A crunch week for Sir Keir Starmer is set to continue on Monday, April 20, as he updates the House of Commons on the latest revelations about Lord Mandelson’s appointment.
No 10 on Friday night released a readout of a meeting between the Prime Minister and senior civil servants that appeared to corroborate that Sir Keir only found out on Tuesday, April 14, that Lord Mandelson was cleared for his role as Britain’s representative in Washington against the advice of security officials.
This morning, Sunday, April 19, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall backed the PM – telling Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that he should not lose his job.
He has “made the right calls” on the big issues facing the country, the senior minister said.
The Foreign Office has been blamed for clearing the peer in January 2025 to begin as US ambassador, despite him failing a secure vetting process.
The Prime Minister has said he was “absolutely furious”, and described the failure to inform him as “staggering”.
Sir Olly Robbins, who was only weeks into his job as Foreign Office permanent secretary at the time, was sacked on Thursday as he had lost the confidence of Sir Keir and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.
He is expected to speak to the Foreign Affairs Committee as early as next Tuesday, a day after Sir Keir will update the Commons on the latest twists in the saga.
The committee on Saturday published correspondence showing that Ms Cooper had asked the FCDO to conduct a “full review” of all the information the department had provided to the committee.
Lord Simon McDonald, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office from 2015-2020, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Sir Olly was “thrown under the bus” and that No 10 “wanted a scalp and they wanted it quickly”.
Lord Peter Mandelson outside his home in London Credit: Jordan Pettitt/PA
Prime Minister ‘should not lose his job’
The Prime Minister should not lose his job over the latest revelations in the scandals over Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador because he has “made the right calls” on the big issues facing the country, a senior minister said.
Appearing on Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall was asked if Sir Keir Starmer’s poor judgment in appointing Lord Mandelson was the root of the issue.
She replied: “I don’t agree with that. I think the failure of judgment here was the failure to tell the Prime Minister that Peter Mandelson, who actually is responsible for all of this… the person that I am angry at is Peter Mandelson.”
Ms Kendall added that the victims of Jeffrey Epstein had not been mentioned since the latest revelations broke, but asked if the Prime Minister had also ignored the paedophile’s victims, the minister replied: “Absolutely not.”
Asked why Sir Keir was not losing his job over the scandal, as a growing list of civil servants have done, Ms Kendall replied: “Because the Prime Minister on the big calls facing this country has made the right calls.”
She added: “Because on the fundamental judgments facing this country, whether it’s on international issues, rebuilding our relationship with the EU, saying ‘we won’t get involved in the war’, investing in our defence, or whether it’s on domestic issues, lifting children out of poverty, tackling violence against women and girls, all of the big fundamental issues facing this country, the Prime Minister has made the right call.”
Did a senior civil servant fail to share the details of Mandelson’s vetting?
The Guardian reported on Friday that Antonia Romeo, the head of the civil service, and Cabinet Office permanent secretary Catherine Little, had found out before the Prime Minister about Lord Mandelson’s failure to gain vetting.
The readout of Tuesday’s meeting gave credence to this, as Ms Little had received information about the vetting as part of the process to release files related to Lord Mandelson’s appointment, which MPs voted for in February.
“On reviewing the file she had therefore learned that the recommendation from the vetting officer had been that DV (Developed Vetting) should not be granted to Peter Mandelson,” the readout said.
The Cabinet Office denied that this meant the senior civil servant had sat on the details, while a Government source said: “Cat has been the one doggedly fighting Olly Robbins to get the documents out of his clutches and into the public domain.
“This is a laughable attempt to shift blame from the actual person who kept the PM in the dark.”
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The leaders of the major opposition parties have all called for Sir Keir to resign over the latest revelations, with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch claiming the Prime Minister had misled Parliament and the public.
Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney said it was the Prime Minister’s “incompetence” that was “staggering”.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said that Sir Keir must publish the advice he received on Lord Mandelson’s appointment.
Former foreign secretary Sir James Cleverly told The Independent it is “inconceivable” that the Prime Minister and David Lammy were unaware of Lord Mandelson’s failed security vetting.
Lord Mandelson, a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role last September when more details emerged about his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019.
Sir Keir was already under fire over the decision to give Lord Mandelson the job, despite it being known that his dealings with Epstein continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.
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