Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer removed Lord Peter Mandelson from the post of Britain’s ambassador to the United States on Wednesday, less than a day after publicly defending the appointment, after new emails surfaced showing the peer defending convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Downing Street said the decision followed the emergence of messages uncovered in a Bloomberg investigation that it characterised as "reprehensible" and said those messages were not available to vetting authorities because they came from a long-disused account. Labour officials and ministers told reporters the episode had prompted a revolt inside the parliamentary party, and figures across Westminster demanded the release of all documents related to Mandelson’s appointment and vetting.
The resignation of Lord Mandelson, a former Labour cabinet minister who had been appointed in December to the high-profile Washington post, came after crisis talks at No. 10 between the prime minister and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. Officials said the pair concluded Mandelson had to go following pressure from within the governing party and wider political fallout.
Whitehall sources told the Daily Mail that senior figures in the Foreign Office had advised against the appointment. Downing Street denied reports that Starmer had overruled advice from the security services, saying the new emails had materially changed the picture because they showed Mandelson urging Epstein to "fight for early release" and saying on the eve of Epstein’s 2008 imprisonment, "Your friends stay with you and love you."
Lord Mandelson issued a letter to staff in which he described the role as "the privilege of my life" and said he was "utterly awful about my association with Epstein 20 years ago and the plight of his victims." Downing Street acknowledged the prime minister had known that Mandelson had continued a friendship with Epstein after Epstein was jailed in 2008, but said the newly surfaced messages were a decisive factor.
The timing intensified scrutiny. Mandelson’s departure follows the resignation last week of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and comes days before a state visit to the United Kingdom by former U.S. President Donald Trump. Government sources said Mr. Trump, who had developed a working rapport with Mandelson in Washington, was not informed of the removal until after it took effect.
Conservative critics accused Starmer of dithering and called for a full inquiry. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said there were "serious questions over what Starmer knew and when," and former Conservative foreign secretary Sir James Cleverly said officials would likely have warned ministers that Mandelson’s appointment carried "significant reputational risk." Alex Burghart, another Conservative frontbencher, demanded the publication of vetting materials and communications surrounding the decision.
Within Labour, ministers declined to defend the ambassador after Starmer’s initial public backing. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he was "completely disgusted" and that Mandelson’s position was a matter for the prime minister. A Labour MP described the handling of the episode as a "shambles," saying the party had long been aware of the risks the appointment posed.
Downing Street attributed the advocacy for Mandelson’s appointment to the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, whom some colleagues have described as a proponent of the peer. Labour sources said McSweeney had pushed the appointment despite reservations from other senior figures.
Mandelson served twice in the cabinet and had a long public career in British politics before his diplomatic posting. His friendship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in 2019, has been cited as the central concern in recent days. The new emails that surfaced this week prompted renewed questions about what material was available during vetting and whether all relevant documents had been disclosed to those advising ministers.
Downing Street said it would not comment further while internal reviews continued, and opposition parties continued to press for transparency. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The episode leaves unresolved questions about the government’s appointment processes and the handling of reputational risk in sensitive diplomatic roles, and it adds to political turbulence in Whitehall as the administration prepares for high-profile international events in the coming days and weeks.