Sir Keir Starmer is facing the toughest 48 hours of his premiership as he battles to save his job amid growing outrage over the handling of Peter Mandelson’s failed security vetting.
With his reputation on the line, the prime minister will on Monday seek to convince the Commons that he was not aware that UK Security Vetting had advised that Lord Mandelson should be denied clearance to become the UK’s ambassador to the US.
After what is expected to be a mauling from MPs, Sir Keir will be under further scrutiny on Tuesday when Sir Olly Robbins, sacked as the Foreign Office permanent secretary last week for continuing with Lord Mandelson’s appointment despite the vetting concerns, will appear before a powerful group of MPs to explain his department’s role in the saga.
The former civil servant’s allies believe he could undermine the prime minister’s version of events. They claim Sir Olly is furious about his dismissal and is understood to have taken legal advice. Senior former civil servants have thrown their support behind the ousted mandarin, with former Foreign Office permanent secretary Simon McDonald and ex-deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara claiming he was “thrown under a bus” to save the prime minister.
On Friday night, No 10 released a readout of a meeting between Sir Keir and senior civil servants that appeared to corroborate the claim that the prime minister only found out on Tuesday that Lord Mandelson had been cleared for his role as Britain’s representative in Washington against the advice of security officials.
The prime minister has said he was “absolutely furious” and described the failure to inform him as “staggering”.
But Downing Street’s insistence that it was not aware of the issue is under the spotlight, after it was revealed that The Independent approached No 10 about claims that Lord Mandelson had not cleared his security vetting as long ago as last September, when the disgraced peer was sacked from his post as ambassador to the US.
A WhatsApp exchange from that time between The Independent and Downing Street’s then director of communications, Tim Allan – in which Mr Allan responds that “vetting was done by FCDO in the normal way” – has been described as a “smoking gun” that makes it impossible to deny that No 10 was made aware of concerns in September, seven months before the PM claimed he found out.
The revelation has raised the question of whether Sir Keir misled parliament in February, when he told MPs that “due process was followed” and that Lord Mandelson had cleared vetting.
The WhatsApp exchange with Mr Allan was presented to tech secretary Liz Kendall, a key ally of the prime minister, by Sir Trevor Phillips on his Sunday morning political show on Sky News. She told Sir Trevor: “You will have to ask those questions to Tim Allan. I’m not going to speak on behalf of him, and I don’t think it is fair that I do.”
When it was pointed out that Mr Allan was “responding for the prime minister to a journalist”, Ms Kendall replied: “All ministers were told was that [Mandelson] had got developed vetting status. We were not told that the Foreign Office took that decision whereas the UK Security Vetting advised against.”
But former foreign secretary Sir James Cleverly, who on Saturday said it was “inconceivable” that the prime minister and David Lammy were unaware of any problems with the vetting, said he believes the WhatsApp exchange “is the smoking gun which shows the prime minister may not be telling the truth”.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski added: “This is as close to a smoking gun, I think, as we’re going to get.”
Former Downing Street special adviser Robert Midgley said: “I used to work in No.10 – when a journalist comes with this sort of information to anyone in Downing Street, despite that response, that information only travels upwards. It’s impossible Starmer did not know about it.”
On Sir Trevor’s show, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi said: “If David Maddox at The Independent asked this question seven months ago, there is no way, and I have been in the room, that the head of comms for the prime minister wouldn’t have at least had the curiosity to say, ‘Where did this story come from? How did he fail? And why don’t we know about it?’
“There is no way that the cabinet secretary wouldn’t know about this failure. They may not have the details, but [would] at least be told, ‘By the way, we have got a problem, he has been appointed but he has failed developed vetting afterwards.’
“They clearly had got the memo from the prime minister, or [former chief of staff] Morgan McSweeney, that this appointment is being made [so] don’t question it.”
A former senior civil servant, who dealt with a number of major crises that threatened to bring down previous governments, said the text exchange “points to some pretty serious dysfunction in the system”.
They added: “If the Cabinet Office knew seven months beforehand, and they either didn’t tell the PM, or told the PM and he chose to ignore it, then firstly that lets Olly off the hook completely, and secondly it raises some much more fundamental questions about the way the centre is working.”
Kemi Badenoch, who has called for Sir Keir to resign over the issue, is expected to ask about the WhatsApp messages on Monday.
Meanwhile the prime minister is facing growing pressure to consider his position from within his own party, with senior figures from both left and right calling on him to step down.
Maurice Glasman, founder of the influential Blue Labour grouping on the right of the party, told The Telegraph: “He cannot conceivably continue as a credible prime minister any longer. And that’s all because he cannot say ‘I made a mistake, I’m sorry.’”
Jeremy Corbyn’s former shadow chancellor John McDonnell added: “The Starmer/Mandelson crisis is just a symptom of toxic factionalism in Labour created by the dominance of the McSweeney/Mandelson Labour Together faction.”
Lord Mandelson, who was a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role last September when more details emerged about his relationship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019.
Sir Keir was already under fire over the decision to give Lord Mandelson the job, despite it being known that his dealings with Epstein had continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.