UK PM insists he won’t resign over scandal of US envoy’s appointment

Downing Street applied huge pressure on civil servants to approve the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK envoy to Washington and seemed to care little about the details, sacked official Olly Robbins told MPs. Photo / Oli Scarff and Justin Tallis, AFP

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer today insisted that he would not resign, claiming allegations of misleading MPs over his appointment of a scandal-tainted party loyalist as the United Kingdom’s envoy to Washington had been “put to bed”.

Starmer’s remarks in Parliament came as the beleaguered leader faced fresh calls to step down over what he has admitted was an error of judgment in appointing veteran former politician Peter Mandelson.

Mandelson was sacked from the post last year over his links to the late United States sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer spoke to lawmakers a day after the Foreign Ministry’s most senior official, Olly Robbins, gave evidence to a parliamentary committee, having been fired by Starmer over the affair last week.

Starmer has accused Robbins of having failed to tell him about problems that emerged during Mandelson’s security clearance.

He has insisted that, despite previously stating that “all due process” had been followed, he would not have allowed the appointment to proceed if he had known that independent vetting officials had recommended that a security clearance be denied.

Starmer told MPs that Robbins had clearly answered “no” when asked if he had shared the recommendation “with me, No 10 or any other ministers”.

“That puts to bed all the allegations levelled at me ... in relation to dishonesty,” he said, adding that a week ago opposition politicians “were all saying that it must have been shared with me ... It was not”.

Opposition pressure

Mandelson was named to the top diplomatic post in December 2024, just weeks before US President Donald Trump was inaugurated the following month. He took up the job in February 2025.

The exact nature of the risks raised by vetting officials has not been made public, but Robbins has said that they did not relate to Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein.

Kemi Badenoch, leader of the main Opposition Conservative Party, dismissed Starmer’s denial, demanding why he had not ditched the appointment when he found out about other controversial issues.

A document produced during the appointment process “said Mandelson remained on the board of a Kremlin-linked defence company long after Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014”, Badenoch claimed.

“The Prime Minister told us on Monday [local time] that he’d read that due diligence report. Why did the Prime Minister want to make a man with links to the Kremlin our ambassador in Washington?” she added.

Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s former top aide, who resigned over his role in the crisis, is to appear before MPs next week.

Robbins said yesterday that Starmer’s Downing Street office put constant pressure on civil servants to approve Mandelson’s appointment and seemed to dismiss security concerns.

Robbins described the tone not as “just please get this done quickly” but “get it done”.

“I think, a pretty unmistakable feeling,” he said.

-Agence France-Presse