There are many things Keir Starmer has done which raise questions about his suitability for his job – but furnishing Kemi Badenoch with a genuinely plausible argument that he needs to resign must surely sit near the top of the pile. “The Prime Minister appointed Peter Mandelson before the vetting had been completed, vetting Mandelson failed,” she said, in response to damning revelations from The Guardian on Thursday. “Starmer then said full due process was followed. That is misleading Parliament.”
Maybe, maybe not. But Badenoch is not the only one demanding Starmer’s head: Nigel Farage and Ed Davey are in the mix, too. This is of course just the sort of thing that opposition leaders do, but on this occasion it really does not look good. And it is not clear that Downing Street’s line – that the Prime Minister did not mislead parliament, because he wasn’t aware that Mandelson had failed his vetting – meaningfully counts as a defence.
Here’s what we now know thanks to The Guardian’s reporting. The Prime Minister named Mandelson as the new British ambassador to the US in December 2024. The peer failed the developed vetting process – a “highly confidential background check by security officials” – the following month.
So how was it he took up the post in February anyway? Because someone in the Foreign Office – we don’t currently know who – overruled the outcome. “Neither the prime minister, nor any government minister, was aware that Peter Mandelson was granted developed vetting against the advice of UK Security Vetting until earlier this week,” a Downing Street spokesman told the paper.
Perhaps that’s true: it would be a bold statement to give otherwise, and Sir Olly Robbins, the most senior officer in the Foreign Office, was forced out on Thursday night. (It has always struck me as strange that it still counts as a resignation when you’re told you’re doing it.) Even if we take that line on face value, though, it hardly puts the PM in the clear. The most plausible reason a government department would take the near unprecedented step of overruling security vetting is because it was known to be the outcome Number 10 wanted. That, given everything we know, raises questions about Starmer’s judgement. The best one can say is that they were questions that were being asked already.
The more damning corollary of that latest Downing Street statement is that the Prime Minister was simply not doing yet another part of his job. It was obvious to any casual reader of Peter Mandelson’s Wikipedia page that his appointment presented significant potential risks. Given all that, the fact Starmer was nonetheless unaware he had failed his security vetting suggests either he was unaware of those risks; or that he never bothered to ask the outcome of vetting. Either explanation casts enough doubt on his competence as to make a strong case for resignation in and of itself.
Next month’s local and devolved election results seem all but certain to see Labour lose control of the Welsh government for the first time, not to mention councils in its heartlands in London, Manchester and the other cities. Dozens of previously safe seats may now be no such thing. Mere weeks ago it was widely assumed that this would inevitably mean a leadership challenge.
That risk now seems to have receded – partly because of an international crisis and the resulting uplift from record-breaking unpopularity levels to merely historic ones; mostly because everyone knows the Labour party can’t find an alternative candidate to unite around, or indeed its own arse with both hands. As a result, despite the fact he is about to lead his party to one of its worst routs in generations, on Thursday morning, Keir Starmer’s leadership appeared secure.
These revelations may well change that. Starmer may not, as assorted opposition leaders claim, have misled Parliament and thus breached the ministerial code. But if he didn’t, that only serves to highlight the fact he didn’t ask the questions he should, and was outsourcing vast chunks of his job to functionaries.
Not for the first time I am left wondering why he even wants the job at all. Being prime minister is stressful, invasive and will inevitably mean literally millions of people hate your guts. Keir Starmer clearly has no animating mission, no zeal for addressing the nation, no interest in either politics or policy. The only plausible answer for why he wanted to run the country at all was because he thought he could run it more competently than his predecessors had.
Well: the most flattering interpretation of these latest revelations is that he doesn’t want to do that bit either. Perhaps he is done. Perhaps he is not. But given everything we know now about his style of governing – why on earth does he even care?
[Further reading: Starmer sacks top civil servant as Mandelson crisis deepens]
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Subscribe here to commentThe other plausible answer is “to prove he could”. He is chippy about his background and has frequently emphasised that he is a highly competitive person who has to win. He’s said to play dirty football to win on the pitch. Showing the world – could be enough.
I often wondered whether “to prove he could” was the reason that Sunak became Prime Minister. He always looked uncomfortable and seemed not to have understood the job description; he would presumably have been more comfortable and richer staying in finance.
But I can’t rule out the possibility that both of them shared David Cameron’s false belief that they’d simply be good at the job.
Brilliant piece. It is somewhat ironic that Starmer is looking to be undone by a web of intrigue that he has caught himself up in, considering the nature of Johnson’s departure.
I simply just can not believe the excuse they’re putting about he somehow didn’t know that Mandelson had failed the vetting process. If that is indeed true, then that is so breathtakingly outrageous that it raises far more serious concerns that go beyond mere dishonesty.
The answer to why Sir Keir Starmer even wants to be Prime Minister might not lie in political ambition, but in pathology. It appears he may be suffering from an identified condition described by several eminent thinkers and diagnosed by a distinguished neurologist who was once himself a Cabinet minister.
Billy Connolly observed that the mere desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one. The very act of seeking power proves a person is temperamentally unfit to exercise it—pairs perfectly with his other golden rule: “Don’t vote, it just encourages them.”
It is not just Connolly’s logic that captures this paradox. Douglas Adams made a similarly astute observation (and seemingly clairvoyant knowledge of the ultimate ascent of Trump) in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:
“It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
However, for those seeking academic rigour over satire, we can look to a classic ‘poacher-turned-gamekeeper’ scenario. Lord David Owen—former Foreign Secretary and a trained physician—coined the term “Hubris Syndrome” to describe the profound unsuitability of those who hold political office. Drawing on his medical background, he diagnosed this as a genuine condition acquired by politicians, arguing that the pursuit and possession of power leads to:
A messianic manner: A tendency to see the world purely as a stage for self-glorification.
Excessive confidence: A marked contempt for advice or criticism.
A loss of reality: Progressive isolation from the real world.
Perhaps, then, poor Sir Keir is simply not well. We must recognise the onset of these symptoms and, as a compassionate society, offer him our most profound sympathies.