Sir Keir Starmer thinks he knows best – and blames others when it turns out he doesn’t. That, more than anything, was the lesson from his sorry showing in the Commons, as he tried and failed to explain away the Mandelson scandal.
It was an awkward performance from the outset because there are really only two explanations: either he is a liar or he is incompetent. Both are plausible, though the latter seems more likely.
There is, however, reason to think this affair has been littered with untruths, or, at best, carelessness dressed up as candour. For starters, back in February, Sir Keir was asked by Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch if the “official vetting that he received” mentioned Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein. He said: “Yes, it did.”
If so, he must have seen the vetting. Yet yesterday he insisted he had not, claiming he was referring instead to general “due diligence”, not the formal security file. As he once said to Boris Johnson: come off it.
He also failed to inform Parliament at the earliest opportunity – last Wednesday – despite the ministerial code requiring it. And his previous assurances that “full due process” had been followed now look rather thin. Sir Keir wanted Mandelson, and that appeared to trump everything else, including Mandelson’s well-known taste for controversy. Twice sacked from government, still the “Prince of Darkness”, yet still the Prime Minister’s preferred choice.
And so Peter Mandelson was appointed, as was the will of Sir Keir. But, guess what? The then cabinet secretary, Sir Simon Case, had advised that for a political appointment, as this was, vetting should be completed before the job was formally awarded. That advice was ignored.
Sir David Davis raised precisely this point in the Commons, rightly. It goes to the heart of the Prime Minister’s judgement. Yet it was brushed aside with the now-familiar robotic refrain: it was “what I understood to be the usual process”.
For Mr Process to have ignored the advice of his chief civil servant at the time is quite something. It was a choice to plough on despite the Case advice that could have avoided this scandal; one Sir Keir Starmer did not have to make but chose to.
The Prime Minister was keen to cite the official review conducted by Sir Chris Wormald, Case’s successor, but was notably reluctant to mention Case himself. There was no reference to him in the statement, and when pressed in the chamber, Sir Keir swerved the point. The advice exists in black and white, whether the Prime Minister wishes to recall it or not.
In order to give the Washington role to a political appointee, the Foreign Office would “develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential conflicts of interest or other issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice”.
Instead, Sir Keir complained, repeatedly, that nobody had told him about the vetting outcome. Even if true, it raises an obvious question: why didn’t he ask? Diane Abbott, not often a natural ally, put it neatly: “It is one thing to say ‘Nobody told me, nobody told me anything, nobody told me.’ The question is: why didn’t the Prime Minister ask?”
Sir Keir spoke as though this were all somehow passive, something that only happened to him. Yet he could have asked at any point, particularly after press reports suggested Mandelson had failed vetting. The simpler explanation is that he did not want to know.
Badenoch, by contrast, came prepared. She set out six precise questions, shared in advance, so he could not pretend to be unaware of the details. They covered the ignored advice, the failure to deny earlier reports, and the Prime Minister’s reluctance to probe too deeply. Still, he stumbled.
She also highlighted the double standard: a man who once insisted “I carry the can” for staff mistakes has instead presided over a string of staff departures for a decision that was, ultimately, his own – “people fired for a decision he made”.
The Conservatives have already secured an emergency debate, sensing an opportunity to prolong the damage – after all they have managed to push the Mandelson scandal along this far.
Sir Keir did get one or two things right.
He admitted the appointment was wrong and apologised. He also remarked of the process around Mandelson’s appointment that MPs may “find these facts to be incredible”.
“Yes!” the opposition benches cried. And he even claimed it “beggars belief”. At that point there was only laughter left in the Commons, and a despondent looking Sir Keir.
There was little else left to do.