London, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday said he is “furious” over a security blunder that allowed the appointment of controversial peer Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US, who was later sacked over links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The issue has been thrown back into the spotlight after a Guardian report claimed Lord Mandelson had failed the obligatory security vetting that is carried out for high-profile government appointments.
However, it emerged that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had overridden that intensive scrutiny to greenlight the appointment regardless last year.
“That I wasn’t told that Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting when he was appointed is staggering,” Starmer told reporters in Paris, where he is hosting a summit to agree a defensive plan to secure the Strait of Hormuz.
“That I wasn’t told that he had failed security vetting when I was telling Parliament that due process had been followed is unforgivable. Not only was I not told, no minister was told, and I’m absolutely furious about that.
“What I intend to do is to go to Parliament on Monday to set out all the relevant facts in true transparency, so Parliament has the full picture,” he said.
The government has blamed Foreign Office officials, with the department’s topmost civil servant Sir Olly Robbins being sacked for the blunder.
However, Opposition MPs and some of Starmer’s own Labour Party colleagues have questioned the credibility of the claims that the Prime Minister was made aware of the failed vetting by the UK’s security services only this week.
“All roads lead to resignation,” said Opposition Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who has insisted it was “simply not possible” Starmer wasn’t aware Mandelson had failed his vetting process.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has accused the UK PM of showing “catastrophically poor judgement” and questioned if he misled Parliament when he repeatedly insisted that all “due process” had been followed in Mandelson’s appointment.
Meanwhile, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has summoned Olly Robbins to appear before the cross-party panel as some of the top civil servant’s previous statements about the appointment process have now been “called into question.”
Following the latest revelations, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones stepped in to suspend the rules that allowed the Foreign Office to overrule a security vetting process.
“The fact that that process was allowed to happen is quite frankly flabbergasting,” he said.
The issue of Mandelson’s appointment and subsequent sacking last year has caused much turbulence at the heart of the British government, with repeated calls for Starmer to step down over the appointment despite known connections between the former Labour Cabinet minister and Epstein.
Earlier this year, Starmer issued an apology to the victims of Epstein in an effort to move on from the scandal and also lost one of his topmost political aides, Morgan McSweeney, who took responsibility for the dubious appointment.
However, the issue has continued to plague his government as a Metropolitan Police investigation was launched into further revelations around Mandelson’s ties with the late American sex offender. While he denied wrongdoing, Mandelson was sacked seven months into his role in Washington and the files related to his appointment process were released by the British government under transparency norms.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
