Justin Webb Scorches 'Incurious' Starmer For Not 'Getting A Grip' Amid Fresh Mandelson Row

A BBC Radio 4 presenter hit out at a senior minister after he insisted that Keir Starmer did not mislead parliament over Peter Mandelson’s security vetting.

It emerged on Thursday that the ex-Labour peer failed an intense vetting process but was still appointed as the UK’s ambassador to Washington last year.

Mandelson was sacked in September 2025 after the depth of his relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein emerged.

Reform UK, the Conservatives and the Greens are now calling for Starmer to resign, claiming he misled parliament when he previously claimed “due process” was followed over Mandelson’s appointment.

No.10 has blamed the Foreign Office for overruling the security advice and giving Mandelson vetted status, claiming ministers were unaware that the ex-Labour peer had failed vetting.

Starmer also sacked the top civil servant in the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, on Thursday night.

Chief secretary to the prime minister Darren Jones was sent out to bat for the government on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme this morning – and took a verbal lashing from presenter Justin Webb.

Webb said it was “not credible” Robbins would have taken a decision “this momentous” to overrule the advice without mentioning it to the foreign secretary or the prime minister.

But Jones replied, “I find this whole situation astonishing as well,” insisting that he had already suspended the right for the Foreign Office and other organisations to use that exemption.

Webb said it would have been “normal” for the prime minister – who was previously the UK’s director for public prosecutions – to check that he was correct when he told MPs that “due process” was followed in hiring Mandelson.

Jones said the PM only became aware of that fact on Tuesday evening of this week and insisted that Starmer has not misled MPs.

“Come on, Mr Jones, he gave a misleading impression!” Webb replied. “He said at the Commons, ‘full due process was followed at this appointment, as with all our ambassadors’.

“Technically that’s true, but he was giving a misleading impression, wasn’t he? Albeit he didn’t know it himself.

“In those circumstances, he’s meant to go back to the Commons and ’fess up.”

Jones refuted that claim, but Webb hit back: “In that statement in Hastings, he was absolutely clear, wasn’t he, that this had happened. The vetting procedure had been properly done.

“That the vetting procedure, because Lord Mandelson had subsequently been appointed and then had to be fired, the vetting procedure itself was at fault.”

But Jones insisted this was a “failure of the state” that this process was allowed to happen in the way that it did, distancing Starmer’s responsibility.

Webb said: “Number one it’s his job to get a grip of things, number two, he just seems incredibly incurious about things that are important.”

“That is not the case,” Jones insisted. “The Foreign Office did pass the developed vetting status in vetting Peter Mandelson.”

The presenter gave a short laugh, and said: “But the point is did he recommend Mandelson passed it? This all sounds very legalistic and very loyal and I think to most people listening it is simply a fact of have you got a grip or have you not got a grip?

“Are you saying things that are true or things that turn out to be false?

“On both those things – on the grip and on the true or false thing – Sir Keir fails.”

Jones rejected that description and once again blamed the Foreign Office, and said the process was “flabbergasting”.

Webb then asked why Starmer did not tell the Commons on Wednesday before PMQs about the problems with Mandelson’s vetting.

Jones said he asked the cabinet secretary to give him a “detailed list” of the facts before going to MPs.

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