{"id":555626,"date":"2026-04-28T20:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/555626\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:14:10","slug":"starmer-sees-off-major-labour-rebellion-over-call-for-mandelson-inquiry-keir-starmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/555626\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer sees off major Labour rebellion over call for Mandelson inquiry | Keir Starmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keir Starmer has seen off a major Labour rebellion over a bid to force a parliamentary investigation into his appointment of Peter Mandelson<\/a>, but many of his own MPs warned he was running out of political capital.<\/p>\n

After Downing Street deployed its full weight to force Labour<\/a> MPs to block a referral to the privileges committee over the scandal, some angrily accused Starmer of leaving them facing accusations of a \u201ccover-up\u201d.<\/p>\n

Previously loyal MPs warned the prime minister to tread carefully, particularly after what are expected to be a damaging set of election results for Labour next week. \u201cHe\u2019s in last chance saloon and the last few days haven\u2019t improved his prospects of survival,\u201d one minister said, while another added: \u201cKeir only has so much credit in the bank with the backbenches now, so he needs to spend it wisely.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a day of high jeopardy on Tuesday, Starmer\u2019s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and the Foreign Office\u2019s former permanent secretary, Sir Philip Barton, prompted yet more questions over how much pressure had been put on officials to accelerate Mandelson\u2019s posting to Washington.<\/p>\n

While the attention of Labour MPs will turn to limiting the fallout at the elections, the scandal is likely to raise its head once more next month, after the intelligence and security committee (ISC) announced it had finished reviewing key government documents.<\/p>\n

\"StarmerStarmer staves off mutiny over Mandelson mess\u2026 but for how long? – The Latest<\/p>\n

But after days of intense pressure, Downing Street was taking temporary relief from the failure of a vote \u2013 tabled by the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch<\/a> \u2013 on whether the privileges committee should consider whether Starmer had misled the Commons over Mandelson\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n

The government won the vote by 335 votes to 223, a majority of 112, with insiders feeling some relief that senior figures such as Angela Rayner opted to keep their powder dry.<\/p>\n

However, 15 Labour backbenchers supported the motion, mainly from the left of the party and with track records as rebels, and there was concern that up to 53 MPs did not vote, though not all of these will have been abstentions.<\/p>\n

One of the rebels, Emma Lewell, the MP for South Shields, criticised the decision to whip Labour MPs to block the motion. \u201cIt has played into the terrible narrative that there is something to hide and good, decent colleagues will be accused of being complicit in a cover-up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In another damaging revelation for the prime minister, it emerged that Christian Turner, the UK\u2019s new ambassador to the US who took over from Mandelson, had described him as having been \u201con the ropes\u201d over the scandal.<\/p>\n

He told a group of students in private remarks in February that Starmer\u2019s future had looked \u201cquite touch and go\u201d but that he was a \u201cstubborn guy\u201d who would be unlikely to quit of his own accord.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moment I would look to is the May elections,\u201d the Financial Times<\/a> reported Turner as saying. \u201cIf Labour does very badly \u2026 I suspect the party will be able to go over that threshold and remove him \u2013 seems to me to be the conventional thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

And on another day of damaging disclosures to the foreign affairs select committee on Mandelson\u2019s security vetting, McSweeney admitted that Foreign Office officials came under intense pressure to expedite the posting, but denied they were forced to \u201cskip steps\u201d in security vetting.<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s former chief of staff, who resigned earlier this year<\/a> over the scandal, acknowledged he had asked Barton, then the top official at the department, to conduct the process \u201cat pace\u201d but not to do anything \u201cimproper\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a rare appearance before MPs, McSweeney said: \u201cThere is a real difference between asking people to act at pace and asking people to lower standards. We never did that. We never asked people to skip steps at any part of the process \u2026 It was all about, can we do this at pace, not, can we do anything improper.\u201d<\/p>\n

McSweeney told MPs that learning the extent of Mandelson\u2019s ongoing links with Jeffrey Epstein \u2013 after he had been questioned about red flags raised by the due diligence process and sent to Washington \u2013 was like a \u201cknife through my soul\u201d.<\/p>\n

The former senior aide said Starmer would not have gone ahead with the appointment had he known the full truth. While he acknowledged that revoking Mandelson\u2019s posting over his failure to get security clearance would have been \u201cembarrassing\u201d for the government, it would have been \u201cfar preferable\u201d to allowing it to proceed.<\/p>\n

Many Labour<\/a> MPs are angry that Downing Street, which had been aware at the time that Mandelson was close enough friends with Epstein to stay overnight at his house, decided to send him to Washington regardless.<\/p>\n

McSweeney admitted he had made a \u201cserious error of judgment\u201d in advising Starmer to appoint the former Labour minister, but said he had felt his \u201cexperience, relationships and political skills\u201d, including on trade, could serve UK interests as Donald Trump re-entered the White House.<\/p>\n

In his own evidence to the committee, Barton said No 10 had seemed \u201cuninterested\u201d in the vetting process around the appointment, and there were no avenues for him to express his concerns.<\/p>\n

Asked if he was under pressure to get the vetting done quickly, he said: \u201cAbsolutely \u2026 I don\u2019t think anyone could have been in any doubt in the department working on this that there was pressure to get everything done as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

He denied having received any phone call from McSweeney \u2013 long rumoured \u2013 which had asked him to \u201cjust fucking approve it\u201d. McSweeney told MPs that such Westminster rumours were \u201ccorrosive\u201d to faith in the political system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer has seen off a major Labour rebellion over a bid to force a parliamentary investigation into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-555626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555626","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=555626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}