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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Could there be a worse time for Britain’s government to be convulsed, yet again, by the imbroglio over its abortive appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US? Like its European counterparts, Britain is grappling with a geopolitical and economic crisis triggered by the US-Israeli war with Iran. Yet Sir Keir Starmer last week fired the top Foreign Office civil servant over his failure to tell the prime minister that Mandelson, a one-time Jeffrey Epstein associate, had failed his security vetting. The root of the problem, though, is Starmer’s decision — even if pushed by advisers — to nominate the flawed Mandelson, and his failure properly to own that choice.
The pity for Starmer is that the latest Mandelson twist followed recent signs of public approval for his handling of the White House. The prime minister was right to stand up to President Donald Trump over the Iran war, even if this has provoked a rift with Washington.
But his government came into office with two central pledges: change for UK voters fed up with a stagnant economy and failing public services, and stability in government after years of Tory turmoil. The government can blame, in some part, its woeful economic inheritance for its failures so far to deliver the first. For the absence of stability, it can blame only itself — and the buck stops with the prime minister.
Though colleagues say he is a decent man committed to public service, Starmer has been exposed in office as a weak politician. The Mandelson appointment is emblematic of his poor judgment. Even if there was a case to pick an arch political schmoozer as ambassador to the court of Trump, there were obvious risks in appointing a figure with questionable ties who had twice resigned from Labour governments under a cloud. Starmer should at least have insisted on rigorous vetting.
Sir Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office head sacked by Starmer, told MPs on Tuesday, however, that Number 10 had shown a “dismissive attitude” to Mandelson’s vetting. Downing Street had created an “atmosphere of pressure” to rush through the appointment. Starmer has called it “incredible” that Robbins failed to alert him that security officials had raised red flags during Mandelson’s clearance process. Robbins says he followed the rules, and Foreign Office experts believed they could mitigate the risks identified — related not to Epstein but, it is understood, to Chinese links. The former mandarin can feel aggrieved by his defenestration.
The latest debacle is part of an emerging pattern: the Mandelson appointment was yet another Starmer mis-step for which he is scapegoating others. In 21 months, the prime minister has burned through two chiefs of staff and four communications directors. Arguably, he could have lanced the Mandelson boil months ago had he conceded his error, apologised and accepted complete responsibility.
Starmer is now a premier who has power without a purpose. He cannot control his parliamentary majority sufficiently to make the difficult choices required. He remains in office because Labour MPs are understandably unsure if any of the alternatives, with the leading candidates coming from the party’s left, are any better.
The prime minister is in limbo until his parliamentary party settles upon someone else as genuinely preferable, or decides things have reached such a nadir that it is worth rolling the dice. Starmer might have hoped his toughness with Trump would earn him a reprieve. But next month’s Scottish and Welsh parliament and English council elections are expected to be so dire for Labour that his MPs may well conclude that, for better or worse, the time to roll the dice has come.