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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Germany’s chancellor has declared America is being “humiliated” by Iran over negotiations to end the war in the country and reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Friedrich Merz said he “can’t tell what strategic exit the Americans are pursuing” exactly two months after the conflict began.

A ceasefire is currently in place, but there is little prospect of an imminent peace deal being reached.

Meanwhile, the key waterway the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, while the US is blockading Iran’s ports.

Donald Trump last week called off planned peace talks which had been due to be held between American and Iranian officials in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, insisting they were a waste of time.

Posting on Truth Social, he said: “If they want to talk, all they have to do is call.”

But Merz said: “At the moment I can’t tell what strategic exit the Americans are pursuing, especially since the Iranians are obviously negotiating very skilfully, or perhaps very skilfully refusing to negotiate, and are letting the Americans travel to Islamabad only to send them back home empty-handed.

“An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so called Revolutionary Guards.”

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s highly-respected chief international correspondent, has said any peace deal “will take a long time” to be reached because “neither side wants to back down”.

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In 2025, there were about 10.2 million pet cats in the UK; almost a quarter of all UK households (24%) have a feline friend.

But, per Cats Protection, 3% of these were injured by cars outside the home, and the most common cause for injury was fights among other cats in the great outdoors (15%).

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that a new paper has suggested the best way to help our cats live longer is the simple, free technique of keeping them indoors.

Roaming cats may die as many as 10 years before their indoor peers, the researchers wrote.

This is partly because outdoor cats are exposed to “substantial risks of traumatic injury and infectious disease, plus lesser risks of poisoning and abuse”.

They added that the “cohort of outdoor cats has approximately 70-80% of the lifespan of the cohort of indoor cats”, and that chronic conditions created by e.g. injuries sustained outdoors can create expensive vet bills for owners.

Additionally, they found that the quality of life of indoor cats was generally better than that of outdoor cats.

Even their bond with their owners tended to be more satisfying and fulfilling.

The researchers say this doesn’t mean keeping your cat indoors carries zero risk.

“Containment,” they say, may lead to “obesity, diabetes or behavioural problems… Contained cats are also unlikely to express all cat behaviour”.

And though solutions including “environmental enrichment, exercise, and correct feeding, plus containment logistics,” are plentiful, they “may strain owners’ time and finances”.

But, they add, on balance, it’s probably still the better choice.

They ended their paper, “We conclude that, based on health and welfare, the advantages of containment are considerable and the disadvantages often remediable.”

As speculation mounts about a potential sequel to the new Michael Jackson biopic, the head of the movie studio behind it has made a bold claim about its future.

Much has been made of the fact that the new film Michael doesn’t address the many allegations of child sexual abuse levelled against the Billie Jean singer in his lifetime, with several prominent figures attached to the movie claiming this could form the basis of a sequel.

Speaking to Business Insider, Lionsgate chief Adam Fogelson said frankly: “Look, there’s at least one more movie.”

He continued: “Just speaking less as an employee of Lionsgate and more as a person who has spent a lot of time in the movie business, I was always excited by the possibility that you could make a more complete and satisfying telling of Michael’s story if you weren’t confined to only one movie.”

Originally, filmmaker Antoine Fuqua had intended to include scenes referencing the allegations, and even shot a sequence of the police raiding Jackson’s Neverland ranch.

However, when production was close to being complete, the Jackson estate discovered a legal clause in one accuser’s settlement, forbidding his name or likeness from ever being featured in a film.

As a result, Fuqua had to bring back the cast and crew for costly reshoots, though Fogelson said some of this footage could still see the light of day.

“From my perspective, it’s important to try to give the audience an authentic understanding of who Michael Jackson was,” he added.

“So I think that that can be done with or without some of what was in the third act that had to be scrapped.”

During an interview published over the weekend, Fuqua was asked if it was true that around “a third of footage” already recorded could go into a potential Michael follow-up, to which he confirmed: “Absolutely.”

He also said last week that if a Michael sequel were to go ahead, he’d hope to not “sensationalise” the stories and controversies surrounding the Grammy winner in his later years.

“Being a movie star, rock star, superstar like Michael, there’s enough of that already,” he claimed. “You don’t have to do much. But I think the key is, like, who was he as a human being?

Michael had a mauling from critics in the lead-up to its release, but it’s seemingly fared much better with audiences.

As well as making more money in its opening weekend than any biopic before it, it holds an audience score on Rotten Tomatoes of 97%, and an average Letterboxd rating of 3.6 stars of a possible five.

Sir Philip Barton became the latest former civil servant to give evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on Peter Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the United States.

The former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office was quizzed on how the shamed former Labour peer got the role – and whether the rules were followed.

Barton left his post on January 19, 2025, less than a month before Mandelson took up his job in Washington DC, but had been closely involved in the appointment process before then.

Here are the five key things we learned from his 90-minute evidence session.

Sir Philip told the committee that he was worried that Mandelson’s known links to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein would prove problematic.

Asked what concerns he had about the decision by Keir Starmer to give the then Labour peer the plum diplomatic post, he said: “I think it was very much … around the possibility of his known connection to Epstein, causing an issue subsequently.

“Obviously, I didn’t know what was actually going to happen, because Epstein was such a toxic, hot potato subject in US politics itself, including in the election campaign.”

Mandelson was sacked by the prime minister after just six months in the job after further revelations emerged about the extent of his friendship with Epstein.

The Guardian revealed nearly two weeks ago that UK Security Vetting had recommended Mandelson not be given “developed vetting” status, which allows the holders to access top secret government information.

However, he was granted it by Sir Olly Robbins, Sir Philip’s successor as permanent secretary in the Foreign Office.

Giving evidence, Sir Philip confirmed that the Cabinet Office at first did not think that was a prerequisite for Mandelson to take up his ambassadorial role.

He said: “The Cabinet Office initially said that as Mandelson was ‘a fit and proper person’ as a member of the House of Lords, he did not require developed vetting.

“To be honest with you, I thought that was odd and insufficient. To do the job effectively you have to be party to some of the deepest secrets that the UK government holds.”

He said the Cabinet Office later changed its view.

Sir Philip was asked if No.10 had a “dismissive” attitude towards Mandelson’s security status, as was claimed last week by Sir Olly Robbins.

He replied: “I wouldn’t use the word dismissive. The word I would use is uninterested.

“I think people wanted to know that all the practical steps required for Mandelson to arrive in Washington on or around the [Trump] inauguration date. It needed to be completed at pace, as it were.”

Sir Olly Robbins told the committee last Tuesday that there was “constant pressure” on Foreign Office officials from No.10 to get Mandelson in place.

The PM appeared to contradict those comments at prime minister’s questions the following day, when he insisted no pressure was applied.

Asked whether his department was under pressure, Sir Philip said: “There’s two possible questions here. Question one is, was there pressure on the substance of the [developed vetting] case?

“Question two is, was there pressure to get the [developed vetting] case done in a particular timeframe?

“Answer one is, during my tenure, I was not aware of any pressure on the substance of the Mandelson [developed vetting] case.

“Question two, was there pressure? Absolutely.”

He added: “I don’t think anyone could have been in any doubt in the department working on this that there was pressure to get everything done as quickly as possible.”

The PM faces a crunch Commons vote on Tuesday over whether he should be investigated for claiming “due process” was followed in Mandelson’s appointment.

The Tories say that is untrue and Starmer has misled the Commons.

Asked whether due process had been followed, Sir Philip refused to back the PM and instead said he would “dodge” the question.

“I think the processes the [Foreign Office] … followed up until I stood down on Sunday, 19th January, that was proper process, done at pace as we were asked,” he said.

However, he did say it was “unusual” for Mandelson’s appointment to be announced before security vetting was carried out.

Sir Philip denied reports that Morgan McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff at the time of Mandelson’s appointment, had told him to “just fucking approve it”.

He said: “I didn’t receive any direct calls from the chief of staff during my time as permanent under-secretary. So there was no call at all.

“My interactions were always when others were present in a general meeting, there weren’t very many of those either.”

Sir Philip added: ”“I’ve really racked my brains and I cannot recall Morgan McSweeney swearing in a meeting at me, or indeed just in in general.

“So I don’t see any substance in that part of it and I think it’s important I say that this morning, given how many people have come to think that might be true.”

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