DAN HODGES: I told No 10 seven months ago that Mandelson failed his security vetting

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Keir Starmer claimed yesterday he was ‘absolutely furious’ about the fact he was not told until Tuesday Peter Mandelson had failed his vetting to be Ambassador to Washington. Which is odd. Because I knew last September.

Back in the autumn, soon after Mandelson’s resignation from the post following revelations of his relationship with infamous paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, my colleague Glen Owen and I spoke to two separate sources in the intelligence community.

They told us that during the formal security service vetting on Mandelson a number of ‘red flags’ had been raised, following consultation with their opposite numbers in the United States.

We were told some of these issues related to Mandelson’s Epstein links, but more significantly, some involved his business links with Russia and China.

Our sources also reported that Foreign Office officials had raised their own concerns about Mandelson gaining access to highly sensitive diplomatic material. And that, as a result, they had lobbied for the post to be handed instead to MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore.

But all these concerns were apparently ignored.

We were specifically told that the confidential report into Mandelson’s vetting had been watered down in an eerie sort of reverse echo of the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ that, under Tony Blair’s Labour government, had hyped up the argument for going to war with Iraq.

‘The concerns about Mandelson were quite strong in the original version’ a senior Government official revealed. ‘But then the report was rewritten. It was deemed politically inconvenient to present the original to the Prime Minister.’

Downing Street were told eight months ago there had been issues with Peter Mandelson’s vetting, writes Dan Hodges

These claims were put to Downing Street on Saturday, September 13. And they were categorically denied.

That denial, as we all now know, was a lie. The question is, whose lie?

We know for a fact one of the people responsible for this falsehood was the PM himself. Repeatedly, both inside and outside the House of Commons, Starmer claimed that due process had been followed with regard to Mandelson’s appointment, that it was the same standard process used for all Ambassadorial appointments, and that Mandelson had passed vigorous vetting by the security chiefs.

We now know for a fact none of that was true. We also know something else was palpably untrue.

Yesterday Starmer claimed neither he, nor ministers, nor anyone in No 10 had been informed that Mandelson had actually failed his high-level vetting until this Tuesday. But as we’ve seen, that’s again a blatant falsehood.

As well as our report, between September 2024 and March of this year, Downing Street was approached by at least three other national newspaper journalists with stories related to Mandelson’s vetting. On each occasion Starmer’s aides flat-out denied there had been any issue.

So again, who was lying, and why? Downing Street have frantically begun pointing to comments by Ciaran Martin, former boss of the National Security Centre, and a friend of Starmer’s chosen fall guy, Foreign Office permanent Secretary Olly Robbins. 

Martin claimed Robbins had been precluded by regulations from informing Ministers of the process around Mandelson’s vetting. But their new spin simply highlights new questions.

Starmer’s aides spent the day briefing journalists that the PM had ‘repeatedly’ attempted to find out from Robbins – who managed the vetting process – what the true status of Mandelson’s security clearance had been. And that Robbins, incredibly, had refused to tell them.

So on what basis did No 10 issue categorical denials to journalists that there was any issue with the vetting?

Then there is the issue of Robbins’s late-night sacking after No 10 claimed he had failed to inform them of the fact Mandelson had been initially vetoed by the security services. If, as Robbins’s friends and No 10 are now claiming, he was indeed precluded by the regulations from revealing the truth, why was he sacked? Surely he was simply following the rules?

Strip away the spin and the deflection, and these are the facts. Downing Street were told eight months ago there had been issues with Peter Mandelson’s vetting. Yet they categorically denied it.

What’s more, Keir Starmer continued to repeat those denials. To Parliament. To the Press. And, most importantly, to the British people.

And those denials were completely and utterly false. So when Sir Keir finally confronts the House of Commons on Monday to deliver a statement on this whole tawdry affair he has a choice.

He can admit to being a knave. Or he can admit to being a fool. But what he cannot do, is maintain the pretence he is fit to occupy the office of Prime Minister.