Morgan McSweeney has admitted that Foreign Office officials came under intense pressure to expedite Peter Mandelson’s posting as UK ambassador to Washington, but denied they were forced to “skip steps” in security vetting to do so.
Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, who resigned earlier this year over the scandal, acknowledged that he had asked the then top official at the department, Philip Barton, to conduct the process “at pace” but not to do anything “improper”.
In a rare appearance before MPs on Tuesday, McSweeney said: “There is a real difference between asking people to act at pace and asking people to lower standards. We never did that. We never asked people to skip steps at any part of the process … It was all about, can we do this at pace, not, can we do anything improper.”
He insisted he had not been involved in Mandelson’s vetting process, nor had he asked officials to “ignore procedures, request that steps should be skipped or communicate explicitly or implicitly that he should be cleared at all costs” as that would have been “unacceptable”.
His evidence to the foreign affairs select committee came after Barton told the MPs there “absolutely” was pressure from Downing Street over the pace of vetting. Olly Robbins, his sacked successor, has previously told the committee he felt “constant” pressure to get Mandelson into post.
McSweeney told MPs that learning the extent of Mandelson’s ongoing links with Jeffrey Epstein – after he had been questioned about red flags raised by the due diligence process and sent to Washington – was like a “knife through my soul”.
He admitted he should have asked civil servants in the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team (PET) to seek clarification with Mandelson at that stage, rather than doing so himself, given their own relationship.
“When I look back on it, I certainly think it would have been much, much better if I’d asked PET to ask those follow-up questions. I guess my thinking at the time was, I’d put follow-up questions to him in writing … he would feel more obligated to give truth and the full truth,” he said.
“The nature of the relationship that I understood he had with Epstein was not a close friendship. [It] was a passing acquaintance that he regretted having and that he apologised for. What has emerged since then was way, way, way worse than I had expected at the time.”
McSweeney said Starmer would not have gone ahead with the appointment had he known the full truth. “The prime minister did not have enough information because Mandelson did not share the necessary information with him. He had ample opportunity to do so and did not.”
He acknowledged that withdrawing Mandelson’s appointment over his failure to get security clearance would have been “embarrassing” for the government, but “far preferable” than allowing it to proceed.
Many Labour MPs are angry that Downing Street, which had been aware at the time that Mandelson was close enough friends with Epstein to stay overnight at his house, decided to send him to Washington regardless.
McSweeney admitted he had made a “serious error of judgment” in advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson, but that he had felt his “experience, relationships and political skills”, including on trade, could serve UK interests as Donald Trump re-entered the White House.
In his own evidence to the committee, Barton said No 10 seemed “uninterested” in the vetting process around Mandelson’s appointment, and said there were no avenues for him to express his concerns.
Asked if he was under pressure to get the vetting done quickly, he said: “Absolutely … I don’t think anyone could have been in any doubt in the department working on this that there was pressure to get everything done as quickly as possible.”
He denied having received any phone call from McSweeney – long rumoured – which had asked him to “just fucking approve it”. McSweeney told MPs that such Westminster rumours were “corrosive” to faith in the political system.
Barton, who left the Foreign Office in January, said he was unaware of No 10’s intention to appoint Mandelson until a day before the announcement. “I wasn’t involved, I wasn’t told a decision was coming,” he said.
Barton told the committee he believed his concerns about Epstein were shared by the national security adviser, Jonathan Powell.
But he said the “die was cast” and there was no possibility of advising against the appointment. He told the committee it was unusual to announce the appointment before vetting had been completed. “The normal order is vetting then announcement,” he said.
Barton said he had been in discussions with the former ambassador Karen Pierce about extending her appointment in the US, but he was presented with the Mandelson appointment “and told to get on with it … There was no space for dialogue.”
Barton said he was well aware of the “toxic” nature of the Epstein connection from his time in the US and his understanding of American politics. “I didn’t know anything that wasn’t in the public domain. Now we know a lot more about Mandelson’s links to Epstein.
“But I had a concern that a man who, demonstrably from the public record at the time … had a link to Epstein. [I knew] that Epstein, through the presidential election campaign in the US and more generally in US politics, had been and was a controversial figure, and I was worried that this could become a problem in future.”
He said there was “no space or avenue or mechanism for me to put that on the table” even though he said he was aware of tweets from those close to Trump reminding the incoming president about Mandelson’s negative comments about Trump.
“I’d been deputy ambassador in Washington and therefore occasionally chargé [d’affaires, a diplomat who acts as the head of a diplomatic mission in the absence of an ambassador], and I knew very well [that] to do the job effectively, you have to be party to some of the deepest secrets that the UK government holds. But I also recognise that the situation was unusual,” he said.
Asked if Number 10 was “dismissive” of the vetting, Barton said: “The word I would use is uninterested. I think people wanted to know that all the practical steps required for Mandelson to arrive in Washington on or around the inauguration date. It needed to be completed at pace.”
But he said McSweeney did not call to insist he approve the appointment. “It’s been floating around the media since last September. There’s different versions, sometimes involving swear words, sometimes not. And I’ve really racked my brains and I cannot recall Morgan McSweeney swearing in a meeting at me or indeed in general.”
