Head of the UK Foreign Office Sir Olly Robbins lost his job overnight after a new twist in the back room moves to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington at the start of the Trump presidency.
Security officials initially denied the peer clearance, but Foreign Office officials took the rare step of overruling the recommendation.
The Prime Minister was not aware that the former Labour grandee was granted developed vetting against the advice of UK Security Vetting until earlier this week, the government said.
He has instructed officials to establish the facts about why vetting was granted, and the Foreign Office said it is “working urgently” to comply.
Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said Sir Keir Starmer was “furious” at the situation but denied the Labour leader had misled Parliament over the Mandelson scandal.
The disclosure has thrust the prime minister into a state of jeopardy bearing eerie similarities to the uproar over whether his Conservative predecessor, Boris Johnson, misled parliament over Downing Street parties during Covid lockdowns.
Reports on Thursday suggested he may make a statement in the Commons on Monday over the matter but No 10 did not confirm if he would face MPs.
Sir Keir is due to face the media on Friday alongside French President Emmanuel Macron as he co-hosts a summit on reopening the Strait of Hormuz in Paris, with the pair expected to make a joint statement in the afternoon.
David Lammy, who was foreign secretary when Lord Mandelson was appointed, also did not know the Foreign Office had overruled the vetting until Thursday afternoon, it is understood.
The revelation left him facing calls from opposition leaders to resign, as members of his own Labour Party privately conceded that the premier would have to step down if he was found to have known about any cover-up.
“This is really serious,” John Cryer, a former chairman of Labour’s parliamentary wing, told GB News. “This is a very, very serious crisis,” he said, adding that Mr Starmer “has got some serious questions to answer”.
The question for Mr Starmer is whether he was truthful when he assured the House of Commons in recent months that “due process” had been followed in the decision to appoint Mandelson to the key position despite his links to China, Russia and Jeffrey Epstein.
Having been briefed about the override this week, Mr Starmer fired the foreign office’s top civil servant over the incident late on Thursday. The prime minister is expected to make a statement in Parliament as soon as Monday in attempt to clarify the record.
The prime minister’s appointment of the silver-tongued trade negotiator as his ambassador to the US was meant to strengthen Britain’s position in anticipation of a more transactional White House run by President Donald Trump. Instead, it’s become a millstone around Starmer’s neck, leading to repeated calls for him to step down since Bloomberg News exposed the depth of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein in September.
