{"id":15897,"date":"2026-04-17T10:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T10:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/15897\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T10:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T10:12:09","slug":"starmer-allies-say-hes-furious-as-labour-critics-seize-on-mandelson-vetting-row-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/15897\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer allies say he\u2019s \u2018furious\u2019 as Labour critics seize on Mandelson vetting row \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mandelson became U.S. ambassador in February 2025 before being sacked in September over his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2026\/apr\/16\/revealed-mandelson-failed-vetting-but-foreign-office-overruled-decision\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Guardian first reported<\/a> Thursday afternoon Mandelson did not pass his security vetting clearance, but that the Foreign Office overruled the decision.<\/p>\n<p>Jones told the BBC on Friday morning that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ignored the advice of United Kingdom Security Vetting, the government\u2019s screening agency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI find this whole situation astonishing,\u201d Jones said in his BBC remarks, adding that he suspended the Foreign Office\u2019s right to ignore security vetting going forward last night. \u201cThat is a failure of state process that was in line with the rules, which I have now changed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jones said the PM had been told that Mandelson was \u201cgranted developed vetting status\u201d and that no minister saw the vetting because it involves \u201cdeeply invasive personal investigations into people\u2019s backgrounds.\u201d The government has said Starmer was made aware of vetting failure on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n<p>Jones also told Sky News Starmer was \u201cfurious with the state\u201d and that it was \u201cutterly unacceptable\u201d both that the Foreign Office had not told him that information and that the process existed in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>The continued row about Mandelson is raising fresh questions about Starmer\u2019s embattled leadership. With tough local elections looming May 7, one Labour MP <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/newsletter\/london-playbook\/peter-claims-another-one\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told POLITICO\u2019s London Playbook<\/a> that \u201cgrim inaction is our best option\u201d while a loyalist MP said \u201cthis can\u2019t go on for many more months.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mandelson became U.S. ambassador in February 2025 before being sacked in September over his friendship with convicted sex&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[497,7498,7499,1360,94,5035,1368,1369,460,7500,5,6,461,2067,2068],"class_list":{"0":"post-15897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-british-politics","9":"tag-darren-jones","10":"tag-diane-abbott","11":"tag-elections","12":"tag-keir-starmer","13":"tag-peter-mandelson","14":"tag-playbook","15":"tag-rights","16":"tag-security","17":"tag-transparency","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-westminster-bubble","22":"tag-yvette-cooper"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116419516476379112","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}