He Announced the Man Before Vetting Him. He Told Parliament Due Process Was Followed. Both Cannot Be True.
Sir Keir Starmer wants you to believe he is furious. He was not informed. The system failed him. He is the victim in all of this. The system that failed him, however, is the one he runs. And the man he sacked to prove his innocence started his job a fortnight after Starmer had already committed the appointment to the public record.
Sir Keir Starmer announced former Lord Peter Mandelson as Britain’s next ambassador to the United States on 20 December 2024. Sir Olly Robbins took up his post as the Foreign Office’s most senior civil servant on 8 January 2025. Note the sequence. The prime minister publicly committed the country to his chosen man thirteen days before Robbins started work. The vetting that would subsequently fail had not yet begun.
This sequence is the foundation of everything that has followed. Not a footnote. Not a technicality. The foundation.
In January 2025, Mandelson was subjected to Developed Vetting, the highest level of security clearance required for access to top-secret material. UK Security Vetting concluded its assessment with a “high” overall concern and a formal recommendation to deny clearance. The Foreign Office overruled that recommendation, using a rarely exercised authority. According to the Guardian, they did so acting on the understanding that the prime minister wanted the appointment to proceed.
Robbins, who had been in post for weeks, inherited a public promise made at the top of government. He did what the system expected him to do: he facilitated the prime minister’s will. A letter was then sent to Mandelson confirming that his “security clearance has been confirmed by Vetting Unit and is valid until 29 January 2030.” That letter, released by Parliament only last month, was false. The Vetting Unit had recommended against clearance. The overriding of that recommendation was not disclosed. Mandelson was told he had passed. He had not.
He put the cart before the horse, then sacked the groom.
Starmer now says he knew none of this. He is “absolutely furious,” we are told. The system failed him.
The problem with that account is September 2025.
WHAT DOWNING STREET WAS TOLD
When Mandelson was sacked last autumn over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, as Labour Heartlands has covered in detail, the vetting question did not stay quiet. On 11 September 2025, The Independent’s political editor David Maddox texted Downing Street’s Director of Communications, Tim Allan, stating that two sources had told him Mandelson had failed his vetting. Allan did not deny it. His response was a careful vagueness: vetting had been done “by FCDO in normal way.”
Five days later, on 16 September 2025, Liberal Democrat MP Rachel Gilmour rose in the House of Commons and stated: “A source from MI6 has reportedly claimed that they failed to clear Mandelson and warned that his links to [Epstein] would compromise him. Downing Street pressed ahead with the appointment anyway.” No minister rose to deny it. No government statement corrected the record.
On the same day, Yvette Cooper and Olly Robbins co-signed a letter to MPs confirming that vetting had been “conducted to the usual standard set for Developed Vetting.” Every word of that sentence is technically defensible. Not one word of it told the truth. The outcome of the vetting, a recommendation to deny clearance, was nowhere in the letter.
Starmer, who told Parliament that “full due process” had been followed, says he only found out this week. A journalist put the allegation to his Director of Communications in September. An MP stated it on the floor of the House in September. His Home Secretary co-signed an evasive letter on the same day. And the prime minister remained, apparently, entirely unaware.
THE SCALP
Baron Simon McDonald, who served as the Foreign Office’s Permanent Under-Secretary until 2020, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Number 10 “wanted a scalp and they wanted it quickly.” He described Robbins as having been thrown under a bus. “I cannot see that there was any process, any fairness, any giving him the chance to set out his case, and that feels to me wrong,” McDonald said.
McDonald also noted that vetting information is highly sensitive and, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, legally cannot be shared with Number 10 or the prime minister directly. The Permanent Under-Secretary is required by law to maintain confidentiality on vetting decisions.
That legal defence covers January 2025. It does not cover September 2025, when journalists and MPs were raising the question in public, in writing, and directly with the prime minister’s own staff.
Robbins is expected to give his account to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday. He reportedly believes he followed due process and is angry at the manner of his removal. Whatever he says, a man who inherited a prime ministerial commitment he played no part in making was removed inside a single news cycle to provide the appearance of decisive action. That is not leadership. It is a sacrifice.
THE VERDICT
A government in which the prime minister announces the appointment, the civil service overrules the security services to deliver it, a false letter is sent confirming clearance, an MP raises the failure in the Commons to silence, and a journalist is met with studied vagueness, is not a government that was deceived. It is a government that arranged its own deceiving.
Kemi Badenoch wrote to Starmer this weekend calling the affair “a tawdry and shaming affair for you and your party, and for this country.” She offered the only two explanations available: lying or incompetence. Starmer insists there is a third option. He has not yet told us what it is.
Every minister’s salary depends on the lie holding. Parliament will decide today whether it does.
He signed the name. He gave the order. He knew nothing. Pick one.
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