Sir Keir Starmer has apologised to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for appointing Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the US, saying: “None of us knew the depth and darkness of that relationship.”
The UK prime minister is facing fierce criticism from Labour MPs following his admission that he sent Mandelson to Washington in February 2025 despite knowing that the peer had continued his friendship with Epstein after the disgraced financier had been jailed for child sex crimes.
But on Thursday Starmer insisted he was not about to quit, even as Labour MPs said his handling of the Mandelson row would prove a death knell for his premiership.
“I was elected to bring about change for millions of people and that’s what I intend to do,” Starmer told journalists after giving a speech in East Sussex on regional development.
In an attempt to calm the row, Starmer said to Epstein’s victims: “I am sorry for what was done to you, sorry so many people in power failed you, sorry for believing Mandelson’s lies and appointing him.”
The relationship between Epstein and Mandelson was previously known and Starmer said: “When we were going through the employment process, we asked questions about the nature and extent of that relationship.”
He said that the answers given to those questions “were intentionally intended to create the impression that Mandelson barely knew Epstein”.
Starmer said he asked Mandelson whether he had stayed in Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2009 — a visit first revealed by the FT in 2023 — while the financier was in jail.
But crucially Starmer did not tell journalists what Mandelson said in reply or whether he pushed him on the subject. “When he provided answers I had no reason to believe he was telling anything other than the truth,” he said.
Labour peer Lord Maurice Glasman in January 2025 warned Number 10 it was making a mistake by appointing Mandelson in a memo sent to Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.
Glasman sent the memo, seen by the FT, after attending Donald Trump’s inauguration. Starmer had announced his selection of Mandelson the previous month.
“The vast majority of people I met . . . consider our appointment of Peter Mandelson an unnecessary provocation. Several people showed me a photograph of him blowing out the birthday candles with Jeffrey Epstein,” Glasman wrote. “Withdraw Peter Mandelson. He is the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong place.”
Starmer’s planned release of documents relating to the vetting process has been delayed after the Metropolitan Police warned against the publication of anything that might prejudice its investigation into Mandelson over reports of misconduct in public office.
Emails published over the weekend by the US Department of Justice show Mandelson passed UK government documents and market-sensitive information to Epstein, from whom he had previously taken $75,000, while he was a cabinet minister under Gordon Brown.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has called for a House of Commons vote of no confidence in Starmer, branding his premiership “untenable” and arguing that it is a question of “when, not if, he goes”.
In a press conference in Westminster on Thursday, Badenoch said Starmer’s administration was distracted by the scandal surrounding Mandelson and that “serious” governance was needed.
At a separate Bank of England press conference, governor Andrew Bailey said he had been “shocked” by revelations of Mandelson’s dealings with Epstein during the global financial crisis.
Epstein’s victims were the main priority, Bailey added, but “we all have to ask ourselves . . . how is it we live in a society in which this happened, and the cover-up happened as well?”
Several Labour MPs and peers have broken cover to argue that the deepening row could spell the end of Starmer’s premiership.
Both the pound and gilts came under pressure as investors worried about the potential for a more leftwing government to increase public borrowing. Sterling fell 0.5 per cent against the dollar while UK borrowing costs rose to their highest since November.
Lord John Hutton, who served in the cabinets of Gordon Brown and Sir Tony Blair, said on Wednesday night that the scandal “could well mark the end of the prime minister’s time in office”.
“The issue is the leadership from the prime minister, and I think unless that changes dramatically, I think the government is in serious trouble,” he told LBC Radio.
Karl Turner, MP for Kingston upon Hull East, told Times Radio that Starmer was in a “crisis” situation and the mood among Labour MPs was the angriest he had witnessed in his 16 years in parliament.
Starmer was also forced on Wednesday to back down under Labour pressure — led by former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner — over what some MPs saw as an attempt to cover up documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador.
The prime minister initially said documents involving Mandelson, demanded by the Conservatives, would be released unless they breached national security or damaged Britain’s international relations.
But facing the prospect of defeat in a Commons vote on the issue, he made a last-ditch concession to Labour rebels and accepted Rayner’s proposal that oversight of the release of the documents should be carried out by parliament’s cross-party intelligence and security committee.
The revelations about the extent of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein, who was found dead in a New York jail cell in 2019, have raised fresh questions about the prime minister’s political judgment and that of Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff.
McSweeney, widely seen as the architect of the Starmer project, promoted Mandelson’s bid for the top diplomatic role and lobbied in vain for the peer not to be sacked from the post last year.
Paula Barker, Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said she was “sickened” by Starmer’s admission that he knew about Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with Epstein when he appointed the New Labour veteran to the role of US ambassador.
“Quite frankly I think the country deserves better,” Barker told the BBC.
Steve Reed, housing secretary, insisted on Thursday that the positions of Starmer and McSweeney were secure, telling Sky News: “The person at fault here is not the prime minister or his team.”
But one former minister told the FT there was “a mood for blood”, while others saw Monday’s events as a damning indictment of Starmer’s judgment and political operation.
Additional reporting by Delphine Strauss in London