{"id":543273,"date":"2026-04-21T18:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543273\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T18:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:22:08","slug":"ed-miliband-says-he-and-lammy-feared-mandelson-appointment-could-blow-up-peter-mandelson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543273\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Miliband says he and Lammy feared Mandelson appointment could \u2018blow up\u2019 | Peter Mandelson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Miliband and David Lammy discussed concerns that the appointment of Peter Mandelson<\/a> as the UK\u2019s ambassador to Washington could \u201cblow up\u201d, the energy secretary has revealed.<\/p>\n

Miliband said he spoke to Lammy, who was foreign secretary at the time Mandelson was given the Washington post, and both expressed reservations.<\/p>\n

Mandelson was sacked after nine months in the job after new disclosures about his relationship with the late financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

The Guardian revealed last week<\/a> that Mandelson had failed his initial security vetting, which had then been overruled by the Foreign Office, leading to the sacking<\/a> of the department\u2019s permanent secretary, Oliver Robbins.<\/p>\n

Robbins will give evidence to a select committee of MPs on Tuesday morning. He is expected to argue he was following procedures by not disclosing details of the vetting process to ministers and by ensuring Mandelson could be appointed, which was then the express desire of No 10.<\/p>\n

\"MandelsonMandelson vetting row: Starmer v Robbins blame game deepens – The Latest<\/p>\n

Miliband told Sky News on Tuesday that he and Lammy had been worried the appointment was risky and said Mandelson should never have been appointed, because of his links with Epstein and his lobbying firm\u2019s business ties with Chinese and Russian companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re saying he should never have been appointed and I agree with you,\u201d Miliband told Sky News. \u201cI steered well clear of Peter Mandelson when I became Labour<\/a> leader in 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked what he had thought about Mandelson\u2019s initial appointment, he said: \u201cThat it could blow up, that it could go wrong \u2026 I had a conversation with David Lammy<\/a> about it before the appointment, and I said I was worried about it \u2026 I think he was worried about it too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miliband said he was not asked directly what his views were of the appointment. \u201cMaybe I wasn\u2019t the person that people would necessarily ask. I think people knew my view on Peter Mandelson,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said he did not think it was a resigning matter for the prime minister. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think he should. Because I think if every time a prime minister made a mistake they resigned, we would shuttle through prime ministers like nobody\u2019s business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrime ministers make mistakes. I think on big judgments for this country, the biggest judgment of all, whether to join the war against Iran, Keir Starmer made a big and fundamental correct judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking on BBC Radio 4\u2019s Today programme, the Labour MP Sarah Champion said a leadership challenge was \u201cabsolutely the last thing that we want right now\u201d but said Starmer was deeply unpopular.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you, people don\u2019t like Keir on the door but it\u2019s not over this Mandelson thing. They don\u2019t like him personally. There\u2019s been a fantastic campaign by opposition parties to undermine him.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said people were more concerned by events in Iran and rising energy costs. \u201cI think that so much attention being given to the minutiae of this just confirms the Westminster bubble in their mind and they don\u2019t like it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ed Miliband and David Lammy discussed concerns that the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK\u2019s ambassador to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-543273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543273","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=543273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}