Keir Starmer stood up in the House of Commons this week and tried to blame his own civil servants for the appointment of a man who failed security vetting to one of the most sensitive diplomatic posts on the planet. It was a pathetic spectacle. The Prime Minister handed Britain’s ambassadorship to Washington to Peter Mandelson, his old friend and political ally, and now he wants us to believe he had no idea Mandelson had failed his vetting.

Either Starmer is lying, or he is one of the most negligent Prime Ministers in living memory. There is no third option.

The Facts Are Damning

Mandelson was announced as ambassador in December 2024, before vetting was even complete. Vetting only began after the appointment had been publicly trumpeted by Downing Street. When the security services flagged concerns — including Mandelson’s well-documented friendship with the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — Foreign Office officials used a rare override authority to push the appointment through.

Why? Because, in the words of the former top Foreign Office civil servant Olly Robbins, there was a “very, very strong expectation” from Downing Street that Mandelson “needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible.” That pressure didn’t come from Robbins. It came from the top.

Mandelson was sacked seven months later when his Epstein links became politically toxic. The vetting failure was hidden until last week. Starmer now claims he was never told. It beggars belief.

This Is Not a Functioning Government

Think about what this story actually reveals. The Prime Minister either:

  • Knew Mandelson had failed vetting and pushed the appointment through anyway, then lied to Parliament about it; or
  • Did not know — meaning his own Foreign Office overrode the security services on his most high-profile appointment without telling him.

Both possibilities are catastrophic for a Prime Minister. The first is a resignation matter. The second proves he has lost control of his own government. Bloomberg this week described Starmer as a lame duck. They are right.

Labour’s Establishment Stitch-Up

What this saga really exposes is the rotten culture at the top of British politics. Mandelson is a Labour grandee — twice forced to resign from Cabinet under Tony Blair, then quietly rehabilitated, then handed the plum job in Washington despite a security service warning. The rules apparently don’t apply to people in the club.

If a Reform UK appointee had failed vetting and been pushed through, the BBC would have run with it for months. Because it’s Mandelson, the political class closes ranks. The same Foreign Office that wouldn’t let David Frost speak unscripted to journalists rolled out the red carpet for a man with documented links to a paedophile financier.

What Reform UK Would Do

A Reform UK government would treat security vetting as the absolute bar to public office, not as a bureaucratic inconvenience to be overridden by ministerial pressure. We’d publish the vetting recommendation alongside every senior appointment. We’d strip Foreign Office officials of the power to override security service recommendations on diplomatic posts.

And we’d expect a Prime Minister to take responsibility for his own appointments. If you can’t even properly vet your own ambassador, you have no business running the country. Starmer should resign. He won’t. But the voters will get their say in May.