“We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - Peter Mandelson
Peter Mandelson, a politician who has unusually been forced to resign from the Cabinet twice, and who was the known close friend and associate of the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was appointed Ambassador to the USA by Keir Starmer BEFORE being security vetted for the post.
In 1998 Mandelson took a £373,000 personal loan from fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson to buy a house. He did not declare the loan to the Permanent Secretary or to the Cabinet Office. This created a conflict of interest because Robinson was under investigation by Mandelson’s own department at the time. He was forced to resign.
Mandelson was later appointed Northern Island Secretary, during which time he became embroiled in a second scandal. He was accused of helping the Hinduja brothers obtain UK passports while they were donors to the Millennium Dome project. Again, he was forced to resign.
This core Blairite politician - known as a “Blairite Baron” - was made Business Secretary by Gordon Brown, (former Chancellor of the Blair government) and later elevated to the House of Lords.
Mandelson is mentioned in the Epstein files several times, including photographs, and his social contact with Epstein was public knowledge years before his 2024 appointment as ambassador. Known as The Prince of Darkness” or “The Dark Lord”, it beggars belief that Starmer appointed him to the post of ambassador before having him vetted.
Teachers, social workers, childminders/childcare workers, foster carers, doctors, nurses, healthcare workers and jobs in schools and children’s homes ALL require the job applicants to undergo a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check BEFORE they can begin work. It is illegal to start work before you have passed the DBS check.
Despite Mandelson’s past behaviour in breaking the Ministerial Code of Ethics and despite his known association with a convicted paedophile, Keir Starmer saw fit to appoint him as UK ambassador to the USA before having him checked as a security risk.
The legal and British constitutional framework has ambassadors appointed under the Royal Prerogative, exercised by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary. They CANNOT take up post unless they pass national security vetting. Although a person can be appointed ambassador before being Developed Vetting (DV) has taken place, they CANNOT take up post or have access to classified material. This was not the case with Peter Mandelson. This is unusual because DV failures for ambassadorial roles are rare and normally block the appointment.
MI5 conducts the core vetting, and the Cabinet Office Security Vetting issues the formal pass/fail notice. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Permanent Secretary can review or challenge the vetting decision, and the Foreign Secretary can override in exceptional circumstances. The Prime Minister must be informed of any override for an ambassadorial post.
The rules clearly state that if an ambassadorial candidate fails security vetting, then the Foreign Secretary must be informed and he/she in turn must inform the Prime Minister. According to Downing Street, the Foreign Secretary (David Lammy) was not fully briefed or was given a sanitised version of the vetting results, while the Prime Minister was kept out of the loop entirely. Why?
Given that Peter Mandelson’s appointment was confirmed prior to the completion of security vetting, one might ask whether the Prime Minister was intent on placing his selected candidate in the Washington role regardless of the results of outstanding security checks.
As Fraser Nelson said on the Today programme:
“If a Prime Minister wants information they (civil servants) give him information. If they think the unofficial word is he doesn’t want to know then they will find a way of not telling him. I suspect that’s what happened here. Ollie Robinson (top civil servant in the Foreign Office) knew Mandelson had been announced. He also knew he would be creating a problem if he said no he cant become ambassador because of vetting. So he did what he believed to be his remit. And that’s come from the top” (BBC: 17/04/26.
If this is the correct version of events, and it seems highly credible that it is, then Starmer should resign. After all, it was Starmer who promised the British people “higher” ministerial standards” if he were to become PM.
