5 Moments MPs Grilled Starmer Over Peter Mandelson

Keir Starmer was met with ridicule and disbelief from MPs while fielding their questions over why he ever decided to appoint Peter Mandelson to be an ambassador for the US.

It emerged last week that the ex-Labour peer failed security vetting without the prime minister’s knowledge, and was still given the top job in Washington days later.

Starmer sacked Olly Robbins, the top civil servant in the Foreign Office, granting Mandelson clearance without informing them.

Though Mandelson was sacked in September when the depth of his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was revealed, the saga continues to cast a shadow of Downing Street.

Questions swirl over the prime minister’s judgement and apparent lack of authority within his own government.

Here’s how the prime minister’s attempt to address the scrutiny head on went down with MPs…

The prime minister tried to preempt the frustration from MPs over Mandelson – and his vetting – by admitting that “many members across the House will find these facts to be incredible”.

Starmer was instantly interrupted with a wave of laughter from the opposition benches which seemed to even take the prime minister by surprise.

“To that, I can only say they are right,” the PM ploughed on, despite the noise. “It beggars belief that throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system in government.”

Diane Abbott tore into the PM for not doing the obvious: asking if Mandelson passed security vetting.

The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington pointed out that Mandelson had already been fired from government twice, both occasions long before he was considered for the ambassador role.

“It’s one thing to say, as he [Starmer] insists on saying, ‘Nobody told me, nobody told me anything, nobody told me’,” Abbott said.

“The question is, why didn’t the prime minister ask?”

The PM said he did ask the cabinet secretary to review the “process” around hiring Mandelson once the “further revelations” came to light.

Abbott, Starmer’s former shadow cabinet colleague turned vocal critic, lost the party whip last year and now sits as an independent.

As the longest-serving female MP in the Commons, she is known as the “Mother of the House” as a marker of respect.

Another one of Starmer’s former shadow cabinet colleagues, John McDonnell, also scorched the prime minister – this time over his wider political career.

“Isn’t the reality this: when he sought to realise his ambition to become leader of the Labour Party, with very little base within the party, he became dependent on [Morgan] McSweeney and Mandelson, and Labour Together to organise and fund his election.”

The Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington claimed Mandelson was then rewarded with the “highest diplomatic office” as a result.

“The unspoken message to civil servants was: what Mandelson wants, Mandelson gets. This has damaged the party that I’ve been a member of for 50 years,” McDonnell said.

Starmer refuted McDonnell’s message about Whitehall, insisting it’s “simply not good enough” for any civil servants to withhold such information.

“It’s 2022 all over again,” Lib Dem leader Ed Davey told the Commons, referring to the fury Boris Johnson was faced with as prime minister after it emerged he had broken his own government’s social distancing rules during the Covid lockdowns.

Johnson was later accused of misleading the House – including by Starmer himself – and blaming Downing Street officials for the error.

Davey pointed out that, as leader of the opposition, Starmer promised to implement change if he were to get into office.

“I’m afraid the fact that he even had to make the statement today shows how badly he has failed,” Davey said, as he called on the PM to resign.

Even as Starmer was fighting to keep his job, it seems Labour MPs were not minded to stay in support.

The benches behind the prime minister thinned out substantially during his time in the chamber.

A Labour source told HuffPost UK: “Starmer is fighting for his political life and look how his benches have thinned out. Feels like it’s sinking fast.

“I suspect post-May Labour MPs will start saying he has to set out a timetable to go.”

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