Keir Starmer survived a moment of high jeopardy for his future as Britain’s Prime Minister on Tuesday after his former chief of staff failed to produce any damning evidence over the Peter Mandelson affair.
There was a possibility that Morgan McSweeney would go after his former boss, but he did not. He reserved some of his strongest words to describe his feelings when he discovered that Mr Mandelson had lied about his deep connections to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“It was way, way, way worse than I had expected,” he told MPs investigating why the influential Labour figure was appointed ambassador to the United States. “It was like a knife through my soul.”
The political adviser, who is originally from Cork in Ireland, had resigned as the leading behind the scenes figure in Downing Street over his role in pushing through Mr Mandelson’s appointment. This, Mr McSweeney told the Foreign Affairs Committee in a prepared statement, “was a serious error of judgment”. He added: "The Prime Minister relied on my advice, and I got it wrong.”
That the former aide appears to be taking the fall for what was ultimately Mr Starmer’s decision might go some way to temporarily saving the embattled Labour leader. But he also faces the threat of an inquiry by the Privileges Committee over whether he misled Parliament by stating that all “due process” had been followed in the appointment.
MPs were due to vote on the issue late on Tuesday, although given the size of the Labour majority, it is likely Mr Starmer will avoid the inquiry, unlike former prime minister Boris Johnson.
While he still faces being ousted if Labour performs very badly in the May 7 local elections, Mr Starmer could now surmount the Mandelson affair, which has dominated the headlines for almost two weeks.
Part of that has been due to his sacking of the Foreign Office’s chief civil servant, Olly Robbins, after he failed to tell Downing Street that Mandelson had not passed his security vetting.
In his two hours of evidence, Mr McSweeney denied telling officials that Mr Mandelson’s “checks should be cleared at all costs” but admitted he was “wrong” to advise the Prime Minister to appoint him. When Mr Mandelson was appointed in late 2024, on the recommendation of Mr McSweeney and others, he insisted the appointment was in the “national interest”.
“I thought that his skills as EU [trade] commissioner would help us to get the trade deal [with the US] that I think the country needed, because we were very, very exposed after Brexit and getting that trade deal right was very important.”
He also disclosed that Mr Mandelson would probably not have been appointed US ambassador if Kamala Harris had won the US presidential election in November 2024.
“The Prime Minister rightly wanted to wait to see the outcome of that. I think if Kamala Harris had won that US presidential election, I don’t think that Peter Mandelson would have necessarily been appointed.” But he did argue he was the “right choice” after Donald Trump was elected.
Mr Starmer now must await Tuesday’s Privileges Committee vote and then the outcome of the local elections to see if his precarious tenure in Downing Street will continue.
