Decision to end support for US ambassador over Jeffrey Epstein links comes just before Donald Trump state visit
Decision to end support for US ambassador over Jeffrey Epstein links comes just before Donald Trump state visit
Keir Starmer is facing serious questions about his political judgment after he was forced to sack his US ambassador Peter Mandelson over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
In the second damaging departure for the government in a week, the prime minister withdrew support for Lord Mandelson over emails to Epstein from 2008 suggesting his sentence for soliciting a child for prostitution should be challenged.
The scandal comes at a disastrous time for Starmer ahead of Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK next week. He is also facing an internal Labour battle over the deputy leadership after his deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, had to resign last week over her tax affairs.
While No 10 was hoping the sacking would show decisive action by the prime minister, Starmer quickly became the focus of criticism over his decision to appoint Mandelson in spite of warnings about his chequered past and his defence of the US ambassador up until Wednesday.
The prime minister was also urged to clarify whether there were concerns from security officials about Mandelson, after Sky News reported that red flags were raised by intelligence services in the vetting process. It is understood that any concerns about security were likely to have been contained in a risk assessment from government officials, rather than from the intelligence agencies.
However, another government adviser said they had raised informal doubts within Whitehall about Mandelson’s 2005 association with Russian oligarch Oleg Derispaska but said they were reassured that he was a good appointment because he was “such a master of the dark arts”.
Some Labour MPs are furious about yet another political blunder in the week after Rayner’s resignation, with a number of them angered by what they regard as the influence of Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, who is known to be politically close to Mandelson. One Labour MP described it as a “boys club sticking up for their own” and another suggested that some in No 10 “think it’s OK for their mates to do bad things”.
However, Harriet Harman, the former Labour deputy leader, suggested the blame lay with Mandelson, and said it was “shameful” that the politician had put himself forward for the job knowing that such emails had been written and that there was more to come out about their friendship.
