Starmer staves off mutiny over Mandelson mess… but for how long? - The Latest

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:11He knew, we knew, that Peter Manson had continued his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, even post the charges. For Morgan McSweeney to put on a shocked face, clutch his pearls, didn't quite ring true. When I saw the pictures, when I saw the Bloomberg questions in September 2025, I have to say it was like a knife through my soul. The good news is that people are not bringing up Peter Mandelson on the doorstep. The bad news is they are constantly bringing up Keir Starmer and how much they hate him. It doesn't really matter whether the Peter Mandelson story cuts through to the public or not. They have already made their mind up.

0:46Keir Starmer's former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, says appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador was a serious error of judgment, as MPs debate whether the Prime Minister should face a parliamentary probe. So how much peril is Starmer in? From The Guardian's Today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough. Well, with me is Kieran Stacey, our policy editor and host of Politics Weekly. Thanks for coming on the show, Kieran. It's great to see you. Thanks for having me. So it's a bit of a bumper day in Westminster, isn't it? We've had two very key testimonials before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which we'll talk about in a bit.

1:24But I want to first of all start with this vote that's happening in the Commons that's been brought forward as a Tory motion, basically asking for an inquiry into Keir Starmer's decision to appoint Mandelson, Peter Mandelson, as US ambassador, and whether he misled MPs in the statements that he's delivered to the Commons since then. How high stakes is this all feeling for the Prime Minister today? Well, the vote this afternoon, I think, is feeling like it's actually relatively lower stakes than some of the testimony that you were mentioning earlier, Lucy. The vote itself could be really significant if there was any sense that there was going to be a big Labour rebellion on it.

2:02So if the Tories were able to partner up with enough Labour MPs, they could force an inquiry by a committee known as the Privileges Committee into whether the Prime Minister misled the House of Commons. That's the same committee, by the way, that found that Boris Johnson repeatedly and deliberately misled the House of Commons, and that finding led to his resigning as an MP. But I think at the moment, there's just not enough Labour support for that Tory motion to make this feel like one of those very dramatic days where the Prime Minister's survival is at stake. Instead, we're going to probably end up paying more attention to what his former chief of staff and a former head civil servant at the Foreign Office have said this morning to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

2:43Yeah. Although there have been a number of kind of Labour grandees, David Blunkett, Alan Johnson, Gordon Brown brought in to kind of boost morale and urge restraint ahead of this afternoon's vote. And as per Guardian reporting from your colleagues in the lobby, there is a growing sense of rival factions who are preparing how to oust Starmer from power, what that might look like and the timings. Can you tell me more about what we've learned? Yeah, I mean, we're just hearing so many different things every day from various different factions of the Labour Party. One of the really interesting things for me is that different factions seem to be uniting in a way that we actually hadn't seen before.

3:24So the right and the left now seem to be working together. And we're told that there are two or three statements during the rounds that might be signed and might be presented to the prime minister after the local elections. One would call for him to bring back Andy Burnham as an MP. Another would call for him to set out a timetable for his departure as prime minister. Both would kind of do fairly similar things. They put a timeline on his premiership. But one of the most interesting things for me is that it's not just one group of disaffected MPs who's doing this. It is different groups from different parts of the party all working together.

3:59And that's probably what's more dangerous than ever for the Prime Minister. So as you say, it's a number of rival factions, but who nonetheless share the view that it's a question of when, not if. So let's look at this testimony that's been given to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee this morning. One from a former very senior foreign office official, the predecessor to Sir Oliver Robbins, who we heard from last week. But perhaps more of a household name is Morgan McSweeney, who was, of course, Keir Starmer's former chief of staff, who was central to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and who gave a very long testimony.

4:37It's perhaps one of the very few, perhaps the only times that we've heard from him at this length. Yeah, I think so. We were trying to figure this out earlier this week. I think this is the only time I've heard him interviewed in front of a select committee, which for someone who's been at the top of politics for as long as Morgan McSweeney has, is actually quite unusual. And so what were the key takeaways in your view? Well, I think Philip Barton kind of did what we expected him to do. He said a couple of interesting things. He said, yes, there was an atmosphere of pressure around the appointment of Peter Mandelson.

5:06I knew it wanted to be done. I knew it wanted to be sped through the system. He said that he didn't remember Morgan McSweeney swearing at him, which was one of the accusations that had been levelled at Keir Starmer's former Chief of Staff. He also said, quite interestingly, he thought it was normal process to do security vetting before an appointment was made or an appointment was announced, which is not the way around that this government chose to do things with Peter Mandelson. Yes. I think Morgan McSweeney was interesting in different ways. He certainly testified for longer for a start. But he was also more crucial to the whole decision making process.

5:42He said, first of all, that he'd been lied to by Peter Mandelson, which is something that a lot of people have said along the way. He said a couple of things that didn't quite stack up. He said that he'd been reassured in advance by Peter Mandelson that his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was only a passing acquaintance. That doesn't quite stack up because we knew from reporting already by the time he was appointed that Peter Mandelson had stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's flat in New York. And this was even after Jeffrey Epstein was put in jail for child sex offences. And that did get picked up on by the committee.

6:15He said that there was an atmosphere of pressure, but that's just normal in politics. We didn't want anybody to bypass any vetting procedures. And he said if he'd have known that, you know, the full extent of Peter Mandelson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, he wouldn't have made that appointment. We also had it confirmed, by the way, one little tidbit for Westminster Watchers. We had it confirmed that the second person in line for that job was George Osborne, the conservative former chancellor. We did. We did. This had been reported. In fact, there was a hilarious shortlist of candidates, three candidates for that job, one of which was Peter Madison, one of which was George Osborne, the third of which was the TV star Bear Grylls.

6:55So apparently that three got whittled down to two. Wow. And Peter Madison was eventually appointed. Yeah, I've got to say there was a lot of a scream face emoji shared in the latest WhatsApp chat at that mention of George Osborne. As you say, something that had been reported, but was finally put on the record today. But like you say, kind of Morgan McSweeney's key point was that he felt that he was deceived by Mandelson, that, you know, there was some concerns and there were concerns raised in meetings in Number 10 about what that relationship was. but the decision was taken to press ahead because it was felt he was the right political choice at that time.

7:31Morgan McSweeney interestingly said that had Kamala Harris won that election, they would have made a different choice. But then he said in September 2025, when he saw the first tranche of the Epstein files, saw the photos, saw the extent of their relationship, of their financial relationship, he described it as a knife to the soul in quite poetic language. how plausible is that like you say because there was also talks of you know a lunch a dinner in 2024 this sense of them having a fairly intimate relationship yeah I mean what an interesting phrase that was a knife to the soul very poetic as you say but quite out of character I mean Margaret McSweeney is a fairly dry fairly softly spoken guy who doesn't tend to to wax lyrical and I think we mainly saw that in front of the committee today and then suddenly he came up with this phrase that felt a little bit pre-scripted.

8:25I hope that's not unfair. I mean, I think, as I said, you know, the thing that really doesn't ring true about that is the fact that he knew, we knew, that Peter Maddison had continued his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein even post the charges. And so, you know, for Morgan McSweeney to, you know, put on a shocked face and clutch his pearls, having found out that they really were, Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Maddison were really close friends didn't quite ring true. But I think it is true to say that both Morgan McSweeney and the Prime Minister were surprised. I think we were all surprised at the closeness of that, for the full extent to that relationship.

9:04Yeah. So Parliament is about to take a break ahead of these very crucial local May elections on May the 7th. I'm just wondering, is this Mandelson affair something that's having real cut through for MPs, for councillors, for mayoral candidates as they're going around constituencies knocking on doorsteps. Is it one of these things that matters to people interested in politics or does it have cut through because it's this sort of sleaze aspect that people are so tired of in politics? You know, it actually doesn't seem to be cutting through. I mean, I've talked to quite a few MPs now who say that it's not being brought up on the doorstep with them.

9:43In fact, one said the good news is that people are not bringing up Peter Mandelson on the doorstep. The bad news is they are constantly bringing up Keir Starmer and how much they hate him. So part of the problem here is it doesn't really matter whether the Peter Mandelson story cuts through to the public or not. They have already made their mind up over Keir Starmer. And one of the reasons that I think Labour MPs are kind of going through this, you know, another period of questioning the prime minister's future is not just because this Peter Mandelson story is broken, but because we're in this pre-local election period where they're spending a lot of time on doorsteps talking to constituents and they're all getting the same message back.

10:19We don't like the Prime Minister. And I think, you know, even if Peter Mandelson was not a story in Westminster right now, we'd still be hearing of Labour MPs thinking about whether to try and oust Keir Sama purely because they're talking to constituents right now and they have a very clear message about him. Yeah, that message seems loud and clear. Kieran, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Kieran Stacey, The Guardian's policy editor. You can keep up with his reporting and that of our lobby team over at theguardian.com. And I recommend today's episode of Science Weekly, where Madeleine Finlay will be looking at food intolerances and how to know if you actually have one.

10:59Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The Latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. It was produced by Bryony Moore. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

11:18This is The Guardian.