9 Bombshells From Starmer’s Ex-Top Aide Over Mandelson Hire

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has spoken out over the government’s controversial decision to hire Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US for the first time.

He was today scrutinised by MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee over the ex-Labour peer’s appointment.

McSweeney resigned from his senior role in February this year, taking full responsibility for encouraging the prime minister’s to hire Mandelson despite his known links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer’s premiership now hangs in the balance after the Guardian reported Mandelson had failed his security vetting – but was still hired as the government’s attache to Washington.

Here’s what we learned from McSweeney’s lengthy evidence session.

In his opening remarks, McSweeney immediately took responsibility for supporting Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador, calling it “a serious error of judgment.”

He said: “The prime minister advice relied on my advice and I got it wrong.”

The former senior aide said he did not tell anyone to ignore advice from vetting officials when it came to Mandelson.

He claimed he made a recommendation based off his judgement of Mandelson’s “experience, relationships and political skills”.

He said: “What I did not do was oversee national security vetting, ask officials to ignore procedures, request that steps should be skipped, or communicate, explicitly or implicitly, the checks should be cleared at all costs.”

“Like everyone else, I could see there was pros and cons in the appointment and I worried that it would go wrong so I didn’t try to push anything through,” he added.

“I don’t think the prime minister would have chosen Mandelson if Kamala Harris had been elected president,” McSweeney said.

He said there would have been a wider range of candidates to choose from if the Democrats had won the presidential election because of the “nature of the relationships available”.

McSweeney later said his “top concern” was the UK-US trade deal, and Mandelson’s previous experience as European Commissioner was seen as an advantage there.

McSweeney told the MPs that as early as January or February 2024, months before Labour’s landslide election victory, the party told the civil service he was considering making Mandelson a political appointment to the White House.

Amid speculation about where the idea of Mandelson’s appointment came from, McSweeney said it stemmed from the ex-Labour peer himself.

“I think the first person who put Mandelson’s name forward was Mandelson,” he said, as he reportedly made it very clear “he was interested in the job”.

He added that he thought Mandelson’s appointment would have been in “the national interest”.

This was not some hero I was trying to get a job for,” he said, while also disputing suggestions Mandelson was his “mentor” – calling him a confidante instead.

McSweeney said he was under the impression Mandelson’s Epstein friendship was a ‘passing acquittance’ – until emails published by Bloomberg unearthed the depth of their relationship last September.

He said what then emerged was “not the relationship I was led to understand it was – it was very, very, very different”.

McSweeney described finding out reality as a “knife through my soul”.

“The nature of the relationship that I understood he had with Epstein was not a close friendship,” he said.

“How I understood it at the time was a passing acquaintance that he regretted having, and that he apologised for.

“What is emerged since then was way, way, way worse than I had expected at the time.”

McSweeney said: “When I look back on it, I certainly think it would have been much, much better if I’d asked PET [the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team] to ask those follow up questions.

“I guess my thinking at the time was if I put follow-up questions to him in writing, and that if a senior member of staff did that, that he would feel more obligated to give the truth and the full truth.

“I didn’t feel that I got that back from him.

“But it wasn’t my decision. It was the prime minister’s decision and he saw the DV [developed vetting] as part of that decision.”

However, he later said he felt Mandelson was telling the truth when they first spoke.

McSweeney claimed he only realised it may not have been the “full truth” when the later revelations came up.

The Foreign Affairs Committee previously discussed claims that McSweeney had told the Foreign Office to “just fucking approve” Mandelson’s appointment.

However, former chief of the Foreign Office Philip Barton dispelled the rumour on Monday.

“This swearing rumour is it is something that has caused me a great deal of stress for a number of months,” McSweeney later said.

“I do not know why people do this in politics, put around untrue rumours.

“They phone lots of journalists. Those journalists then phone lots of politicians … It’s damaging for people’s reputations. And I think it’s unfair for staff who can speak for themselves.”

He said: “One of the things that subsequently surprised me – I would have assumed that, and maybe they did – but I would assume that our Foreign Office would have been in contact with us counterparts to see what information they held on him.”

He said there is “no way” Mandelson would have been appointed as ambassador if the government knew the full depth of his friendship with Epstein.

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