LONDON — One of Britain’s most senior civil servants, Olly Robbins, was dismissed late Thursday as Keir Starmer’s government reeled from a deepening crisis over the appointment of its former ambassador the U.S., Peter Mandelson.
Starmer and his foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, lost confidence in Robbins, the top official in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), a U.K. official familiar with the matter said, after a new report revealed new details of his role in the security vetting for Mandelson.
The move comes as the British prime minister faces mounting questions over the fact that Mandelson failed security vetting — but was made U.K. ambassador to the U.S. anyway in December 2024.
Mandelson, a veteran Labour politician, was fired this past September from the top diplomatic role over his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Guardian newspaper first reported Thursday that he had been given the green light to take up the Washington job against the advice of the government’s screening agency, United Kingdom Security Vetting.
“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 U.K. government spokesperson said earlier Thursday after the Guardian report.
‘Full due process‘
Sacking Robbins is unlikely to blunt questions about Starmer’s own judgment in appointing the politician to the diplomatic post.
The opposition has already accused the prime minister — who said earlier this year that a “full due process” was followed during the appointment — of misleading parliament, a resigning matter under the ministerial code in the U.K.
Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch seized on that comment Thursday, saying Starmer should resign if he misled parliament. “If Mandelson failed the security vetting, full process was not followed. Misleading Parliament is a resigning offense,” she added.
Labour MPs who had recently been heartened by Starmer’s approach to the Iran war were left agog at the latest claims.
“All we want is the truth,” MP Rachael Maskell told POLITICO. “Now a different account of Mr. Mandelson’s security clearance has been brought to light we need accountability as to why we were provided a different version of events.”
A highly loyal MP, granted anonymity to discuss internal party matters, said Thursday night: “This is bad, very, very bad. There are so many factors, I don’t know if it will be the end, but it definitely could be.”
Robbins’ rocky path
The departure of Robbins is the latest twist in a Whitehall career that has seen the senior official — once marked out as a future head of the country’s civil service — take repeated political flak.
Robbins served as chief Brexit negotiator during the doomed premiership of Theresa May. As talks with Brussels appeared to be steering the U.K. into a compromise deal, he found himself pilloried as they bogeyman of hardline Tory MPs and newspapers, earning the moniker “the PM’s Rasputin” in one Times article.
When May was finally ousted in 2019, to be replaced by Boris Johnson, Robbins left government too.
He went on to roles at Goldman Sachs and then the Hakluyt advisory service. His civil service return came in 2025 as head of the Foreign Office under Starmer’s Labour government.
Earlier this year MPs passed a motion requiring that documents on how Mandelson was appointed be handed over to the U.K. parliament after revelations in the Epstein files. The government said it had obtained the fresh UK Security Vetting information while trawling documents to comply with the parliamentary motion.
Bethany Dawson, Emilio Casalicchio and Charlie Cooper contributed to this report.
