The UK government released nearly 150 pages of documents Wednesday that laid out how it vetted Peter Mandelson before Prime Minister Keir Starmer chose him as Britain’s ambassador to the United States, drawing new attention to the decision and Starmer’s political judgment.
The documents, a subset of what the government said is a much larger set of material to come, show that officials flagged “reputational risk” tied to Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender for whom Starmer had appointed an associate as the top U.S. envoy. Starmer later sacked Mandelson in September after documents showed Mandelson maintained contact with Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for sexual offenses involving a minor.
In comments reported Thursday, Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said he doubted the release timetable would change the political impact of what had already been provided. “It’s hard to believe that later releases are going to persuade anybody to see the PM’s decision in a better light,” Bale said. He added that while the scandal might have hastened Starmer’s exit if the country were not focused on “rather more important Middle Eastern matters,” the fallout would still weigh on the prime minister.
The release also drew on a due-diligence checklist used during Mandelson’s vetting, which “confirmed what was already known” to critics, according to the account released by the government through AP. The checklist highlighted red flags Starmer was advised to consider, including how Mandelson’s ties could expose the government and the prime minister to risk.
Cabinet Secretary Simon Case’s advice appeared in the documents as well, including a warning that selecting a political appointment could increase exposure compared with appointing a career diplomat. “If anything goes wrong, you could be more exposed as the individual is more connected to you personally,” Case advised, according to the document described in the report.
Separate parts of the vetting material also described Mandelson’s earlier record, including reputational issues linked to his work in a previous Labour government, when he twice had to resign over financial matters, and his later role at Global Counsel, a lobbying firm he co-founded. The documents also included a note that Starmer had been warned a political appointment would be riskier than a veteran diplomatic appointment, which is more common in Britain.
Starmer has said he regrets the appointment and that Mandelson misled him about the depth and extent of his friendship with Epstein. The prime minister said Thursday, “It was me that made a mistake, and it’s me that makes the apology to the victims of Epstein, and I do that,” in a statement carried in the documents’ coverage. The report also said police investigating Mandelson requested that correspondence between Starmer and Mandelson be withheld, limiting what has so far been available to support Starmer’s claim that he was misled.
Mandelson has faced additional legal scrutiny, according to the report. He was briefly arrested last month on allegations he passed sensitive government information to Epstein a decade and a half ago, and he has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged. The report said he does not face allegations of sexual misconduct.
Defense lawyer Marcus Johnstone, who is not connected to Mandelson, said the documents released so far represented only a fraction of the overall picture, describing the exchange between government and investigators as potentially intensive. Johnstone said civil servants, government lawyers and the police had probably fought a “small war” behind closed doors before deciding what to release, and he said the fight would continue as more batches of thousands of pages are published. “We need to remember that the files we are seeing today are only the thin end of the wedge on Mandelson,” Johnstone said. “But we should be under no illusions that what we are currently seeing is anything like the full picture.”
The political pressure on Starmer has intensified in recent months, the report said, after more detail emerged from U.S. Department of Justice files published in January about Mandelson’s ties to Epstein. The report said opponents and some members of Starmer’s governing Labour Party called for his resignation, though it said Starmer survived the immediate danger and that his position remained fragile even though he had not met Epstein and was not implicated in Epstein’s crimes.
On Thursday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused Starmer of lying to Parliament about the appointment and suggested Labour lawmakers reconsider his leadership. “It is very clear that he told lie after lie after lie about the appointment of Peter Mandelson,” Badenoch said, adding that “This is about his judgments.” Starmer’s spokesperson Tom Wells said Thursday that proper rules were followed in scrutinizing Mandelson, but that the vetting process needs improvement.
While the Mandelson documents have refueled questions at home, the report said the crisis has also been overshadowed by the Iran war, with Starmer taking a cautious approach internationally. The report said Starmer responded to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran without joining airstrikes, initially hinted those strikes broke international law, and at first refused to allow American warplanes to use British bases; it said that after Iran struck back with missiles and drones at neighboring countries, Starmer said U.S. planes could use U.K. bases to strike Iran’s missile program but not other targets. The report said Trump complained last week that Starmer was “not Winston Churchill,” but said polls suggested Starmer’s reaction aligned broadly with public sentiment that is wary of deeper involvement.
In Bale’s assessment, the documents’ impact may depend on the broader international situation. Bale said of the Mandelson files that the affair “while certainly doing nothing to help him, seems — rightly or wrongly — pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.”