Starmer under pressure as Mandelson vetting scandal deepens after civil servant exit

Keir Starmer’s handling of the Mandelson appointment has turned into a test of government honesty, civil service accountability and who knew what before Peter Mandelson was sent to Washington. The prime minister has said it was unforgivable that he was not told Mandelson had failed security vetting, while Sir Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office’s top civil servant, has exited after the department did not pass that information up the chain.

The central fact is no longer just that Mandelson was a risky choice because of his past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. It is that he failed security vetting for the ambassador-to-the-United States post, yet the Foreign Office overruled that recommendation and he still took the job. Starmer later told Parliament that due process had been followed, but he has now said he was not informed about the failed vetting when he made that claim.

The chronology has sharpened the political damage. Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment was announced in December 2024. Later disclosures in September 2025 said he had not been subject to the usual security vetting before the announcement. Foreign Affairs Committee correspondence shows that the Cabinet Office propriety and ethics team carried out a separate due-diligence process before the appointment was announced, while the formal security vetting came later. That split between ethics screening and security clearance now sits at the heart of the scandal, exposing how easily a politically sensitive appointment can move ahead without a complete picture reaching the prime minister.

The fallout has spread beyond Mandelson himself. Yvette Cooper and Sir Olly Robbins had previously told the Foreign Affairs Committee that vetting followed established Cabinet Office policy, but the latest disclosure has raised fresh questions about what the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office knew and when it knew it. BBC reporting said Robbins was effectively sacked after his department failed to tell the prime minister that Mandelson had failed vetting, and other reports said he lost the confidence of both Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

The political pressure on Starmer has only intensified. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused him of misleading Parliament and said he should resign if he had done so. Reuters reported renewed calls for Starmer to go from multiple opposition parties, including the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Green Party, even as the government insisted he has no plans to resign. For Starmer, the issue is now larger than one ambassador. It goes to the credibility of the appointment system, the discipline of the civil service and whether the prime minister was given the full facts before defending a process that was already under strain.