Why Keir Starmer would resign if he had any sense of honour
The Prime Minister has either been careless and slapdash or conniving and deceitful. Neither position is forgivable
Sir Keir Starmer does not have his troubles to seek. Despite the undeniable truth that he inherited a bleak balance sheet and a country requiring significant change, the problems he now faces are especially of his own making. They are questions of trust, judgment and competence and it is difficult to see how he cannot take personal responsibility for failing in all three.
The latest developments regarding his first appointment of Lord Mandelson as British Ambassador to the United States suggest he is not only guilty of poor judgment, but cannot be trusted.
David Maddox, a former political editor of The Scotsman, has reported in The Independent that he spoke to the 10 Downing Street press team back in September 2025 about sources who had told him Peter Mandelson had failed a security vetting. Their answer was “vetting done by FCDO [Foreign Office] in normal way”. Dan Hodges of the Daily Mail also claims the same experience happened to him.
Did Starmer’s press secretary not warn Starmer back then that a story might break on this, in case he might be questioned and give the wrong answer? It is inconceivable that such a question was not relayed to Starmer.
Height of incompetence
The role of press secretaries includes protecting their PM from being asked questions they should be able to rebut or explain away, which means knowing where any unexpected elephant traps lie. A press secretary would not want to hide such a story from a Prime Minister, instead a line to take would be agreed with the PM in case Starmer was buttonholed at an inconvenient moment.
Even if, in the unlikely event, the Prime Minister was not informed, it is the height of incompetence of his office that a PM would not know and he should take ownership of responsibility for such a failure.
Starmer is very good at presenting a sanctimonious tone borne of his guid conceit of moral rectitude, but he lacks self-awareness. At Hasting on February 5, Keir Starmer gave a categorical assurance that Mandelson had passed his security vetting, saying: “There was security vetting, carried out independently by the security services, which is an intensive exercise that gave him clearance for the role.”
We now know that there was an initial due diligence vetting that raised red flags about Mandelson’s business links to China and Russia, and that he failed the subsequent high-level vetting that involves financial scrutiny and close questioning. This is all separate from what was known about Lord Mandelson’s close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which continued after the American billionaire was convicted of sex offences.
The Prime Minister built for himself a reputation as someone who could be trusted to do the right thing and show a clean pair of hands – especially after the controversial period of Boris Johnson’s premiership. He did this using his legal background as director of public prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service south of the Border between 2008 and 2013 – and by telling other politicians how they should conduct themselves and how they should take responsibility for their errors.
Why Starmer wanted Mandelson
Now on his third Chief of staff in less than two years, he has also seen a Transport Secretary resign over a fraud offence in 2014, followed by the forced resignation of his Deputy Prime Minister over her tax affairs, then a similar fate for his anti-corruption Treasury minister over charges of corruption in Bangladesh. It was already obvious the Prime Minister has poor judgment when it comes to personnel appointments.
Now it is clear that, given Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein and his failure to pass two separate vetting procedures, the Prime Minister should never have appointed him, and yet Starmer carries on.
This provokes the question, “why?” The answer is simple. Mandelson, as an arch-political manipulator, was to play a key role in convincing US President Donald Trump to either support or not intervene in Starmer’s quest to establish an EU reset that would bring the full reversal of Brexit – and to hand over the Chagos Islands to the Chinese-leaning Mauritius government.
In the face of Trump’s tariffs, Starmer wanted a trade deal with the United States but knew the President thought Brexit was a “great thing” and so he needed to play down the EU reset as a mere adjustment rather than the grander scheme that is now becoming more visible. Just last week, the Chancellor was talking up the UK realignment of single market laws as being the rule rather than the exception.
The United States had a legal right to object to any Chagos handover enshrined in a 1966 agreement that the Prime Minister did not mention when presenting the policy and Trump was unaware of. The US base on the Chagos island of Diego Garcia meant Trump had to agree.
Chief schmoozer
Who better to mollify the president than the man who was the creator of Blairism, a former EU trade commissioner and chief schmoozer for delivering challenging political pitches? Mandelson was not just a bit player but had a central role in Starmer’s foreign relations and so the PM ignored all the warning signs.
Starmer has been found out for being either careless and slapdash or for being conniving and deceitful. Neither is a forgivable defence. The Prime Minister cannot pass the buck on to civil servants.
As a matter of honour, he should resign and allow the Labour Cabinet to find a new Prime Minister. If it cannot, we should have a general election. That such a course is not obvious to Sir Keir Starmer shows his reputation as a man of high moral principal is phoney and he is deserving of no sympathy.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org
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