Peter Mandelson vetting hearing exposes Starmer appointment process

British MPs spent four and a half hours on Tuesday examining Peter Mandelson's appointment as U.S. ambassador, after Keir Starmer decided in December 2024 to put him in post before Trump's 2025 inauguration. The hearing concentrated on how the vetting was handled and whether the prime minister misled parliament. Opposition MPs are due to vote on Tuesday night on whether to open an inquiry.

Starmer's December 2024 choice

Starmer said the appointment followed “full due process” and that “no pressure whatsoever” was put on Olly Robbins. But the hearing placed that claim beside evidence that Downing Street wanted Mandelson in place quickly and chased the result of sped-up vetting while the process was still running.

Much of that process stayed opaque even to the most senior people involved. Robbins and Ian Collard both told MPs they never saw a vetting form recommending that Mandelson’s clearance should be denied. Both said they were told verbally that the case was “borderline”.

Robbins and Collard evidence

Collard later said that when he saw the form in September, it described Mandelson’s case as a “very borderline case”. That detail pushed the hearing beyond a dispute over timing and into a narrower question about how much was written down, how much was said aloud, and who saw which judgment before the appointment went ahead.

Starmer sacked the Foreign Office’s top civil servant this month after it emerged that Robbins had granted Mandelson top security vetting despite officials raising red flags. Mandelson himself was then sacked in September over the depth of his past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Philip Barton testimony

The hearing began with Philip Barton, who said it is “not unheard of” for senior civil servants to keep information from their political masters. He also told MPs, “I am worried that everyone’s going to think that the center of government spends its whole time conniving behind the backs of everyone else,” giving the hearing a sharper edge over how the process was handled at the top of government.

That left MPs weighing two things at once: whether the appointment was pushed through with incomplete visibility, and whether the prime minister’s account of the process matched what civil servants described under questioning. The vote scheduled for Tuesday night will decide whether that allegation moves into a formal inquiry.