Kendall says Starmer would have withdrawn Mandelson as US ambassador appointment if he knew he failed security vetting
Keir Starmer would have withdrawn Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US if he had known he had not passed security vetting, Liz Kendall said, even if it was close to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Kendall told Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One that Starmer would have rescinded the job offer if he had been told – regardless of the timing ahead of Trump taking up the presidency.
She said: “If the prime minister had known that UK security vetting had not cleared him, the appointment would have been withdrawn.
“It would’t have mattered how close that was to the president’s inauguration or any of that, I believe that because there is no way that the prime minister would have continued with it, had he known the facts that he now knows.”
Key events
Our Scotland correspondent Libby Brooks has written this piece on how Scottish voters are being attracted to Reform UK, and how it reflects attitudes to immigration.
It’s Monday evening in Aberdeen, and George Preston is wearing his union flag suit to the Reform UK rally. He joined the party in 2024 as it gained ground in the north-east of Scotland with its first councillor defections from the Scottish Conservatives.
Now Preston is out leafleting for the party that polls suggest is vying with Scottish Labour to become the official opposition to the Scottish National party in the Holyrood elections on 7 May.
“Very, very few have said: ‘Have this back,’” he says. “Far more are supportive. I think Reform have found a following that was already here.”
His last point covers local politics and the national mood. The north-east of Scotland is a traditional Tory/SNP battleground, where support for Brexit was higher than anywhere else in the country and voter preoccupations align over fishing, farming, and oil and gas.
The collapse in Scottish Conservative support has left a significant gap that Reform has rapidly filled.
Read more here:
Conservative shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said he thought Keir Starmer and his team were “in the wrong” more than Sir Olly Robbins.
Burghart told BBC One he was still waiting to hear all of the facts, but said: “I think there’s one person responsible for everything that’s happened and that’s the prime minister.
“It was the prime minister’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson to the most sensitive diplomatic posting we have, and we now know that he appointed someone who was a security risk to do that very sensitive job, and ultimately responsibility has to lie with him.”
He added: “What I’m certain of is that the person who is responsible for what has happened has not taken responsibility for it, and it’s about time that he did.”
The Tory frontbencher continued: “We know that the prime minister was in possession of enough facts when he made the appointment, that he should not have made it, and he will not take responsibility for it.
“Everybody else is being thrown under the bus. He’s lost his chief of staff, he’s lost his head of comms, he’s lost the cabinet secretary, he’s now lost the head of the Foreign Office, why will the prime minister not take responsibility?”
Robert Jenrick has also defended his colleague, Reform’s business and energy spokesperson Richard Tice over reports he failed to pay almost £100,000 in corporation tax to the benefit of his investment company, which in turn made donations to Reform UK.
Jenrick told the BBC that he believed Tice had followed advice, and repeated Tice’s claim he may have paid too much in tax.
He said: “Richard is a very successful businessman, he has had a 40-year business career, he’s created thousands of jobs, he’s paid millions of pounds in tax.”
He continued: “Richard has taken advice, he believes he has paid the tax he should have paid, in fact he believes he may have overpaid tax because he paid it through his personal taxation rather than through the company.
“If it transpires that he’s underpaid tax, of course he’ll settle it. But that is not his position, he thinks he has paid the right tax, and that’s absolutely right.”
Robert Jenrick said Keir Starmer is “totally unfit” to run the country and has “terrible judgement”.
Reform UK’s finance spokesperson, who defected to the party from the Conservatives earlier this year, said he didn’t know whether Starmer had lied over the Mandelson affair.
However he repeatedly refused to back up his party’s leader Nigel Farage who said Keir Starmer had lied over Mandelson’s appointment.
Jenrick said: “I don’t know whether Keir Starmer is a liar or just grossly incompetent. What I do know is that he is totally unfit to lead this country, to tackle the big challenges that it’s facing.”
He said the focus on Mandelson’s appointment and vetting was a distraction from other issues.
He said: “His judgement is terrible, and he’s so distracted from what really matters to people out in the country.”
He continued: “I don’t know if he’s a liar or not. What I’m saying is it doesn’t actually matter, I don’t want the prime minister to be a liar, but I don’t want Keir Starmer to be our prime minister because what really matters to the public, is someone leading this country who is focused on the issues facing the people of the country.”
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has indicated Keir Starmer’s mishandling of the economy and the Peter Mandelson saga risks leading Nigel Farage to become prime minister.
Davey told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that Starmer should “move aside” if he wants the Labour party to succeed.
He said: “The thing that I think Labour MPs should think about quite carefully now is their Government has been a bit of a failure, frankly, on the economy, on so much, and it’s in chaos, in the way that Conservatives were in chaos, in perpetual crisis, and I don’t think they can get out of that unless Keir Starmer moves aside.
“And if they don’t, there’s a real danger they’re handing the keys to Number 10 to Nigel Farage, who can benefit from this chaos.
“So I would really say to Labour MPs, who in many ways, have the future of the prime minister in their hands, that they really now have to accept, the prime minister is a big part of their own problem and in the context of the threat that Nigel Farage poses to our democracy and to our country with his divisive Trump-like politics, I think the Labour party has to realise they have to move on.”
Away from the Mandelson saga, Liz Kendall was speaking about her day job as science and technology secretary and indicated the government may get social media firms to change addictive features on apps.
Kendall told Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC of her horror of finding out her average daily mobile phone use is just over five hours, which is probably something we can all relate to.
She was asked whether the government was considering restrictions on features like infinite scrolling, where endless content will come up on apps which can contribute to its addictive nature.
She also said the effectiveness of age limits needed to be looked at, and whether stricter “highly-effective age verification measures” would be needed to access social media.
She said: “This is precisely what the consultation has been looking at. Not just the issue of should we raise the limit of the age, so you can’t have social media if you’re under 16.
“But crucially, and I think this is actually much broader than what’s happened in Australia or other countries, is to look at the root cause of parents’ concerns, which is the addictive nature, the doomscrolling, whether there should be curfews overnight, and whether there should be restrictions or age-limits on all of those fundamental features.”
She added: “The issue is not, let’s be clear, not if we’re going to act, but how.”
Kendall says Starmer would have withdrawn Mandelson as US ambassador appointment if he knew he failed security vetting
Keir Starmer would have withdrawn Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US if he had known he had not passed security vetting, Liz Kendall said, even if it was close to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Kendall told Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One that Starmer would have rescinded the job offer if he had been told – regardless of the timing ahead of Trump taking up the presidency.
She said: “If the prime minister had known that UK security vetting had not cleared him, the appointment would have been withdrawn.
“It would’t have mattered how close that was to the president’s inauguration or any of that, I believe that because there is no way that the prime minister would have continued with it, had he known the facts that he now knows.”
Liz Kendall said Keir Starmer should not lose his job over Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador because he has “made the right calls” on the big issues facing the country.
The science and technology secretary was asked by Trevor Phillips on Sky if Starmer’s poor judgment in appointing Mandelson was the root of the issue.
She replied: “I don’t agree with that. I think the failure of judgment here was the failure to tell the prime minister that Peter Mandelson, who actually is responsible for all of this … the person that I am angry at is Peter Mandelson.”
Kendall went on to say Starmer had “absolutely not” ignored Jeffrey Epstein’s victims by making the appointment, and said she supported him in the decisions he had made over many big issues.
She said: “The prime minister, on the big calls facing this country, has made the right calls.”
She added: “Because on the fundamental judgments facing this country, whether it’s on international issues, rebuilding our relationship with the EU, saying ‘we won’t get involved in the war’, investing in our defence, or whether it’s on domestic issues, lifting children out of poverty, tackling violence against women and girls, all of the big fundamental issues facing this country, the prime minister has made the right call.”
Liz Kendall has repeated David Lammy’s claim the prime minister would have stopped Peter Mandelson’s appointment if he had known the peer had failed security vetting.
Speaking to Trevor Phillips on Sky News on Sunday, the science and technology said Keir Starmer was a “man of integrity”.
She “completely refuted” that Starmer would do anything to put the UK at risk.
Kendall said: “He is a man of integrity and there is no way he would have proceeded with that, whatever the so-called embarrassment. He would have thought that was wrong, and he would not have done.”
She had earlier said Sir Olly Robbins was “wrong” not to tell Starmer or the foreign secretary, that UK security vetting had advised against the appointment and the issue was a “serious mistake”.
“I think that was wrong at the start, and then subsequently wrong because as you well know Trevor, the prime minister and ministers made a series of statements in parliament about this about it. I think that was a failure, and that’s why he lost the confidence of the prime minister and foreign secretary,” Kendall said.
Cabinet minister to speak to broadcasters
Keir Starmer faces yet another difficult day as prime minister as questions about his leadership swirl caused by the Peter Mandelson saga this morning, although his cabinet colleagues are rallying around him.
Starmer’s science and technology secretary, Liz Kendall, will speak to the BBC this morning as the fallout from Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US continues.
The deputy prime minister David Lammy said on Saturday that Starmer would have stopped Mandelson from taking up the role if he had known he had failed security vetting. He is among numerous ministers who have spoken out in support of the prime minister since the news on Thursday that Mandelson had not passed the security checks process.
Last night the Sunday Times reported the reason Mandelson failed the vetting was because the biggest client of his lobbying firm, Global Counsel, was a firm linked to the Chinese military.
Starmer has faced renewed calls to resign from opponents since the latest development was reported, and the pressure is expected to continue with Reform UK’s finance spokesperson Robert Jenrick, and Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart are due to speak to the BBC this morning.
We’ll bring you the latest lines here.
