Starmer Faces Parliament Over Mandelson Scandal

0:00On April 20, Sir Kear Starmer is bracing for another rough day in Parliament over the scandal with Lord Peter Mandelson's appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Washington, D.C. Mandelson held the job for nine months but failed security vetting checks due to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and business links to Russia and China. Starmer claims he was kept in the dark and sacked the top foreign office civil servant, Sir Ali Robbins, for it. Earlier this week, Starmer told MPs he challenged Robbins directly and didn't buy his excuses for ignoring the vetting advice. He insists there was no pressure from No. 10 to push the appointment through and he never would have picked Mandelson if he'd known about the red flags. And MPs are piling on with reactions, demanding full transparency on how a political ally like Mandelson skipped over career diplomats for this key role. The fallout has sparked emergency debates and questions about national security, especially since vetting flagged him as high concern. Now Sir Ali Robbins is set to testify before the Foreign Affairs Committee, saying the

1:02government pressured him to clear Mandelson anyway. He'll reveal he never even saw the formal, no-go recommendation from UK security vetting, which he calls just advisory. Meanwhile, the Intelligence and Security Committee has the vetting docs and Starmer's team is digging into any risks for Mandelson's time on the job. With more scrutiny hitting Parliament today, this story is far from over.