Senior Cabinet ministers on Sunday rallied around UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose leadership is teetering over his decision to give Britain\u2019s most important diplomatic job to Peter Mandelson, a scandal-tarnished politician and friend of Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
Starmer will face restive lawmakers in Parliament on Monday to fight for his job after the explosive revelation that Mandelson was appointed ambassador to the United States despite failing security checks.<\/p>\n
Starmer says he is \u201cfurious\u201d that he was not told at the time, in January 2025, that an intensive vetting process had recommended Mandelson<\/a> not be given security clearance. The Foreign Office, which oversees diplomatic appointments, cleared him anyway.Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy<\/a> said if Starmer<\/a> had known, \u201che would never, ever have appointed him ambassador\u201d.<\/p>\n Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told Sky News on Sunday that Starmer \u201cis a man of integrity and there is no way he would have proceeded\u201d with Mandelson\u2019s appointment had he known.<\/p>\n The top civil servant in the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, was forced to resign on Thursday \u2013 though allies say he was just doing his job and is being made a scapegoat. Robbins is expected to give his own version of events to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior Cabinet ministers on Sunday rallied around UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose leadership is teetering over his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[146,13,3724,361,6468,1469,4790,8030,6676,94,31,3105,42,185,5035,8028,523,461,8029],"class_list":{"0":"post-17304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-conservative-party","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-epstein","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-foreign-office","15":"tag-house-of-commons-foreign-affairs-committee","16":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","17":"tag-keir-starmer","18":"tag-labour-party","19":"tag-liberal-democrats","20":"tag-middle-east","21":"tag-parliament","22":"tag-peter-mandelson","23":"tag-sky-news","24":"tag-ukraine","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-us-justice-department"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116432751968458472","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17304","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=17304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}