Mandelson | Pakistan

Downing Street on Tuesday denied a claim from a former official that it had applied pressure on civil servants to approve the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK envoy to Washington and seemed to dismiss security concerns. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer remained mired in a scandal over his decision to appoint Mandelson as Britain’s envoy to the United States before sacking him last year over links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Olly Robbins, the most senior foreign ministry official until he was fired last week over the scandal, told MPs on Tuesday that Starmer’s office had a “dismissive attitude” towards the security vetting for its US envoy pick. There was a “very strong expectation … coming from Number 10 (Downing Street) that he (Mandelson) needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible”, Robbins told a watchdog parliamentary committee. “My office, the foreign secretary’s office, were under constant pressure, there was an atmosphere of constant chasing.” A Downing...

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday faced renewed calls from his political opponents ​to resign after it was revealed that his former ambassador to ‌the United States failed security vetting and was still allowed to take up the job. The government on Thursday confirmed Mandelson — who was subsequently fired after Starmer said he had lied ​about the strength of his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — had ​failed his security vetting before taking up the role. The government said ⁠Starmer was unaware officials in the Foreign Office had overruled the vetting ​recommendation, and a source said the most senior official at the Foreign Office, Olly ​Robbins, would leave his role after losing Starmer’s confidence. “I don’t think the prime minister can get out of his responsibility by sacking Olly Robbins. I think the buck has to ​stop with Mr Starmer,” Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey told BBC Radio. “I think ​the evidence suggests that he misled the Commons (parliament) and misled the public. ...

Former British government minister Peter Mandelson has resigned as a member of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party after new reports of his ties with disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein, media reported on Sunday. Mandelson, who was dismissed by Starmer as Britain’s ambassador to the United States last year after previous revelations about his connections to Epstein, said he did not wish to cause “further embarrassment” to Labour, the reports said. “I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furore surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and I feel regretful and sorry about this,” Mandelson said in a letter to the Labour Party reported by the BBC and other news organisations, which Reuters was not immediately able to obtain. Mandelson said he believed allegations about financial payments to him by Epstein, which appeared in British media based on files released by the US Department of Justice, were false and he would investigate them. “While doing this, I do not wish to cause further embarrass...