LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday sacked the country’s top civil servant in the Foreign Office over the Mandelson vetting scandal.On Thursday night, it was announced that Sir Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office permanent under-secretary, would step down from his post after his department did not inform the prime minister that Lord Mandelson had failed security vetting for the role of US ambassador.Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper have lost confidence in Robbins, and he has effectively been sacked.Earlier on Thursday, it was reported that Mandelson had failed the enhanced vetting process for his appointment as US ambassador but was given the post anyway after civil servants dismissed the findings.Downing Street eventually admitted to the sequence of events but maintained that Starmer, not any other government minister, knew what had happened. The office instead blamed the Foreign Office officials for the whole ordeal.According to The Telegraph, Robbins was dismissed from his post after a phone conversation with Starmer on Thursday evening and the prime minister met with Cooper.As per the report, the British premier found out about the situation on Tuesday evening when civil servants charged with finding documents about Lord Mandelson’s appointment uncovered the advice.Mandelson was announced as the UK’s ambassador to the US in December 2024, before in-depth vetting had been carried out, and formally took up the role on 10 February 2025.Just seven months later he was sacked over his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Starmer has faced calls to resign over allegations he misled Parliament and MPs when he claimed “full due process” was followed during the appointment.The Ministerial Code states that ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament are expected to resign.Taking questions from journalists following a press conference on 5 February in Hastings, Starmer also said that there was “security vetting carried out independently by the security services, which is an intensive exercise that gave [Lord Mandelson] clearance for the role, and you have to go through that before you take up the post”.The revelations about Mandelson’s vetting have reignited anger over his appointment and raise further questions over the prime minister’s judgement.Starmer is expected to give a statement on the issue in the House of Commons on Monday.Calling for the prime minister to stand down, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “It is either, he knew that Mandelson failed the security vetting and lied to us in Parliament, on TV repeatedly, or he didn’t know, didn’t ask and said he had passed the security vetting — which means he is hopelessly incompetent.”Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said that if it was true the prime minister was not aware Mandelson had failed security vetting, he should have “told Parliament at the earliest opportunity, not waited for the media to force the truth out”.”His failure to do that alone is surely a breach of the ministerial code,” he added.Reform UK, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru have also called for the prime minister to go, accusing him of lying about Lord Mandelson’s vetting.Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party have written to the independent adviser on ministerial standards, Laurie Magnus, calling for an investigation into whether Starmer deliberately misled the public.Robbins, who has held a number of senior Civil Service roles and served as Theresa May’s chief Brexit negotiator, was appointed permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office in January 2025.Earlier, Labour MP Emily Thornberry, who chairs the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said she felt she had been “misled” by Robbins when he gave evidence to her committee last November about Mandelson’s vetting.”We gave them direct questions and they half answered it, but they missed out the bit that was important… he didn’t pass the vetting,” she told the BBC.Friends of Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s chief adviser who resigned in February over his role in Mandelson’s appointment, told the BBC he had not known about the conclusion of the vetting process.
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