Sir Keir Starmer has said “I beat myself up” over his decision to make Lord Mandelson US ambassador and “nobody has been harder on me in relation to the mistake I made there than me”.
The Prime Minister said he “dwells” on his appointment of the peer to Britain’s top diplomatic posting abroad despite the former Labour grandee’s association with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Sir Keir faces ongoing questions about his judgment after the release of Government documents that showed he was warned before approving Lord Mandelson for the role of a “general reputational risk” over the peer’s association with the financier.
Speaking to Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, he said: “Nobody has been harder on me in relation to the mistake I made there than me.
“And I’ll tell you for why, I’ve spent years trying to deal with violence against women and girls.
“And as I look back at it now and the mistake I made, I’ve been really hard on myself. In the immediate days after this all came out, I was particularly hard on myself. So yeah, everybody else was criticising, I get all that.
“But nobody was criticising me more than myself. I’m not trying to, you know, make that a mitigation or an excuse, but, I know I made a mistake.”
He added: “I know that after nearly 20 years fighting violence against women and girls, I made a mistake there. And I hate the fact I made that mistake. And I dwell on it. I beat myself up about it.
“It’s certainly not a mistake I’d ever repeat.
“But there’s no criticism anybody else can level at me that will be as harsh as the criticism I dished out for myself.”
Lord Mandelson, a political appointment rather than a career diplomat, was sacked from his Washington role in September last year over his links with Epstein, who died in 2019.
The first tranche of documents related to the decision was published earlier this month following a demand for transparency by MPs, with more to follow.
However, concerns have been raised that exchanges relating to the appointment could be lost as a result of the theft of former No 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney’s mobile phone in London in October 2025.
Police have taken the unusual step of releasing a transcript of the former senior adviser’s 999 call reporting the crime, in which he gives his name, a personal email address and a home address.
He describes the device as a “Government” phone and says he has called his office to get it tracked, but opposition critics have questioned why the report was not escalated to security services.
The Metropolitan Police wrongly recorded the theft as having taken place in east London after Mr McSweeney incorrectly gave his location as Belgrave Street, rather than Belgrave Road in Westminster.
This meant officers checked the wrong CCTV and concluded there were no realistic lines of inquiry to follow. This is now being reviewed.
The Cabinet Office does have some of the messages between Mr McSweeney and Lord Mandelson, it is understood.
Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to Helsinki on Thursday, Sir Keir said it was “a little bit-far-fetched” to link the theft to the release of Government correspondence about the ambassadorship.
“Unfortunately, there are thefts like this. It was stolen. It was reported at the time, the police have acknowledged and confirmed that. That is what happened,” he said.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said the incident was a “cock-up rather than conspiracy” while Downing Street has sought to emphasise the theft happened “months before” the Commons motion compelling Government to release the files.
MPs moved in February to force the publication of tens of thousands of documents amid questions over the extent of what was known about the peer’s links to Epstein before he was handed the Washington job.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said it was “very suspicious that the phone got stolen” while Labour backbencher Karl Turner also cast doubt on the official narrative, calling Mr McSweeney “McSwindle.”
Leeds East MP Richard Burgon said he had submitted a formal parliamentary written question on the topic, asking whether Mr McSweeney followed the rules in his reporting of the theft and what impact it had on national security.
Mr Burgon said: “Given the serious impact this could have on getting the truth about the Mandelson scandal… we need answers.”
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