Sir Keir Starmer was challenged in cabinet on Tuesday over his handling of the Peter Mandelson scandal with multiple ministers raising questions over the prime minister’s approach.
The interventions during the meeting are the latest sign of cracks appearing in Starmer’s cabinet over the affair, while a Labour MP on Wednesday broke ranks to say it was time for the prime minister to quit.
Starmer has blamed Sir Olly Robbins for the Foreign Office’s failure to pass on red flags raised about Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US during the security vetting process.
Yet despite Starmer sacking Robbins last week as head of the Foreign Office, the prime minister wrapped up Tuesday’s cabinet meeting by saying he was a “man of integrity and professionalism” who had made an error of judgment.
Home secretary Shabana Mahmood questioned Starmer’s effusive praise of Robbins. Two people familiar with Mahmood’s intervention suggested it was a criticism of the prime minister’s messaging rather than the decision to sack Robbins. One recalled her comment being: “If he’s such a great public servant, I don’t understand why he has been sacked.”
Another government figure said chancellor Rachel Reeves, justice secretary David Lammy and health secretary Wes Streeting also raised concerns about recent events damaging the relationship between ministers and the civil service. Lammy warned against creating a “them and us” mentality, the figure said.
Starmer’s swift move to sack Robbins has been criticised by some former mandarins with former Foreign Office chief Lord Simon McDonald claiming he was “thrown under the bus” and treated as a “scalp” by Downing Street.
In a further sign of cabinet support for Starmer fraying, energy secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News on Tuesday that he knew in advance that Starmer’s plan to appoint Mandelson would “blow up” and that former foreign secretary David Lammy agreed with him.
Separately, work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden on Wednesday joined Yvette Cooper, foreign secretary, in criticising an alleged effort by Number 10 to find a top diplomatic job for Starmer’s former director of communications, Matthew Doyle.
Robbins claimed Number 10 had asked him last year if there was a “head of mission” role that might suit Doyle and that he was asked not to tell Lammy, the then foreign secretary, about the idea at the time.
“I don’t think he would have had the qualifications to do it,” said McFadden, adding that it was the wrong thing to do. “No appointment was made.” Cooper has called the episode “extremely concerning”.
Doyle, now in the House of Lords, also said he knew nothing about the approach. He was suspended from the Labour Party in February over his past association with a paedophile councillor.
Starmer on Wednesday did not deny that Downing Street had proposed Doyle for an ambassadorial position. He told the Commons: “When people leave roles in any organisation there are often conversations about other roles they might want to apply for, but nothing came of this.”
Starmer fended off renewed calls to quit during a tense Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday as Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch claimed he inadvertently misled the House of Commons over the Mandelson scandal.
Tory officials said Badenoch was looking to see if there was a way to force a Commons vote on Starmer’s conduct in the coming days.
Hartlepool Labour MP Jonathan Brash became the first backbencher to call for the premier to quit over the affair, saying on Wednesday that he was “completely fed up to the back teeth of this psychodrama”.
Brash, a leading member of the right-wing “Blue Labour” group, told GB News: “I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the prime minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”
Backbench Labour MP Polly Billington repeatedly avoided giving a direct answer to the question of whether she trusted Starmer’s judgment, on BBC Radio 4’s World at One. Billington said that while “prime ministers do make mistakes”, the government needed to ask itself, “what do we do next to avoid these things happening again?”
Starmer was again forced to apologise for the controversial appointment of Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington after Robbins’ explosive evidence session on Tuesday.
The prime minister has said several times that “full due process” was followed. But Badenoch said Starmer had failed to follow a recommendation by former cabinet secretary Lord Simon Case in 2024 to wait for security vetting before announcing Mandelson’s appointment.
“He knows he did not follow due process, yet he told the House he had,” she said. “I can’t accuse the prime minister of deliberately misleading the House but . . . this was not due process. Everyone knows the consequence of misleading the House. Will the prime minister finally take responsibility and go?”
Starmer replied that he had asked Case’s successor, Sir Chris Wormald, to investigate what had happened, and the former mandarin had concluded that “appropriate processes were followed”.
Red flags were raised during Mandelson’s vetting, thought to be about his business links to China, but he was nonetheless given security clearance by Robbins.
Starmer sacked former Labour cabinet minister Mandelson last September after only seven months as ambassador over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Emily Thornberry, Labour MP and chair of the foreign affairs committee, announced on Wednesday that the committee had summoned Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s former chief of staff, to give evidence on Tuesday.
Cat Little — permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, who discovered Mandelson’s failed vetting in March — will appear in front of the committee on Thursday.