LONDON – A weeks-long political crisis engulfing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer reached a new boiling point this week, after a recently fired top civil servant laid bare explosive behind-the-scenes details of how scandal-plagued politician Peter Mandelson — a known associate of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — secured the post of UK Ambassador to the United States despite failing official national security vetting.
Last week, Starmer terminated the employment of Olly Robbins, the former permanent secretary of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, over Robbins’ central role in approving Mandelson’s nomination even after being notified of formal security concerns. Appearing before Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Robbins mounted his public defense, claiming his department had followed all official procedural protocols. But his testimony did little to resolve months of lingering questions about Starmer’s judgment, and instead triggered a fresh wave of cross-party opposition demands for the prime minister to step down.
This latest controversy comes after Starmer already forced Mandelson to resign from the ambassador post last year, when newly unsealed documents confirmed Mandelson’s ties to Epstein were far closer and more sustained than he had previously disclosed to Downing Street. Even so, the political fallout has continued to build, and Robbins’ opening remarks before the committee delivered new, damaging revelations that cut to the core of Downing Street’s role in rushing the appointment through.
Robbins told the committee that Starmer’s Downing Street office applied intense, sustained political pressure to cut short the vetting process and install Mandelson in the Washington post as quickly as possible. “There was a very, very strong expectation from Downing Street that Mandelson needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible,” he told lawmakers. According to Robbins’ account, Mandelson’s appointment was publicly announced in December 2024, and he had already assumed his role, received U.S. government approval for the nomination, and gained access to classified diplomatic briefings more than two full weeks before Robbins took over his role at the Foreign Office — and while the full security vetting process was still incomplete. Most critically, Robbins said Downing Street adopted a deliberately dismissive stance on the vetting process, only caring about how quickly the appointment could be finalized, not whether it was safe to proceed. “There was never any interest, as far as I can recall, in whether, but only an interest in when,” he said.
The testimony directly contradicts Starmer’s public account of the scandal. The prime minister has claimed he was “furious” to learn last week that the UK’s official national vetting unit had advised against granting Mandelson security clearance, and has argued he fired Robbins for deliberately withholding this critical information from his office.
But Robbins pushed back against that narrative on Tuesday, telling lawmakers that strict Foreign Office confidentiality rules barred him from sharing the vetting panel’s negative recommendation with the prime minister. He added that the extreme secrecy surrounding the vetting process meant he was never even allowed to view the full panel’s report on Mandelson. UK government protocol requires vetting officials to mark their recommendations on a color-coded form — green for approval, yellow for conditional approval, red for denial — but it remains unclear exactly what risks the panel flagged, or what exact rating the panel assigned to Mandelson. Robbins confirmed he was only briefed verbally that Mandelson was considered a “borderline case” and that the panel was “leaning towards recommending that clearance be denied.” Despite that warning, senior Foreign Office officials ultimately ruled that any identified risks could be sufficiently mitigated to allow the appointment to move forward.
In one notable clarification that defies widespread public assumptions, Robbins confirmed explicitly that the security concerns flagged during the official vetting process were unrelated to Mandelson’s long-documented ties to Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The public furor over the appointment first erupted earlier this year, when newly released files from Washington showed Mandelson shared market-sensitive information with Epstein in 2008, when he was serving as UK Business Secretary under the last Labour government.
While the official vetting concerns did not center on the Epstein ties, a separate civil service due diligence report, released to Parliament last month, did flag broad reputational risks of appointing Mandelson to the sensitive Washington post. That report outlined multiple red flags beyond the Epstein relationship, including questionable business ties to both Russia and China, and the fact that Mandelson was forced to resign from two previous Labour governments over separate ethics and financial scandals. After those details emerged, Starmer apologized publicly, and blamed Mandelson for lying about the true extent of his connections to Epstein.
Robbins’ testimony has thrown fresh fuel on the fire of the scandal, piling unprecedented new pressure on a already beleaguered Starmer, as opposition leaders reiterate their demands for his resignation. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, called Robbins’ evidence “devastating to Keir Starmer.” She argued it is “inconceivable” that no senior member of Starmer’s Downing Street staff knew Mandelson had failed the vetting process, and accused the prime minister of deliberately misleading Parliament. “It is clear that No. 10 not only made the appointment before vetting was completed, but that Mandelson was already acting as the ambassador before the vetting, even seeing highly-classified documents. … It is now absolutely clear that ‘full due process’ was not followed,” Badenoch said.
Public opinion polling has recorded a steady drop in support for Starmer and the Labour Party in recent months, and polling analysts say the latest revelations are likely to cement negative public views of the prime minister’s leadership. Keiran Pedley, politics director at leading polling firm Ipsos, noted that recent attention on Starmer’s response to the Iran-Israel conflict had temporarily quieted discussions about his leadership future, but that the new disclosures from Robbins have revived those questions. The upcoming local elections across England, Scotland and Wales are widely expected to serve as a public referendum on Starmer’s leadership, with pollsters forecasting poor results for Labour that could amplify internal and external pressure for the prime minister to step down.