“UNCONVENTIONAL”
Last Thursday, Starmer sacked the Foreign Office’s top civil servant, Olly Robbins, telling MPs he had also now set in motion a review of the security vetting process.
But former civil servants have accused Starmer of scapegoating Robbins, who will give his own account to a parliamentary watchdog committee on Tuesday.
Lawmakers will also hold an emergency debate in parliament after the leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, said there remained “serious questions about what (Starmer) knew and when”.
Opposition leaders have called for Starmer to step down, with accusations ranging from incompetence to the wilful misleading of parliamentarians and the public.
“We still do not know exactly why Peter Mandelson failed that vetting,” Badenoch told parliament.
She and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey again called for Starmer to resign.
Davey said the prime minister had made “a catastrophic error of judgment, and now that it’s blown up in his face, the only decent thing to do is to take responsibility”.
Senior ministers have, however, so far rallied around Starmer.
“A judgment was made that the Trump administration was an unconventional administration and an unconventional ambassador could do a job for the United Kingdom,” Scotland Secretary Douglas Alexander said Monday.
“That judgment was wrong and the prime minister accepts that.”