Farage accuses PM of 'outright blatant dishonesty' and says Starmer will be 'gone by the summer'
Security officials initially denied Lord Mandelson clearance, but Foreign Office officials took the rare step of overruling the recommendation
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has accused Sir Keir Starmer of "outright blatant dishonesty" after it emerged that the Foreign Office overruled the vetting process for Lord Peter Mandelson.
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Security officials initially denied Lord Mandelson clearance, but Foreign Office officials took the rare step of overruling the recommendation.
The Prime Minister was not aware that the former Labour grandee was granted developed vetting against the advice of UK Security Vetting until earlier this week, the Government has said.
He has instructed officials to establish the facts about why vetting was granted, and the Foreign Office earlier said it is “working urgently” to comply.
Downing Street sources say the Prime Minister is “absolutely furious”.
Read more: Starmer and Lammy deny knowing Foreign Office overruled Peter Mandelson's failed security vetting
Mr Farage told LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast that it is not credible or believable that the Government waited until Thursday to reveal security vetting procedures had been overruled because it wanted to launch a “full-scale investigation”.
The Reform UK leader said the explanation is: “Just not credible, not believable in any way at all. I am in absolutely no doubt in my mind that this Prime Minister misled the House of Commons and lied to the country outside of the House of Commons.”
He said that the Prime Minister's claim that he wasn't told that the recommendations by UK Security Vetting were overruled is "outright blatant dishonesty".
It comes after the Foreign Office's top civil servant Sir Olly Robbins was sacked on Thursday evening over the revelations.
Mr Farage added that Sir Olly is “one of the most professional civil servants in this country” and “there is no way” he would have decided to overrule security vetting procedures alone.
“There is no way a man like that would unilaterally make a decision of this kind, and, equally, the Prime Minister cannot stand up and say that Mandelson passed security vetting and now claim later he wasn’t told.
“That’s not incompetence, even Keir Starmer is not that incompetent, it is outright, blatant dishonesty.”
Lord Mandelson, a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role last September when more details emerged about his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019.
Sir Keir has been under fire over the decision to give Lord Mandelson the job despite it being known that his dealings with Epstein continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.
Questions over his judgment intensified after the first batch of documents related to the decision published last month showed that he was warned before announcing Lord Mandelson’s ambassadorship of a “general reputational risk” over his association with Epstein.
That warning stemmed from the first part of the checks, carried out by the Cabinet Office, which was based on information in the public domain at the time.
The second was the highly confidential background vetting by security officials, which followed the announcement but came before Lord Mandelson took up his role in February 2025.
Information unearthed in this process – including any concerns – is never shared with ministers, and the result is binary, either clearing the candidate or barring them.
More documents relating to his appointment are yet to be released at the behest of MPs.
Sir Keir said in February that Lord Mandelson was cleared by security vetting, which he criticised for failing to disprove the former Labour grandee’s lies.
When Morgan McSweeney stepped down as Sir Keir’s chief of staff in February, he took “full responsibility” for giving his boss advice that resulted in the “wrong” appointment decision, while also calling for the vetting process to be “fundamentally overhauled”.
Mr Farage said Sir Olly is the “sacrificial lamb in an attempt to try and save the Prime Minister”.
He told LBC: “None of this adds up, the idea they weren’t told about the vetting. Remember, in the House of Commons, Starmer actually said that the vetting had told him about the ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, then outside of the House, in Hastings, he gave a speech in which he said that Mandelson had cleared security vetting.
“They are all over the place on this, it is totally unbelievable and Robbins, he’s the sacrificial lamb in an attempt to try and save the Prime Minister, and it just isn’t good enough.”
Mr Farage believes that his party will be the ones to "finish off the job" in getting Sir Keir out of power in the upcoming local elections.
He argued that Reform will sweep the vote across parts of the country on May 7 which will "be the end of Starmer".
"What I think will happen is that he'll limp off to the 7th of May," he said.
"And if I'm right and Reform literally crush the Labour vote in the north of England, in South Wales, in parts of lowland Scotland, then that will be the end of Starmer."
He predicted that the Prime Minister will "be gone by the middle of summer".