if there is an error, if his accountants have made an error, he’ll put it right. But I very much doubt that will be the case.
n
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Downing Street has signalled that Keir Starmer accepts he inadvertently misled MPs by not telling them that Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting interview for ambassador to the US.
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Keir Starmer has been accused of misleading MPs because he told them repeatedly that due process was followed in this process. At the lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson told journalists that parliament should have been given the information that has come to light about the security vetting leading to a recommendation that Mandelson should not be approved.
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But the spokesperson said that Starmer did not knowingly mislead parliament. Under the ministerial code, it is only knowingly misleading parliament that is regarded as a resignation offence; ministers who unintentionally mislead parliament are just expected to correct the record at the earliest opportunity.
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Asked whether Starmer misled parliament, the PM’s spokesperson said:
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n
The prime minister would never knowingly mislead parliament or the public. He’s clear, though, that this information should have been provided to parliament. It should have been provided to him, it should have been provided to other government ministers.
n
But he clearly did not have this information – that is the crucial fact – he clearly did not have this information when he previously spoke to parliament.
n
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Asked if Starmer would be correcting the record, the spokesperson said Starmer would be “updating parliament with the full facts of this case”.
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Downing Street released more on this in a briefing published on Friday.
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Keir Starmer was advised that, if he wanted to appoint a politician like Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US, the candidate should go through security vetting before the appointment being announced. Simon Case, the then cabinet secretary, said that to Starmer in a memo written in November 2024. As Sky News points out, the document was one of many released in the first batch of papers published in March as a result of the humble address saying documents about Mandelson’s appointment should be published.
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from Simon Case’s memo to PM”,”caption”:”Extract from Simon Case’s memo to PM”,”credit”:”Photograph: No 10″}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
UPDATE: Jessica Elgot and Pippa Crerar have more on this story here.
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The Commons foreign affairs committee has confirmed that Olly Robbins will give evidence to it at 9am tomorrow about the way he was sacked over Peter Mandelson’s security vetting.
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Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
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A new poll has suggested there will a near tie between pro-independence and pro-UK parties in the Holyrood election on 7 May, with the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens one seat short of a pro-independence majority.
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The new poll by More in Common, using the multilevel regression and poststratification system (MRP) which attempts to predict who wins each seat, forecasts the SNP will win comfortably with 56 of Holyrood’s 129 seats but fall short of an overall majority.
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That would leave SNP leader John Swinney without the mandate for a second independence referendum he believes a majority would produce. The Scottish Greens claim that mandate would arise if both they and the SNP had a combined majority – a stance Swinney has rejected.
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But, according to this new MRP, the Scottish Greens will win eight seats – much less than the 12 or more seats the Greens themselves expect to win, leaving pro-independence parties on 64 seats – one short of an overall majority.
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In a bitter twist for anti-independence parties, the poll says Reform UK will be the largest of the unionist groupings, on 22 seats. Labour, who would win 17 seats, and the Liberal Democrats, on 14, have ruled out any deal with Reform.
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More in Common were very careful to say that over half Holyrood’s 73 constituency seats are three- or four-way marginals, so subject to high degrees of uncertainty. Even so, it said the Scottish Greens would win two SNP constituency seats in Edinburgh and Glasgow for the first time while the Lib Dems would treble their 2021 result with 14 seats, taking control over the Highlands.
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Reform’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord used these results to issue a vain and redundant challenge to Labour, the Lib Dems and Tories to help install a Reform-led government.
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Last week Offord provoked a bitter row with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar after alleging Sarwar had privately approached him late last year to suggest private talks about a deal to lock out the SNP – a claim Sarwar has described as a “desperate lie”. Sarwar has been adamant he would not talk to Reform.
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Offord said:
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n
It is abundantly clear now that Anas Sarwar will not be first minister. The only way that would happen is if all unionist parties backed him in a coalition and we at Reform categorically rule out supporting a Labour party that no longer supports workers and doesn’t share our ambition to make Scotland the most prosperous part of the United Kingdom.
n
So, we ask Mr Sarwar, will you back a Reform government or will you let this country suffer another 5 years of the SNP?
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At his press conference Nigel Farage was asked about reports saying that Keir Starmer knew about the security concerns about Peter Mandelson that led to him failing his security vetting interview. That was a reference to the Telegraph splash, which says:
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Senior Whitehall sources told The Telegraph that the UKSV [UK Security Vetting] findings largely restated security risks that had already been drawn to Sir Keir’s attention.
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One senior source with knowledge of the process said: “The reality is that Starmer had already been warned about the major risks and he had waved them away.”
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In response, Farage said that there was “no way” Starmer would not have known about the concerns.
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Farage pointed out that in September last year the Independent published a story by David Maddox saying: “Serious concerns have been raised that newly sacked US ambassador Peter Mandelson did not clear security vetting for the role – but the prime minister pushed through his appointment anyway.” In his story Maddox said:
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Sources have told The Independent that MI6 failed to clear the Labour peer largely because of concerns over his business links to China.
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However, there were also worries that his past links to the disgraced financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein “would compromise him”.
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The Independent now accepts that the concerns that it was UKSV that failed Mandelson, not MI6. Asked about the story, Downing Street told Maddox that vetting had been carried out in the normal way.
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In his press conference reply, Farage went on:
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It’s impossible for the prime minister to say the warning lights weren’t flashing.
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And if you were prime minister and there were news reports last September that your ambassadorial choice had failed vetting, you would have thought perhaps he might have had some curiosity to try to find out whether this had really happened or not. I just find the whole thing totally incredible. Incredible. There is no way the prime minister couldn’t have known.
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Are you telling me that everyone around him knew and he didn’t know what? It’s possible he’s just a puppet and never consulted on anything, but frankly, it isn’t believable. And I do believe strongly that he misled the House of Commons, that he lied to the country especially. He was so definitive in that Hastings speech that all the necessary channels had been gone that vetting had been assured.
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Asked if Reform UK would vote for a no confidence motion in Starmer, Farage said that they would – but that there was no chance of Labour MPs supporting such a motion. He added:
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The Labour backbenchers are not yet of a mood to get rid of their prime minister, although after 7 May they just might be.
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David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary who was foreign secretary when Peter Mandelson was made ambassador to the US, has said that he was never told that Mandelson failed the security vetting interview. Mandelson’s was only technically approved because Olly Robbins, the head of Foreign Office, exercised his discretion to ignore the recommendation from the people doing the vetting.
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Lammy gave his account of this in an interview with Pippa Crerar.
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Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, has said he finds this hard to believe. He told GB News:
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The problem ultimately is caused by the prime minister choosing an ambassador with a known integrity problem. Everybody understood that about Peter Mandelson, if you look at his past record.
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I’m not criticising his abilities, but as the talisman for New Labour, he had a very dodgy series of relationships. We won’t go into that. So there should have been, the prime minister should have thought through before announcing the appointment how he was going to manage that aspect of choosing Mandelson.
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But let me just move on now to the whole process of the DV [direct vetting]. I cannot believe that a permanent under secretary, when he got the results of the DV, didn’t ring up his minister, who he talks to every day, and say to him, ‘Look, Mr Lammy, minister, we have a problem, and we have to work out now how we’re going to manage that problem’.
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Did Olly Robbins really take it on himself to not tell anybody and decide, as the permanent under secretary of the Foreign Office, that the risk was manageable? I mean, whichever way you look at it, it’s a mess. It was a bad choice in the first place. It was an appalling choice in the first place.
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Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is holding a press conference. He is talking about plans by his party to deport people already granted asylum in the UK. There is a live feed here.
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In a news story about the announcement, the Press Association says:
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Reform UK has pledged to deport “hundreds of thousands” of small boat migrants who have successfully claimed asylum if the party wins the next general election.
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It plans to review all successful asylum claims over the past five years, with anyone who is found to have entered illegally or overstayed their visa and subsequently claimed asylum to “have their status revoked and be deported”, Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said.
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The Times reported that Nigel Farage’s party estimated 400,000 people will be “in scope” of the review and “the majority” will be deported.
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In a statement on X, Yusuf said: “Reform will reverse the invasion of Britain.
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“Anyone who broke into the country illegally, or came in on a visa and overstayed to claim asylum (which is almost all of them) will have their status revoked and be deported.
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“This is an addition to all those currently in Britain illegally.”
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The announcement comes after 602 people crossed the Channel on small boats on Saturday, making it this year’s second busiest day for crossings and bringing the total number of arrivals in 2026 to more than 6,000.
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Reform has already pledged to identify and deport all illegal migrants in the UK, as well as leave the European convention on human rights (ECHR) which is often used by people to claim asylum.
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The party has said it would aim to deport 188,000 illegal migrants a year by operating five removal flights a day.
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In his interview on the Today programme this morning Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, accused Kemi Badenoch of peddling a conspiracy theory about Keir Starmer and Peter Mandelson’s security vetting. Ignoring the fact that Badenoch has toned down what she is saying about Starmer from the end of last week (see 10.33am), Alexander said:
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The central charge that has been run by the opposition since Kemi Badenoch appeared on this programme on Friday – and I quote her directly, she said “there is deliberate dishonesty, I know he is lying” – is that the prime minister has been deliberately dishonest. That is simply not true.
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Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence disproving that charge, not least friends and allies of Olly Robbins himself, who maintained that he didn’t tell the prime minister and claim he couldn’t tell the prime minister the recommendation of the vetting agency about Peter Mandelson.
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So, of course, rightly and reasonably, there will be important questions asked from all sides of the House of Commons today and the prime minister will account for the decisions he’s taken where he should at the despatch box.
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But the central charge made by the opposition, that somehow he knowingly misled parliament or the public is simply untrue. And to believe that requires a conspiracy not only involving Olly Robbins and his friends, but senior officials like the cabinet secretary, and indeed the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office and every minister involved in this appointment.
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Tom Fletcher, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and a former Downing Street foreign policy adviser, was on the Today programme this morning talking about the humanitarian impact of the Iran war. Asked about Olly Robbins being sacked as head of the Foreign Office for not telling Keir Starmer about the recommendation for Peter Mandelson to be refused security vetting, Fletcher defended his former civil service colleague and said they had been in touch in recent days. He said:
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This is a guy who has public service and integrity stitched into his DNA in a way I haven’t seen in any other single individual. And I’ve worked with so many people inside government.
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So he has had an utterly rough few days. He’s a pretty strong character. But I think he’s heartbroken.
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Asked if he agreed with comments from people like Gus O’Donnell (see 9.59am) and Simon McDonald, another former head of the Foreign Office (in an interview on Saturday) that Robbins had been badly treated, Fletcher indicated that he thought O’Donnell and McDonald were raising serious points.
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On Friday Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, told the Today programme that she knew Keir Starmer had been lying about Peter Mandelson’s security vetting. She said:
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It’s completely preposterous for us to believe that when the prime minister said on the floor of the house [of Commons] the full due process was followed that officials who knew that was not the case would not have told him. He knew.
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It is preposterous for us to believe that on 5 February, [after] him giving press conference saying that Mandelson was cleared by the security services, nobody told him that actually that this was not the case.
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It’s completely preposterious, the prime minister, the former chief prosecutor, did not ask basic questions, did not ask to look at the security vetting himself.
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It’s also completely preposterous that civil servants would have cleared a political appointee who had failed security vetting. Mandelson was not a mandarin he was a Labour party grandee appointed to be our most senior diplomat and ambassador …
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It doesn’t matter what story the prime minister is telling, at some point there is deliberate dishonesty – whether it’s the cover-up story or the original story – one of these is deliberate dishonesty, they can’t all be true, and that’s why I know he is lying.
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But now Badenoch has revised her charge against the prime minister. She is not saying that she knows he is “lying” (a word that requires someone to not just say something untrue, but to knowingly state a falsehood). In an open letter to the PM, she says he has been “at best recklessly negligent and at worse dishonest”.
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Badenoch still wants him to resign, though. She made this clear in interviews this morning, telling LBC: “I do think, certainly, in terms of his authority, he has reached the end of the road. He should resign.”
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It was a mistake to announce Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US before he was security vetted for the role, Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, said in interviews this morning. Peter Walker has the story.
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Downing Street is claiming that under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 Olly Robbins, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, could have told Keir Starmer that Peter Mandelson in effect failed his security vetting. (See 9.21am.) In its briefing document today, it says:
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n
Prerogative powers emanate from the crown but are exercisable by ministers and, when (and only when) delegated or otherwise authorised by ministers or as decided by statute, are exercisable by civil servants. In the context of vetting and clearance, this means civil servants run the process and make the decisions on whether clearance should be granted. There are legal obligations in carrying out vetting processes to ensure the appropriate protection and management of sensitive personal information, in accordance with data protection law.
n
However, no law prevents civil servants – while continuing to protect such sensitive personal information – from sensibly flagging UK Security Vetting recommendations or high level risks and mitigations. This allows Ministers to make informed decisions, including on appointments or when accounting for government business in parliament.
n
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But, in an article published in the Times today, Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary, has defended Robbins’ decision not to share that information with Starmer on the grounds that he (Robbins) had used his power as the ultimate decision-maker to decide that vetting approval should be granted. O’Donnell says:
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n
For a government often accused of being overly focused on law, legalism and process, they do not seem to have convinced the many sceptics that they have a clear understanding of their own vetting laws and processes. Their explanation of how the express exclusion of ministers, set out clearly in legislation, from the process of national security vetting for officials relates to how ministers are informed has been, to put it charitably, confusing so far.
n
Moreover, the prime minister might feel that this exclusion of ministers didn’t serve him well in this case. But if so, he should change the system. Instead, he appears to have taken a very rapid decision to dismiss someone for applying what seems on the face of it to be an entirely standard, reasonable and perfectly obvious interpretation of the law and rules as they stand.
n
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Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, was on the government voice on the airwaves this morning. Along with Pat McFadden and Darren Jones, he is one of the ultra ‘safe pair of hands’ ministers trusted to do a media round when the government is in a really tricky position.
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His argument was that the appointment of Mandelson as ambassador to the US was a mistake, that Keir Starmer has already admitted this and apologised for it, but that he did not lie because he was not told about Mandelson in effect failing the security vetting. Starmer should have been told, Alexander said. He told Sky News:
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n
I think most people watching this programme would think if there was material information, that the UK vetting agencies had come up with concerns and made a recommendation in relation to what’s a highly intrusive vetting process, that rightly and reasonably, that would be flagged to the ministers concerned.
n
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Asked if he expected Starmer to lead Labour into the next election, Alexander said:
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n
I expect so, yes … I think he will.
n
There are no certainties but of course I think he will lead and I think he should because, frankly, on the biggest call in this parliament he’s exercised the right judgment, which is to keep us out of someone else’s war.
n
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Alexander also had an unusual way of saying that Starmer does make mistakes.
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n
As a Scottish Presbyterian I don’t believe in papal infallibility, nor do I believe in prime ministerial infallibility.
n
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Good morning. There are occasions when a prime minister wakes up knowing that how they perform in the Commons that day will decide whether or not they keep their job – but they are very, very rare. The best example in modern times is Margaret Thatcher on the day of the Westland debate, when she told staff she would still be in post that evening. Boris Johnson had multiple tricky encounters with MPs, but the most difficult – and the most important for his reputation- was the one before the privileges committee about claims that he lied about Partygate, and that came after he had resigned as PM. For James Callaghan, the confidence debate in 1979 was a terminal moment for his premiership, but that vote was not decided by what he said.
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There seems to be little chance that Keir Starmer may be finished off by what happens in the Commons today. Since the revelations in the Guardian last week about Peter Mandelson in effect failing security vetting for his appointment as ambassador to the US, despite Starmer repeatedly everyone that he was cleared, Labour MPs have not been calling for his resignation. It seems unlikely that by 6pm tonight that will have changed. But many or most of them were already of the view that he is not the right person to lead them into the next general election, and the events of the past few days have firmed up that view.
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Here is the story by the Guardian’s political editor, Pippa Crerar, setting up what is happening today.
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In a separate analysis, Pippa writes: “[Labour MPs] know the public has been losing faith in the political system for years. Every twist and turn of the Mandelson scandal accelerates that. So when another opportunity presents itself to change leadership, they may take it.”
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Last week Starmer sacked Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, for not telling him that Mandelson did in effect fail the security vetting. (But technically he “passed”, because as head of the Foreign Office Robbins had the final say, and he was able to override the recommendation from security chief.) Robbins will give evidence to MPs tomorrow, but we know from what his friends have been saying is that he believes that he was not entitled to give the PM details of what is a very secretive process. The more important point in his defence, which allies have been more reluctant to make publicly, is that given that Starmer had already announced that Mandelson had the job, despite everyone in Westminster knowing Mandelson was a scandal magnet, it was Robbins’ job to implement the wishes of the PM, not block a decision, and an assessment of risk, that had already been taken.
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Last night, ahead of the PM’s statement to MPs today, Downing Street took the unusual statement of publishing a briefing paper about the rules regarding the disclosure of vetting information. It says:
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n
The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRAG) does not prevent civil servants from informing ministers of UK Security Vetting recommendations. What CRAG says is that civil servants make decisions on vetting and clearance. But no law stops civil servants sensibly flagging UK security vetting recommendations, while rightly protecting detailed sensitive vetting information, to allow ministers to make judgments on appointments or on explaining matters to parliament.
n
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We will be focusing mostly on the Mandelson scandal today, but there is still a war on that has not been fully resolved, and the most important set of elections ahead of the next general election are less than three weeks away. Here is the agenda for the day.
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11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, and Zia Yusuf, his home affairs spokesperson, hold a press conference about the party’s plan to deport thousands of people already granted asylum in the UK.
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11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
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After 3.30pm: Keir Starmer makes his statement to MPs about claims that the misled the Commons, and the public, about the vetting process carried out when Peter Mandelson was appointed ambassador to the US.
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If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
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If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
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I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
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Key events
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This blog will be closing soon
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Starmer’s Mandelson statement to MPs – snap verdict
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Your Party MP Zarah Sultana suspended from parliament after calling Starmer ‘barefaced liar’
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Starmer declines invitation to accept he inadvertently misled MPs with previous Mandelson vetting comments
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Starmer says Robbins’ sacking does not blight his record as having ‘distinguished career’
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Reform UK MP Lee Anderson ordered to leave Commons chamber after saying Starmer’s ‘been lying’
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Mandelson given ambassador’s job as reward for helping get Starmer elected MP, John McDonnell claims
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Starmer rejects claim No 10 did not check Mandelson’s vetting record after report in Independent in September
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Davey claims Starmer’s statement today shows he has failed to offer change from Johnson era
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Emily Thornberry suggests Morgan McSweeney so keen to make Mandelson ambassdor he ignored national security concerns
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Badenoch claims Starmer did not ask questions about Mandelson because ‘he didn’t want to know’
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Badenoch says Starmer breached ministerial code by not telling MPs on Wednesday last week about Mandelson error
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MPs jeer as Starmer says it is ‘incredible’ he was not told full story about Mandelson’s vetting
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Starmer says it is ‘frankly staggering’ that he was not told about Mandelson’s security vetting failure
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Starmer says it is ‘unforgivable’ officials let foreign secretary say usual vetting procedure was followed
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Starmer say he would not have appointed Mandelson if he had known the UKSV recommendation
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Starmer says he does not accept he could not have been told Mandelson failed vetting interview
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Starmer says it is ‘staggering’ he was not told about Mandelson failing security vetting interview
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Starmer says he was wrong to appoint Mandelson ambassador to US
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Speaker warns MPs not to accuse PM of lying during this Commons statement
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Speaker Lindsay Hoyle tells MPs former parliamentary employee arrested under anti-hacking laws
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No 10 repeatedly asked for assurances that Mandelson’s vetting carried out properly, Downing Street says
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Swinney claims Starmer not tackling cost of living crisis because he’s distracted by Mandelson scandal
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Farage plays down relationship with Trump – as he claims Obama’s migration policies model for Reform UK in some ways
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Greens join refugee campaigners in condemning Reform UK’s ‘cruel’ plan to deport people already granted asylum
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Farage says Richard Tice will pay any tax owing, in response to claim he failed to pay £100,000 in corportation tax
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No 10 signals Starmer accepts he inadvertently misled parliament in what he said about Mandelson vetting
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How Starmer ignored advice for any politician being made US ambassador to go through security vetting first
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Olly Robbins to give evidence to MPs tomorrow at 9am about Mandelson, foreign affairs committee says
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Reform UK’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord claims latest Holyrood poll shows he’s only alternative to Swinney as next FM
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Farage claims Starmer ‘lied’ about Mandelson vetting, and says after May election Labour MPs may be in mood to oust him
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Former MI6 chief says he finds it hard to accept Lammy’s claim he was not told about Mandelson vetting recommendation
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Reform UK says it would deport hundreds of thousands of people already granted asylum in UK
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Alexander accuses Badenoch of peddling conspiracy theory about Starmer that is ‘simply not true’
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Robbins has ‘integrity stitched into his DNA’, says former No 10 foreign policy adviser
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Badenoch renews calls for Starmer to resign – as she backs away from claim that he definitely lied about Mandelson’s vetting
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Naming Mandelson as ambassador before vetting was mistake, Alexander says
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Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell says Olly Robbins was following rules about vetting disclosure
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Douglas Alexander says he thinks Starmer should stay as PM until next election, but ‘there are no certainties’
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Starmer could have been told about Mandelson’s vetting failure, claims No 10 with release of briefing paper
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This blog will be closing soon
This blog will be closing soon, but we will be continuing our reporting of UK politics over on the Guardian website – breaking the latest stories as they happen.
Just now, prime minister Keir Starmer has ordered an investigation into any security concerns relating to Peter Mandelson’s tenure as UK ambassador to the US, our political correspondent Peter Walker reports.
“I know many members across the house will find these facts to be incredible,” Starmer told jeering MPs, after setting out how the Foreign Office opted to overrule the initial decision to refuse Mandelson’s security vetting without informing him and other ministers.
He said: “To that I can only say they are right. Throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system in government. That is not how the vast majority of people in this country expect politics, government or accountability to work, and I do not think it’s how most public servants think it should work either.”
He added that the Foreign Office had been stripped of its powers to overrule vetting decisions.
You can read the first take of the story below.
The Conservative shadow Lords leader has accused Keir Starmer of appointing Mandelson through “the VIP Lane”, referring to the high priority route to procure items of personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Former cabinet minister Lord True said: “This is a tortuous and frankly somewhat embarrassing statement, stable door after stable door pushed shut long after the obvious national security risk had bolted through them.”
He told the Lords: “You didn’t need vetting to see Mandelson as a proven liar.
“You didn’t need vetting to see he was twice forced to resign in disgrace from government. You didn’t need vetting to hear he revelled in the company of what he called the filthy rich from whatever dubious nation that might be.
“You didn’t need vetting to know he was a known associate and defender of the convicted paedophile (Jeffrey) Epstein. You didn’t need vetting or process – you needed gumption, judgment and common sense, things you cannot contract, sub-contract those things to a Whitehall committee.”
He added: “It looks as if, on the prime minister’s wishes, the process for Mandelson’s clearance was put in what was called, how was it in the Covid era? The VIP lane. And we all know what became of that.”
Starmer’s Mandelson statement to MPs – snap verdict
Andrew Sparrow
It wasn’t much of a win, but as Keir Starmer heads back to Downing Street he will probably count that as a sort of success. Labour MPs did not turn on him; there was no one on his side calling for his resignation, and those who did speak out were mostly from the Corbynite left (whose views are discounted by No 10 anyway), and who were more keen to aim their fire at Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson.
If Kemi Badenoch thought there was more mileage in this, she could have tabled a no confidence motion on this which would have to be debated tomorrow, but she didn’t. She can be brutal in the Commons, but her speech today did not cause the PM any difficulties.
Last week she was saying he was clearly lying. If he is, then he is doing it quite well, because neither she, nor any other MP, made a convincing job this afternoon of establishing that he has not been telling the truth about what he was told about by the Foreign Office about the Mandelson vetting process.
On the narrow process point – it is really plausible that No 10 did not know, and could not find out, that Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting interview?– Starmer may even have won some people around this afternoon. He sounded believable.
But, in other respects, the process point (as well the issue about whether he inadvertently misled parliament) is irrelevant. Starmer’s problem is that he decided to approve the appointment of Mandelson in the first place, when it was already clear that there was ample evidence that his business record and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein made him suspect. That, presumably, is why Olly Robbins decided to facilitate the appointment by using his discretion to overrule the vetting recommendation.
It seems the argument of some in Downing Street might have been that Mandelson should get the job not despite being the sleazy former best friend of a paedophile, but precisely because he was this sort of character. They weren’t appointing him ambassador to the Vatican. There seems to have been the assumption that this was the sort of interlocutor Donald Trump (another ex-Epstein best friend) might like. You can understand why Starmer won’t put it like that in public.
Whatever the reason, it turned out to be a colossal misjudgment. Starmer may have seen off Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey and all the others this afternoon, but this controversy has only added to the long list of reasons Labour MPs have for wanting him out before the next election and nothing he said this afternoon changes that.
That is all from me now. Aneesa Ahmed is taking over.
The statement is now over. Keir Starmer was taking questions for almost two and a half hours.
Your Party MP Zarah Sultana suspended from parliament after calling Starmer ‘barefaced liar’
The Your Party MP Zarah Sultana has also been thrown out of the Commons. She called Starmer a “barefaced liar” and refused to withdraw when Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, asked her to withdraw.
But, unlike with Lee Anderson (see 4.45pm), Hoyle had to “name” Sultana. She did not leave the chamber when he asked her to. Instead, after he “named” her, a motion was passed suspending her from participation in the proceedings. That means she is out for five days, and will also lose pay as a result.
Hoyle only named her reluctantly, after she refused his request to leave without being named. Suspensions like this are relatively rare.
Before she was interrupted, Sultana said:
We all know that the prime minister appointed Mandelson because he owes his job to him. He appointed him, he defended him and now he claims to know nothing. He is gaslighting the nation. So let’s call this out for what it is. The prime minister is a barefaced liar.
Starmer declines invitation to accept he inadvertently misled MPs with previous Mandelson vetting comments
Starmer told MPs that he did not mislead the Commons when he said that due process was followed.
At the No 10 lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson implied that Starmer would accept he inadvertently misled MPs. (See 1.01pm.) On Friday morning last week Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, said he did not think the PM had misled MPs on this issue. Later, at the morning lobby briefing on Friday, No 10 was not willing to repeat this line. On Friday night Downing Street released minutes of a meeting saying officials discussed “whether ministers, having been provided (incorrectly) with assurances about the process, had inadvertently misled parliament when commenting on the process which had been followed”.
But today, when the Tory John Lamont asked Starmer if he accepted he had “inadvertently misled the House of Commons”, Starmer replied:
I did not mislead the House of Commons. I accept that information that I should have had, and information that the house should have had, should have been before the House.
But I did not mislead the House, and that’s why I’ve set out the account in full.
Mark Francois (Con) asks Starmer to confirm that he had asked if Mandelson failed his vetting, and who he asked.
Starmer said he was told that Mandelson was given vetting clearance.
Ellie Chowns (Green) said Starmer should resign.
What’s really staggering and unforgivable is that [Starmer] appointed Peter Mandelson … knowing about his friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. What’s unforgivable is that the prime minister was more concerned with pandering to Donald Trump than with standing with the victims and survivors …
Will he take personal responsibility for his staggering and unforgivable errors of judgment and resign?
Starmer said it was unbelievable that he was not told.
Neil Duncan-Jordan (Lab) says Starmer covered process in his statement. He went on:
Surely, Prime Minister, the real issue is why, when Peter Mandelson’s reputation was already known, was he ever considered for such an important role?
Starmer says he accepts the appointment was wrong.
Lisa Smart (Lib Dem) asks Starmer again to explain why he ignored Simon Case’s advice. (See 4.51pm.)
Starmer said that he thought he had followed the advice, because Mandleson’s appointment was subject to vetting being approved. He said when Chris Wormald, the then cabinet secretary, looked at this process in September, he concluded that the process had been followed in line with what Case recommended.
(Starmer’s answer seems to miss the point, implicit in Case’s advice, which was that, once an appointment gets publicly announced, it becomes much harder for political reasons to accept a vetting decision saying the appointment should not go ahead.)
Starmer says Robbins’ sacking does not blight his record as having ‘distinguished career’
Andrew Mitchell, the former Tory cabinet minister, said Robbins was “a fine and experienced civil servant” who should not be made to take the blame.
Starmer said he lost confidence in Robbins because he did not share the vetting information. But, he went on:
That doesn’t mean [Robbins] hasn’t got a distinguished career. He does have a distinguished career.
Oliver Dowden, the former Tory deputy PM, asked Starmer what Olly Robbins told him when Starmer said he should have been told about the vetting decision. Dowden said that senior officials try to deliver on the wishes of ministers. He suggests that Robbins was trying to help Starmer because he knew Starmer wanted the appointment to go ahead.
Starmer said Robbins has had “a distinguished career”. He said that Robbins’ view was that he was not allowed to give this information to the PM.
But Starmer said he does not want to put words into Robbins’ mouth. Robbins will explain his position tomorrow, he said.
One of Kemi Badenoch’s six questions for Keir Starmer was about Mandelson remaning a director of a Russian defence firm after the invastion of Crimea. See 4.10pm.
She has now answered her own question – posting another extract from the documents released under the humble address mechanism showing that this issue was flagged up to Starmer as a result of the Cabinet Office vetting process (which was different from the UKSV vetting – the main focus of this hearing).
She said:
It’s quite clear from this document the Prime Minister was told this in November 2024.
He didn’t want to answer my question…because HE KNEW.
He was told.
Yet he appointed Mandelson anyway putting our national security at risk.
