Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves 10 Downing Street in London on April 20, 2026. ALASTAIR GRANT / AP
Embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday, April 20, that he had been wrong to appoint Labour politician Peter Mandelson as UK envoy to Washington, seeking to quell anger over a scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's long-time associate. Starmer, already widely unpopular with the public and many Labour MPs, is struggling to manage a controversy that has threatened to bring down his leadership.
Addressing Parliament about the deepening political row, Starmer said: "At the heart of this, there is also a judgment I made that was wrong. I should not have appointed Peter Mandelson."
He faced fresh calls to quit last week after it was revealed that Mandelson − whose friendship with the late convicted US sex offender was long known − had become Britain's envoy to Washington last year despite failing security checks. Starmer has insisted that he and other ministers were not told until last week that Mandelson had failed the independent vetting process.
"It beggars belief that throughout the whole timeline of events, officials in the Foreign Office saw fit to withhold this information from the most senior ministers in our system, in government," he told MPs. "If I had known before he took up his post that [the] recommendation was that developed vetting clearance should be denied, I would not have gone ahead with the appointment."
