revealed on Thursday<\/a> that Mandelson was initially denied clearance in late January 2025 after a developed vetting process, a highly confidential background check by security officials.<\/p>\nKeir Starmer had by then announced he would be making Mandelson ambassador, posing a dilemma for officials at the Foreign Office, who decided to employ a rarely used authority to override the recommendation from security officials.<\/p>\n
Mandelson\u2019s failure to secure vetting approval had not previously been publicly revealed, despite intense scrutiny over his appointment and the release by the government of documents supposed to shed light on the case.<\/p>\n
Amid calls from opposition parties for the prime minister himself to resign, Downing Street released a statement late on Thursday stressing that Starmer and David Lammy, who was foreign secretary at the time, had no knowledge that security officials advised Mandelson should not be given clearance, and said responsibility lay with the Foreign Office.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe security vetting process for Peter Mandelson was sponsored by the FCDO. The decision to grant Developed Vetting to Peter Mandelson against the recommendation of UK Security Vetting was taken by officials in the FCDO,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The Guardian understands that Starmer \u2013 who insiders said was furious \u2013 first learned that Mandelson had failed security vetting on Tuesday this week, while Lammy learned about it when the Guardian broke the story two days later.<\/p>\n
Robbins, the UK government\u2019s former Brexit negotiator, took over as permanent secretary from Sir Philip Barton in early January 2025. He had been in the job just three weeks when the decision regarding Mandelson was made.<\/p>\n
Although he left the civil service in 2019, he had years of experience in international affairs and national security, which helped him navigate a complex global landscape, with the return of Donald Trump to the White House and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Speaking on BBC Newsnight, Labour MP Chris Curtis called Robbins\u2019 departure \u201cthe right decision\u201d, but maintained that the news around Mandelson should not lead to speculation over \u201cwho should lose their roles\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been a series of processes and decisions that have been made right at the top of government that have been the wrong ones,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we as a government, as political leaders, need to learn from those and ensure that things like that do not happen again. It is a good thing that someone has been held responsible for this, but it\u2019s far bigger than that, far bigger questions need to be asked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other figures are calling for Keir Starmer to resign over the recent revelations over Mandelson\u2019s appointment. One anonymous government minister reportedly told The Times: \u201cThis is a tipping point. There can be no more excuses; we\u2019re past apologies and there cannot be another fall person in the form of Olly Robbins.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe PM must go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Olly Robbins, the UK Foreign Office\u2019s top civil servant, has been forced out of his post after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-535037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}