Allies back Starmer as Mandelson-Epstein scandal leaves UK leader fighting for his job
Starmer says he’s “furious” that he wasn’t told at the time, in January 2025, that an intensive vetting process had recommended Mandelson not be given security clearance. The Foreign Office, which oversees diplomatic appointments, cleared him anyway.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said that if Starmer had known, “he would never, ever have appointed him ambassador.”
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told Sky News on Sunday that Starmer “is a man of integrity and there is no way he would have proceeded” with Mandelson’s appointment had he known.The top civil servant in the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, was forced to resign on Thursday — though allies say he was just doing his job and is being made a scapegoat. Robbins is expected to give his own version of events to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
Simon McDonald, who was top civil servant in the Foreign Office until 2020, said Robbins had been “thrown under the bus.” He told the BBC that vetting information was highly sensitive and “would never be shared” with the prime minister or his staff.
All the main opposition parties have called on Starmer to resign.Right-of-center Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister’s position is “untenable.” Ed Davey, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, said Sunday that the government is “in perpetual crisis, and I don’t think they can get out of that unless Keir Starmer moves aside.”
Starmer’s Labour Party holds a large parliamentary majority, so power to topple him lies with his own lawmakers, who are already Some Labour lawmakers think it would be damaging to change leaders at a time of global instability, with wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and with three years until a national election must be called.
Others despair at the prime minister’s repeated missteps since he led Labour to a landslide election victory in July 2024. Starmer has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living, and has been forced into repeated policy U-turns.But his expertise as a former European Union trade chief and contacts among global elites were considered assets in dealing with President Donald Trump’s administration.
He lasted less than nine months in the job. Starmer fired Mandelson in September 2025 after evidence emerged that he had lied about the extent of his links to Epstein.
The release of millions of pages of Epstein-related documents by the US Department of Justice in January brought more revelations, showing that Mandelson’s relationship with the financier continued even after Epstein’s conviction in 2008 for sexual offenses involving a minor.