LONDON – Mr Keir Starmer finished a day of parliamentary scrutiny into the Peter Mandelson saga in a better place than he started it, although the Prime Minister’s job may only be safe until a set of high-stakes local elections next week.
The embattled Mr Starmer enjoyed a rare victory on the evening of April 28 when he won a House of Commons vote on whether he should face an ethics probe over Mr Mandelson’s appointment by 335 to 223, a solid majority.
Mr Starmer has faced an intense period of scrutiny since the Guardian reported two weeks ago that Mr Mandelson had been granted clearance to sensitive material despite the objections of security officials.
The envoy was sacked in September 2025 after Bloomberg revealed the true extent of his ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and the premier has struggled to shake off the scandal since.
The motion, sought by opposition Conservatives who accused him of misleading Parliament over his handling of the row, was dismissed by the premier as a “political stunt”.
If Mr Starmer had lost, it would have been proof of his waning authority and the imminence of his downfall.
Instead, Labour Members of Parliament, who remain unsure about his future, ultimately decided to keep their problems in-house rather than give Tory leader Kemi Badenoch the win.
In the end only 15 Labour MPs voted with the Conservatives, with a few dozen others not voting.
After the vote, Mr Starmer’s spokesman told reporters the government would continue to prioritise policies that matter to voters like cutting energy bills and reducing hospital waiting lists, accusing the Tories of playing political games a week before the local elections on May 7.
In response, Ms Badenoch pointed to Mr Starmer whipping his MPs to block a probe, calling them “complicit” in a “cover up” and arguing the government was “coming apart at the seams”.
Hours before the Commons vote, testimony a few corridors away in a parliamentary committee room had threatened more painful developments to destabilise the government.
To Downing Street’s relief, the sessions with two former senior officials – the top ex-foreign office civil servant Philip Barton and Mr Starmer’s ousted chief of staff Morgan McSweeney – ended without any fresh revelation to deal a killer blow to the Prime Minister’s chances of survival.
Mr Barton’s evidence was uncomfortable for Mr Starmer, making clear that the responsibility for the decision to make a controversial political appointment to such a sensitive high-profile role lay with the premier.
He also backed up testimony by his successor Olly Robbins last week that the Starmer’s office had pressured the Foreign Office to get Mr Mandelson’s appointment over the line.
However, Mr Barton’s caveat that he was not put under pressure over the substance of the appointment process gave the prime minister something of a reprieve.
Later, Mr McSweeney – a figure who attracts ire from the Labour left over his role in defeating that faction of the party on Mr Starmer’s rise to power – took responsibility for advising his old boss in favour of Mr Mandelson’s appointment, saying he had got that badly wrong.
The Bloomberg revelations about the envoy “drove a knife through my soul”, he told the committee, though he also denied pressuring officials to rubber-stamp the appointment.
The next flashpoint for Mr Starmer’s future should be the aftermath of the local elections next week.
Scores of local councils and control of the Welsh and Scottish regional parliaments are at stake and Labour is expected to take steep losses that will spark fresh questions about his premiership.
Bloomberg reported at the weekend that Mr Starmer’s rivals for the top job – who include former deputy premier Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting – think a “perfect storm” of events is needed to bring him down, including what they described as an “emotional” reaction to the local election results triggering a cabinet revolt.
That means the days after the May 7 vote will be key as the results trickle out through that weekend and Labour politicians weigh whether now is the time to change their leader.
Mr Starmer will instead seek to move past the Mandelson scandal with a renewed focus on security, in terms of Britain’s defense, economy and energy supply.
He is planning a series of speeches and policy interventions on those topics in the coming weeks.
It will be up to Labour MPs watching those elections results come in whether Mr Starmer is still in place to make them. BLOOMBERG