UK prime minister Keir Starmer was in Belfast and then Cork on Thursday, far from the madding crowd of Westminster political reporters.
They wanted to grill him about the release of UK government files on Wednesday afternoon that showed he ignored repeated advice not to appoint Peter Mandelson as his country’s ambassador to Washington. It called his judgment into question.
Starmer had avoided the Westminster press ever since, much to the chagrin of seasoned British political lobby reporters. Even the release of the Mandelson files on Wednesday afternoon, after prime minister’s questions had already finished, seemed timed, they said, to avoid him getting direct scrutiny in the House of Commons.
On Thursday, Starmer seemed like a leader on the run.
It was left to his office in Downing Street to deny that the UK prime minister was avoiding scrutiny about his judgment in one of the biggest scandals to have rocked British politics in decades. Starmer was too busy talking about heating oil in Belfast.
The advice in the Mandelson files specifically mentioned his links to US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as a risk with his appointment. The documents also show that Karen Pierce, then the UK’s outgoing ambassador in Washington, explicitly warned Starmer’s team that the Epstein issues would be huge in the US and to watch out.
[ Starmer warned of ‘reputational risk’ over Mandelson’s relationship with EpsteinOpens in new window ]
Jonathan Powell, his national security adviser, warned him. Even the top civil servant in the UK’s foreign office tried to warn his prime minister to be careful.
Yet Starmer, it seems, chose to ignore them all.
At a Westminster lobby briefing on Thursday, a Downing Street spokesman tried gamely to mollify the furious British press pack.
[ Anglo-Irish relations in ‘better place’ after reset, Starmer saysOpens in new window ]
They asked if Starmer’s written responses to the warnings he received had been redacted from the files released: it looked as if they had. The spokesman refused to directly answer the question and said only that Starmer had “read the advice”.
That was obvious. But what was his response to what he read?
The documents made it clear that Starmer, rather than proceeding with caution, had actually sped up Mandelson’s appointment in December, quickening the vetting and due-diligence process.
The Mandelson files contained plenty of words from the people around Starmer. But where were the prime minister’s words in all of this? Why were none of his messages about Mandelson revealed? The spokesman stonewalled this one, too.
Why did Starmer believe Mandelson over his most senior security official, Powell? The spokesman did his thing again.
Starmer will remain in Cork on Friday for a UK-Ireland summit. Back in London, the Westminster press pack eagerly await his return. There are, after all, many questions left unanswered.