Sir Philip Barton said he was not consulted before Keir Starmer announced Lord Mandelson as the next US ambassador, and warned the move could become a difficult issue later. MPs were due to vote later today on whether there should be an inquiry into whether Starmer misled Parliament over the vetting process for Mandelson.
Barton said he had been uneasy about the appointment but had no way to raise his concerns before it was announced. “I was worried that this could become a problem in future… but there was no space or avenue or mechanism for me to put that on the table,” he said. Kemi Badenoch has accused Starmer of misleading MPs multiple times over Mandelson’s appointment, while Starmer has called the vote a stunt and pure politics.
The former top diplomat also said he approved the process so that the prime minister’s choice for ambassador would be properly prepared when he started the job. “I signed off on it, I think it was the right thing to do to make sure... that the prime minister's choice for ambassador is properly prepared when he started his job,” he said. Barton added that his departure from the Foreign Office was down to timing, saying: “I announced to the department I was leaving on the 4 November 2025. I didn't know anything about Mandelson until the middle of December,”.
The row centres on the vetting of Lord Mandelson before his appointment as US ambassador, with Barton’s evidence echoing testimony from Sir Olly Robbins last week that Downing Street was uninterested in the process. Barton said he had also heard that people around Donald Trump felt blindsided by the announcement, and that Trump had said he would have been happy for Karen Pierce to stay. He said no one had asked him to make sure the vetting was rigorous, underscoring the gap between the appointment’s political handling and the checks meant to support it.
That leaves one clear question for MPs today: whether the government treated a sensitive diplomatic appointment as a political decision first and a vetting exercise second.
