Mandelson vetting fiasco leaves Starmer looking like lame duck
Forty-eight hours of brutal public inquiry into British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s judgment have left him looking increasingly like a lame duck.Starmer had already been battling for months to save his job before a former top Foreign Office official alleged on Tuesday that he was pressured by 10 Downing St. to approve Peter Mandelson’s appointment as Britain’s envoy to Washington. The official, Olly Robbins, told a parliamentary committee that the prime minister’s office was “dismissive” in its approach to the security vetting that would ultimately raise red flags about the Labour grandee’s background.Robbins’ testimony, coming the day after Starmer himself faced a grilling in the House of Commons, provided a graphic postmortem of a personnel decision that has shaken the Labour government. The claims and counterclaims laid bare Starmer’s struggle to adapt to U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to power and his behind-the-scenes battle with the civil servants who manage the British state.
