Left-wing parliamentarians have turned on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer over his decision to appoint a senior Labour Party figure linked to Jeffrey Epstein to the position of Ambassador to the United States.
Peter Mandelson — colloquially known as the ‘Prince of Darkness’ since his time in the cabinet of former UK PM Tony Blair — had been appointed to the role despite security vetting recommending he not be given the security clearance needed to perform the role.
Starmer claims this fact was hidden from him by the UK civil service, even firing senior Foreign Office mandarin Olly Robbins over the fiasco.
The British premier’s attempt to distance himself from the scandal has failed to convince opposition MPs, as well as many in his own party, with the left-wing leader being grilled in the House of Commons on why he allowed Mandelson to be appointed in the first place.
“What was it about the twice-disgraced, paedophile adjacent, self-styled prince of darkness that you found so attractive to put into this plum job?” Sorcha Eastwood, a member of the left-leaning Alliance Party in Northern Ireland, asked the prime minister.
Diane Abbott, a former member of the Jeremy Corbyn shadow cabinet before being ousted from Labour following Starmer’s rise, also attacked the prime minister.
“It is one thing to say, as he insists on saying, nobody told me, nobody told me anything, nobody told me. The question is, why didn’t the prime minister ask?”
Questions are also being raised as to the support Starmer now has within Labour, with even some of his own ministers failing to give the PM full-throated support.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband claimed that he “100 per cent supported” the prime minister, but when pressured on why the appointment of Mandelson should ever have been considered in the first place appeared to back off.
“Yeah. Look. It’s a fair point,” he said, leaning to the side in his chair. “It’s a fair point, and he shouldn’t have been appointed.”
It is not just politicians gunning for Starmer, with some civil service officials having turned on the leader for trying to lay the blame on them.
Speaking to a parliamentary committee on April 21, Olly Robbins — who had been directly fired by Starmer for allegedly withholding information regarding Mandelson’s vetting from him — described himself and his colleagues as being put under pressure to wave through the appointment.
He went on to claim that Starmer had also been pushing him to find an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle, his then-communications chief, who had previously faced pressure for his links to a convicted sex offender.
“I felt quite uncomfortable about it,” he told the committee, suggesting that handing out the role could involve him passing over more qualified candidates.
“I kept giving advice that this was very hard… for me to defend.”
Robbins went on to suggest that documents proving Mandelson’s security vetting had flagged issues was leaked by Number 10 in order to shift blame onto the civil service, adding that those who gave the papers to The Guardian should face criminal prosecution.
When pushed on the issue, he insisted that he had not the qualifications to accuse anyone, but argued that the timeline as known added up.
“I’m not an investigator. All I’m able to do is put two and two together ,which is that the first I heard of this deep concern and briefing of it to the prime minister was only really hours before it appeared in The Guardian,” he said.
The attacks have since spread throughout the civil service, with Dave Penman — the head of a major union representing mandarins — accusing Starmer of having lost his ability to work with the public sector.
“Who in the civil service would now think they would be immune from when it is politically expedient to be dismissed?” he asked.