{"id":18346,"date":"2026-04-20T12:21:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/18346\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T12:21:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T12:21:18","slug":"starmer-faces-angry-uk-lawmakers-over-mandelsons-appointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/18346\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer faces angry UK lawmakers over Mandelson’s appointment"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer<\/a> will try on Monday to get a grip on a crisis that has left power slipping from his grasp.<\/p>\n

Starmer will face a tough barrage of questions in Parliament when he stands up to explain why Peter Mandelson<\/a>, a scandal-tarnished politician and friend of Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>, became Britain\u2019s ambassador to Washington despite failing security checks<\/a> \u2014 and seemingly without Starmer being told about the concerns.<\/p>\n

The revelation has left furious opponents calling for Starmer to resign and uneasy allies wondering what else the nation\u2019s leader didn\u2019t know about.<\/p>\n

Starmer repeatedly told lawmakers that \u201cdue process\u201d was followed when Mandelson was appointed. He now says he\u2019s \u201cfurious\u201d that he wasn\u2019t informed that an intensive vetting process had recommended Mandelson not be given security clearance. The Foreign Office, which oversees diplomatic appointments, cleared him anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that I wasn\u2019t told that Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting when he was appointed is astonishing,\u201d Starmer told the Daily Mirror. \u201cThe fact that I wasn\u2019t told when I said to Parliament that due process had been followed is unforgivable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starmer fired the top Foreign Office civil servant, Olly Robbins, within hours of the revelation by The Guardian last week. But allies of Robbins say he would never have been able to share sensitive vetting information with the prime minister.<\/p>\n

Robbins is expected to give his own version of events to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

All the main opposition parties have called on Starmer to resign. Right-of-center Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said in the Mail on Sunday that he had \u201cmisled Parliament over Mandelson, misled the country and is taking the public for fools.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ed Davey, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, said Starmer had \u201cshowed catastrophic misjudgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senior government colleagues have defended the prime minister. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said that if Starmer had known about the failed security vetting, \u201che would never, ever have appointed him ambassador.\u201d<\/p>\n

But lawmakers in Starmer\u2019s center-left Labour Party, already anxious about the party\u2019s dire poll ratings, are restive. Starmer has already defused one potential crisis<\/a> in February, when some Labour lawmakers urged him to resign over the Mandelson appointment.<\/p>\n

He could face a new challenge is, as expected, Labour takes a hammering in local and regional elections on May 7, which give voters a chance to pass a midterm verdict on the government.<\/p>\n

Critics say the Mandelson appointment is more evidence of a failure of judgment by a prime minister who has made repeated missteps<\/a> since he led Labour to a landslide election victory<\/a> in July 2024. Starmer has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services<\/a> and ease the cost of living, and has been forced into repeated policy U-turns.<\/p>\n

He picked Mandelson for one of Britain\u2019s most important diplomatic jobs despite being warned by his staff that Mandelson\u2019s friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019<\/a>, exposed the government to \u201creputational risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mandelson\u2019s business links to Russia and China also set off alarm bells. But his expertise as a former European Union trade chief and contacts among global elites were considered assets in dealing with President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

He lasted less than nine months in the job. Starmer fired Mandelson<\/a> in September 2025 after evidence emerged that he had lied about the extent of his links to Epstein.<\/p>\n

A trove of Epstein-related documents<\/a> released by the U.S. Department of Justice in January included emails suggesting Mandelson had passed on sensitive, and potentially market-moving, government information to Epstein in 2009 after the global financial crisis.<\/p>\n

British police launched a criminal probe and arrested Mandelson<\/a> in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Mandelson has previously denied wrongdoing and hasn\u2019t been charged<\/a>. He does not face allegations of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will try on Monday to get a grip on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[272,11203,1790,38,11202,286,50,8,1480,346,8414,9,3195,67,7,347,348,100,69,106],"class_list":{"0":"post-18346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-david-lammy","10":"tag-district-of-columbia","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-ed-davey","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","17":"tag-keir-starmer","18":"tag-london","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-peter-mandelson","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-united-kingdom","24":"tag-united-kingdom-government","25":"tag-united-states-government","26":"tag-washington-news","27":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116437010535943910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}