{"id":30189,"date":"2026-04-17T16:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/30189\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T16:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:38:08","slug":"starmer-rejects-resign-demands-over-mandelson-vetting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/30189\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer rejects resign demands over Mandelson vetting"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday resisted demands he resign over revelations that his scandal-tainted pick<\/a> for U.K. ambassador to Washington was appointed despite failing security checks.<\/p>\n

Starmer says he was not informed that the Foreign Office had overruled the recommendation of security officials in early 2025 not to give Peter Mandelson<\/a> the job. Many considered Mandelson a risky appointment because of his past friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> and alleged business links to Russia and China.<\/p>\n

Starmer said he was \u201cabsolutely furious\u201d that he had been kept in the dark, calling it staggering\u201d and \u201cunforgivable.\u201d He said he would \u201cset out all the relevant facts in true transparency\u201d to Parliament on Monday.<\/p>\n

The top Foreign Office civil servant, Olly Robbins, took the fall for the decision and resigned.<\/p>\n

The PM\u2019s job is in peril<\/p>\n

The prime minister\u2019s job has been endangered by his fateful decision to appoint Mandelson, a trade expert and elder statesman of the governing Labour Party, as envoy to the Trump administration. It was a calculated risk that backfired spectacularly, and could bring down the prime minister.<\/p>\n

Opposition politicians expressed disbelief that Starmer could have been unaware Mandelson had failed security vetting. Starmer said he only found out on Tuesday of this week.<\/p>\n

Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said Friday that \u201cthe recommendation was to not appoint Peter Mandelson to the role,\u201d and that the Foreign Office ignored it. He said that was \u201castonishing,\u201d but within the rules.<\/p>\n

He said no government minister had been told of the security assessment. People familiar with the process said that is standard practice because of the sensitive personal information involved.<\/p>\n

Jones said the checks, carried out by a department known as U.K. Security Vetting, \u201cgo through financial, personal, sexual, religious and other types of background information, and that is why it is kept extremely private on a portal that only a few people have access to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said claims the prime minister didn\u2019t know were \u201ccompletely preposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis story does not stack up. The prime minister is taking us for fools,\u201d she told the BBC. \u201cAll roads lead to a resignation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed Davey, the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats, said Starmer \u201cmust go\u201d if he misled Parliament and lied to the British public. The Lib Dems asked the prime minister\u2019s ethics adviser to investigate whether Starmer broke the government code of conduct by misleading Parliament.<\/p>\n

Starmer has repeatedly insisted that \u201cdue process\u201d was followed in the appointment, which was announced in December 2024. Mandelson took up the Washington post in February 2025, after undergoing security vetting.<\/p>\n

Mandelson had known Epstein links<\/p>\n

Mandelson\u2019s expertise as a former European Union trade chief was considered a major asset in trying to persuade the Trump administration not to slap heavy tariffs on British goods, and seemed to pay off when the countries struck a trade deal in May 2025.<\/p>\n

But documents released by the government in March, after being forced to by Parliament, showed Starmer ignored red flags raised by his staff about the appointment. He was warned that Mandelson\u2019s friendship with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019<\/a>, exposed the government to \u201creputational risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

The release of millions of pages of Epstein-related documents<\/a> by the U.S. Department of Justice in January reveled more and showed Mandelson\u2019s relationship with the financier continued even after Epstein\u2019s conviction in 2008 for sexual offenses involving a minor.<\/p>\n

Emails suggested Mandelson had passed on sensitive, and potentially market-moving, government information to Epstein in 2009 after the global financial crisis.<\/p>\n

British police subsequently launched a criminal probe. Mandelson was arrested on Feb. 23<\/a> on suspicion of misconduct in public office.<\/p>\n

He has been released without bail conditions as the police investigation continues. Mandelson has previously denied wrongdoing and hasn\u2019t been charged<\/a>. He does not face allegations of sexual misconduct.<\/p>\n

King Charles III\u2019s brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew<\/a>, is also under police investigation over his friendship with Epstein. He, too, has been arrested but not charged.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s recent setbacks<\/p>\n

The prime minister has apologized<\/a> to the British public and to Epstein\u2019s victims for believing what he has termed \u201cMandelson\u2019s lies.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Mandelson revelations are among a string of setbacks<\/a> Starmer has faced since he led the Labour Party to a landslide election victory<\/a> in July 2024. He has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services<\/a> and ease the cost of living, and has been beset by missteps and U-turns.<\/p>\n

The prime minister defused a potential crisis<\/a> in February, when some Labour lawmakers called for him to resign over the Mandelson appointment. But he could face a leadership challenge after local and regional elections on May 7, in which Labour is expected to do badly.<\/p>\n

Despite his struggles on the homefront, Starmer has been praised for his work on the world stage. He has played a key role in maintaining European support for Ukraine<\/a>, and was in Paris on Friday to host a summit alongside French President Emmanuel Macron on reopening the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, the oil shipping route choked off by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday resisted demands he resign over revelations that his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[2695,20045,3372,12,18641,1065,242,1665,664,264,2691,6102,51,20654,17,3773,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-30189","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-keir-starmer","8":"tag-andrew-mountbatten-windsor","9":"tag-darren-jones","10":"tag-district-of-columbia","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-ed-davey","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-emmanuel-macron","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","17":"tag-keir-starmer","18":"tag-king-charles-iii","19":"tag-peter-mandelson","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-united-kingdom-government","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-government","24":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116421034153153313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}