Keir Starmer's government was plunged deeper into crisis on Friday after Oliver Robbins was sacked, the latest fallout from the Peter Mandelson affair that has left the prime minister fighting to contain a scandal of his own making. Opposition leaders are now calling on Starmer to resign, saying he misled Parliament when he insisted the correct vetting procedures had been followed.
The immediate damage is already clear: Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney and Robbins have all lost their jobs as the row over the former ambassador to Washington widens. Starmer appointed Mandelson to the post after leading the Labour Party to a landslide victory in 2024, but then fired him in September over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. The speed of the fallout has turned a personnel dispute into a test of whether Starmer can still control his government.
The most damaging detail emerged last week, when it was reported that a vetting officer had recommended Mandelson be denied full security clearance. The Foreign Office granted him full clearance anyway, and Starmer was not told about the recommendation at the time. He only found out about the security-clearance judgment a few days ago, a delay that has intensified questions about who knew what and when inside Number 10 and across Whitehall.
That is what makes this crisis different from a routine resignation cycle. It began with Starmer's decision in 2024 to send Mandelson to Washington, and it has now opened a wider argument about the way he governs. Some current and former colleagues say the affair has exposed the hollowness of his hands-off style, while one Labour insider said many in the party see him as a good man who is out of his depth. A former official who worked closely with Starmer said the attraction was simple: because he is ambitious, and because politics was another profession he could climb to the top of.
Starmer won office on a promise of order and competence. Instead, after 21 months in power, he is facing a political wound that is no longer just about Mandelson. The question now is whether he can survive long enough to restore authority, or whether the scandal has already done the one thing his critics have been waiting for: made him look like a prime minister losing control.
