By JASON GROVES, POLITICAL EDITOR Published: 00:00 BST, 18 September 2025 | Updated: 07:44 BST, 18 September 2025
Keir Starmer is set to face further embarrassment about his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US today when he holds a joint press conference with Donald Trump.Downing Street is braced for a barrage of questions about what he knew about Lord Mandelson's relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein when he stands alongside the President at the event at Chequers this afternoon.The subject has been made even more sensitive by Mr Trump's travails over his own relationship with Epstein.One Whitehall source said: 'The PM does not want to talk about Mandelson at all, let alone Epstein, and everyone is acutely aware that Trump doesn't want to talk about Epstein either. 'But there are obviously going to be questions and trying to answer them in a way that does not aggravate Trump is a nightmare prospect. The whole thing looks very fraught.'The PM has faced serious questions about his judgment after he publicly backed Lord Mandelson to stay on, despite his well-known friendship with Epstein, and then sacked him the following day.Sir Keir tried to get the issue out of the way in a television interview on Monday in which he appeared to blame his staff for failing to brief him properly on the extent of Lord Mandelson's relationship with Epstein, who the former ambassador once described as his 'best pal'.But he failed to explain why he had not sought more information after Lord Mandelson publicly warned there were more 'very embarrassing' details to emerge. And he faced renewed questions when he admitted knowing of the pair's friendship when he appointed him last December. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer with former British Ambassador to the US Lord Peter Mandelson, who has since been sacked from his position Downing Street is braced for a barrage of questions about what he knew about Lord Mandelson's relationship with Epstein when he stands with US President Donald Trump (pictured with the disgraced financier in 1997) this afternoonFresh concerns were raised this week after Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper revealed the PM announced Mandelson's appointment before he had been vetted by the security services. Pointing the finger of blame at No 10, Ms Cooper told MPs the Foreign Office was not asked if the disgraced peer was a fit and proper person to serve as ambassador.In a further damaging intervention, Labour peer Lord Glasman said he was told by No 10 to 'shut up' after he warned against appointing Mandelson.The Daily Mail revealed last week that the PM's chief of staff Morgan McSweeney asked Lord Glasman to write a report on the incoming Republican administration after he became the only Labour figure invited to President Trump's inauguration in January.Lord Glasman said Mandelson's links with Epstein had been raised with him repeatedly in the US and described him as 'the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong place'. But Mr McSweeney, who viewed Mandelson as a mentor, continued to push for the appointment.Lord Glasman told Sky News that Republicans in Washington 'would come up to me with photos of Peter Mandelson blowing out birthday candles with Jeffrey Epstein and going clothes shopping with him'.He added: 'I reported back to No 10 that I would really think again about this appointment because [trouble] was bound to happen. This was not out of a clear blue sky, was it? Everybody knew.'He went on: 'I heard nothing (from No 10)… I did say when I got back that I would think again about this, publicly. Then I did get a discreet suggestion to just shut up about it and that is what I did.'Mr Trump has been fending off questions for months about his own relationship with Epstein. Unlike Mandelson, he is thought to have broken off relations long before he was jailed for sex offences.But critics have continued to pursue him over the issue, with demonstrators even beaming a picture of Mr Trump with Epstein on to the walls of Windsor Castle to mark his arrival in the UK on Tuesday evening.
