Helen Pitt

Today in Focus, can Starmer survive the Maddelson scandal?

Jonathan Freeland, welcome back to Today in Focus.

So you are, of course, a columnist at The Guardian and the host of our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America, and you are, for your sins, a long-time Peter Mandelson watcher on both sides of the Atlantic.

And we're recording with you just after Keir Starmer's address to Parliament.

How do you think he came across?

And we're going to come on to talk about the questions that he did answer and those that remain hanging.

But before we go there, let's do a quick recap for those at the back, starting with what's been called the original sin of this scandal.

Starmer appointing Peter Manelson to be the UK ambassador to the US back in December 2024.

This is a guy, of course, who was nicknamed the Prince of Darkness, a man who Donald Trump called Sneaky Pete.

Why on earth did Starmer want such a controversial figure

to have such a plum job?

And yet, he only managed seven months in the job, didn't he, before Starmer sacked him over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which he continued after Epstein's conviction for sexual offences.

And let's fast forward to last week and The Guardian's front page scoop, which said that Mandelson had failed developed vetting clearance in late January 2025, only for that advice to be overruled by the Foreign Office so that he could take up the post.

Are we any clearer now why he failed that vetting?

There are so many skeletons in his closet.

Which ones do you think did for him in terms of the security vetting?

But the truth is, we still have not had a definitive explanation, have we, from Keir Starmer on why he failed the security vetting.

So let's talk a bit more about what Starmer did clear up in Parliament on Monday.

What do you think we learned about why he was left in the dark about Mandelson failing the vetting?

So Stormer's clearly pointing the finger at the Foreign Office or throwing them under a bus, as Kemi Badenoch put it.