LONDON — Keir Starmer is so often portrayed as a process-obsessed lawyer that a colleague once called him “Mr. Rules.” But Wednesday’s documents release about the prime minister’s appointment of Peter Mandelson — a friend of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — to be Britain’s ambassador to Washington provides more evidence of the raw politics that greased the wheels of Downing Street. There is no “smoking gun” that showed Starmer knew everything about the Mandelson-Epstein relationship. That’s because he didn’t, and one was never expected. The question from the PM’s critics has always been whether he should have taken a different course, given what he did know. That means the most difficult revelation for Starmer is that a top Foreign Office official and his most senior foreign policy aide, national security adviser Jonathan Powell, both had concerns about the appointment — even as the PM’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, pushed to get it over the line. In other words: The process was there, but the final call was political — and rested on the PM’s personal judgement. ‘REPUTATIONAL RISK’ Starmer decided to sack Mandelson last September after new revelations about his close historic friendship with Epstein. Mandelson has apologized “unequivocally” for his association with Epstein and “to the women and girls that suffered.” The prime minister said at that time — and often repeats now — that the “depth and extent” of the relationship clearly went further than he had known when he appointed Mandelson. This is true, but the new files show red flags were there nonetheless.  The 147-page cache published by the U.K. government shows Starmer was warned that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein was a “reputational risk.” A note to the prime minister from Dec. 11, 2024 provides the receipts for what Starmer recently admitted — that he was warned about reports that Mandelson had stayed in Epstein’s home after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Aides also flagged to Starmer the fact — which was not public at the time — that Mandelson brokered a meeting between his friend Epstein and former PM Tony Blair in 2002 to talk about “economic and monetary trends.” Separately, Starmer’s national security adviser Powell raised concerns, albeit they only appear in the files after Mandelson’s sacking. The 147-page cache published by the U.K. government shows Starmer was warned that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein was a “reputational risk.” | Lucy North/PA Images via Getty Images Powell’s misgivings are revealed in notes of a “fact-finding” call between Powell and the PM’s General Counsel Mike Ostheimer, the evening after Starmer sacked Mandelson last September. The notes show Powell — who had worked for years with Mandelson in Tony Blair’s Downing Street — raised concerns about Mandelson’s reputation directly with McSweeney.  Powell told Ostheimer he had found the process “unusual” and “weirdly rushed” — and that the most senior civil servant in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Philip Barton, also “had reservations around the appointment.” But Mandelson got the job anyway, and arrangements were made in haste ahead of Donald Trump’s January 2025 inauguration as U.S. president. Mandelson was handed his IT equipment and first set of “official sensitive” level files on Boxing Day. Two previous shortlists in 2024 — one compiled by Starmer’s predecessor as PM Rishi Sunak, and a second by McSweeney’s predecessor as chief of staff Sue Gray — had been torn up before Mandelson strode forward. Starmer made his decision less than a week after receiving the due diligence report. ‘MORGAN’S FINGERPRINTS ARE ALL OVER THIS’ Wednesday’s document dump shows the political relationships that lay behind this process. Two names crop up repeatedly in the files; those of McSweeney and Starmer’s then-Director of Communications Matthew Doyle, who were both political special advisers in No. 10 and personal friends of Mandelson. The documents show that McSweeney and Mandelson spoke to each other repeatedly. At one point on Dec. 20, 2024, shortly after Starmer approved the appointment, it was McSweeney who contacted Mandelson personally to flag the need for him to fill out conflict of interest forms.  When the Epstein friendship was flagged in due diligence, McSweeney had a “back and forth” with Doyle, the former communications chief told Ostheimer in a separate fact-finding call. This back-and-forth resulted in McSweeney asking Mandelson three questions about his links with Epstein.  After this, Doyle was “satisfied” with Mandelson’s responses about his contact with Epstein, according to the note to Starmer on Dec. 11, 2024. Doyle, whom Starmer elevated to the House of Lords, had the Labour whip suspended in February after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend who had been convicted of child sex offenses. (Doyle has previously apologized for this “clear error of judgment.”) The government has yet to publish extensive WhatsApp and email communications between Mandelson and Starmer’s ministers and aides. | Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images One senior Labour MP, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly, said: “Matthew Doyle’s understanding of what is appropriate contact with a pedophile is somewhat questionable.”  Crucially, Mandelson’s answers to McSweeney’s three questions have not yet been published. The email chain has been held back at the request of the Metropolitan Police, which is midway through a separate investigation into Mandelson. When this email chain is eventually published, No. 10 aides believe it will support Starmer’s case that Mandelson “lied” to Downing Street about his relationship with Epstein. Mandelson’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment after the documents were released Wednesday. AN OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE There are other elements of the new files that will reassure Starmer’s restive MPs. The most obvious is that McSweeney and Doyle have both already left No. 10. The senior Labour MP quoted above said: “It’s a good thing Morgan’s gone because his fingerprints are all over this. How could he possibly have stayed?” A second Labour MP said it was a relief that McSweeney had left. “He was working against the prime minister’s best interests,” they said. The other factor cheering Labour MPs is what the files say about Mandelson in his own words, fueling his new-found status as a Labour hate figure. The files show Mandelson asked for a £547,201 severance payment after his sacking (he got £75,000), and told the FCDO’s Chief People Officer Mark Power in September that his “chief concern” was arriving back with “maximum dignity and minimum media intrusion.” “[Labour MPs] are more preoccupied with the £500,000,” said a third Labour MP loyal to Starmer. “What kind of person asks for that?” But this is only one step on the road for Starmer’s No. 10, and for possible questions about the prime minister’s judgement. The government has yet to publish extensive WhatsApp and email communications between Mandelson and Starmer’s ministers and aides, not just about his appointment and dismissal but about broader politics, relationships and strategy. Downing Street also announced on Wednesday that it will review the separate national security vetting system. | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images Wednesday’s files show the concern that the breadth of this planned publication — forced in a vote by the opposition Conservative Party — sparked in No. 10. As Starmer prepared to agree to the transparency earlier this year, his private secretary for foreign affairs, Ailsa Terry, told a fellow official there should be a “welfare check” on Mandelson every day. Downing Street also announced on Wednesday that it will review the separate national security vetting system — details of which have not been published in Mandelson’s case — to learn lessons from the former ambassador’s developed vetting. ALL FOR WHAT? The great irony is that Starmer might have avoided all this pain by listening to officialdom. Wednesday’s document release confirmed that two unnamed government officials were found “appointable” for the ambassador job following a recruitment process in April 2024, under Starmer’s predecessor Sunak. Two people with knowledge of the process told POLITICO that the lead candidate was the then-No. 10 national security adviser Tim Barrow, as widely reported at the time. And the runner-up? Christian Turner, the two people said. It is Turner to whom Starmer has now turned for a steadier pair of hands in Washington. Critics might wonder why he didn’t appoint him in the first place. Mason Boycott-Owen contributed to this report.

LONDON — The U.K. government last year awarded contracts worth more than £70,000 to a company headed by the brother of the energy department’s most senior civil servant.  Three contracts were awarded to Amelio Enterprises to install solar panels on schools, according to documents acquired under a Freedom of Information request.  The procurement process was led by the Crown Commercial Services, an agency inside the Cabinet Office. The funding for each school, announced by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero in September 2025, was provided by the government’s publicly-owned clean energy company Great British Energy (GBE). GBE — which is funded by DESNZ and of which Ed Miliband, in his role as energy secretary, is the sole shareholder — has a budget of £8.3 billion to spend on clean power projects, including nuclear. Amelio Enterprises was bought by the renewables company Good Energy Group — headed by chief executive Nigel Pocklington — in October 2024. At the time the contracts were awarded, his brother, Jeremy Pocklington, was permanent secretary at DESNZ.  Pocklington was the top official at DESNZ between February 2023 and November 2025, when he left the department to become permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence.  He declared his brother’s position at Good Energy on his register of interests. The register stated that he would “recuse himself from any direct engagement with Good Energy” as permanent secretary at DESNZ, with any engagement “delegated to a director general.” DESNZ did not comment on the record about the procurement process. An official from the Department for Education said the contracts, issued under government plans to fund the roll out of solar panels on schools and hospitals, had complied with U.K. procurement rules. A spokesperson for Good Energy said: “We strongly reject any suggestion of a conflict of interest in this contract. The work was awarded following an open, competitive tender process and assessed against the same objective criteria applied to all suppliers.” They added: “Amelio Solar Enterprises had already built a strong track record delivering solar projects for schools and had secured similar work for several years before Good Energy acquired the business.” The contracts awarded to Amelio Solar were part of the latest tranche of GBE funding to install solar panels on schools and hospitals across the U.K., in a bid to bring down energy bills in public buildings. DESNZ argues this will free up cash to be invested back into education and the NHS. Announcing the grants in September, Miliband said the funding would help schools and hospitals “save money on its bills, to be reinvested into the frontline, from textbooks to teachers to medical equipment.” In the case of the contracts with Amelio Solar, a separate company was appointed to manufacture the solar panels used. 

The Justice Department posted a trio of FBI interviews with a woman who alleged President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was a young teenager after she was introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein. The woman’s central allegation, according to FBI summaries of her interviews with investigators, known as FBI 302s, is that Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex. The three files come as Democrats are investigating whether the department purposefully withheld materials that included sexual assault allegations against Trump. Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations and he hasn’t been charged with a crime in connection with them. There’s no evidence to suggest Trump took part in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. Many of the materials released by the Justice Department lack substantiation or context. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the allegations “completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence, from a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history.” “The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s department of justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them — because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. As we have said countless times, President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein Files.” In the files, dated between August and October 2019, the woman, whose name is redacted, alleges that when she was between 13 and 15 years old, Epstein took her to either New York or New Jersey, where, “in a very tall building with huge rooms,” he introduced her to Trump. Trump, she said, “didn’t like that I was a boy-girl,” which the interview notes interpreted to mean tomboy. The woman said other people were present, but she couldn’t recall who. Trump asked them to leave the room, then said “something to the effect of, ‘Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,’” according to the interview notes. Trump then unzipped his pants and put her head “down to his penis,” she recalled in the interview. She said she “bit the shit out of it.” In response, she said he pulled her hair and punched her on the side of her head. “Get this little bitch the hell out of here,” the woman recalled him saying. At that point, she said, people reentered the room. The FBI interviews don’t contain information about how the incident ended or how the woman exited the encounter. In one of the interviews, the woman disclosed that she had begun working with attorneys and “wanted to be upfront” about “her pending civil case in the event the agents determined a conflict of interest could occur.” The woman said she or people close to her received a series of threatening phone calls, one of which included a message left on the phone of a co-worker but intended for her. She told the FBI she believed the calls were related to Epstein, and “stated under her breath that if it was not Epstein, maybe it was the ‘other one.’” When agents pressed her on who she meant, she said Trump, according to the interview notes. In the final interview, agents asked her again about her allegations concerning Trump, noting in the document he was the “current U.S. president.” The woman, according to the interview summary, asked “what the point would be of providing the information at this point in her life when there was a strong possibility nothing could be done about it.” Trump has faced allegations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct before, including accusations from multiple women who came forward during the 2016 presidential campaign. In 2023, he was found liable by a federal jury for having sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll after Carroll claimed Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s and then denied her account of rape, calling her a liar. Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the $5 million judgment the jury awarded Carroll. Carroll also won a $83.3 million judgment in 2024 after a separate jury found Trump defamed her with an additional set of remarks about the same claims. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been investigating whether the Epstein-related documents were improperly withheld from public view. “For the last few weeks, Oversight Democrats have been investigating the FBI’s handling of allegations from 2019 of sexual assault on a minor made against President Donald Trump by a survivor,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the committee, said in a statement last week. “Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes,” he added. In a post on social media in response to the statement, the Justice Department said Oversight Democrats “should stop misleading the public while manufacturing outrage from their radical anti-Trump base,” adding that “NOTHING has been deleted.” “If files are temporarily pulled for victim redactions or to redact Personally Identifiable Information, then those documents are promptly restored online and are publicly available,” the post continued. “ALL responsive documents have been produced unless a document falls within one of the following categories: duplicates, privileged, or part of an ongoing federal investigation.” The documents come as the Trump administration continues to battle criticism over its handling of the files, about 3.5 million of which it published in late January. In addition to accusations over withholding certain records, the department has also come under fire from lawmakers for improperly disclosing identifying information of victims and for redacting the names of some men. On Wednesday, a House committee voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about her handling of the Epstein files.

Andrej Babiš built his fortune making fertilizer. But another, lesser-known arm of his business empire has helped bring more than 170,000 children into the world across Europe. The Czech prime minister’s name is rarely attached to FutureLife, one of Europe’s largest IVF clinic networks, spanning 60 clinics in 16 countries from Prague to Madrid to Dublin. But is just one part of a commercial empire that spans nitrogen-based fertilizers and industrial farms, assisted reproduction, online lingerie stores and more. And the Czech leader holds this portfolio while sitting at the table negotiating EU budgets, health rules and industrial policy. Yet in Brussels, nobody can answer a deceptively simple question: Which of the companies associated with Babiš receives EU money — and how much? “We might be giving him money and we don’t even know,” said Daniel Freund, a German Green lawmaker who led the European Parliament’s inquiries into Babiš during his first term as Czechia’s prime minister from 2017 to 2021. In 2021, the Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a resolution condemning Babiš over conflicts of interest involving EU subsidies and companies he founded. Under EU rules, member countries are responsible for checking conflicts of interest and reporting on who ultimately benefits from EU funds. But there is no single EU-wide register linking ultimate beneficial owners to all EU payments — making cross-border oversight difficult. The issue has resurfaced as Babiš returns to power and once again takes a seat among other EU heads of state and government in the European Council. In that exclusive body, he helps negotiate the bloc’s long-term budget, agricultural subsidies and other funding frameworks that shape the sectors in which his companies might operate. For years, debates over Babiš’s conflicts of interest have revolved around a single name — Agrofert, the agro-industrial empire that EU and Czech auditors found had improperly received over €200 million in EU and national agricultural subsidies. The payment suspensions and repayment demands continue: This week, Czech authorities halted some agricultural subsidies to Agrofert pending a fresh legal review of the company’s compliance with conflict-of-interest rules. Babiš has consistently rejected accusations of wrongdoing. His office said he “follows all binding rules” and that “there is no conflict of interests at the moment,” adding that Agrofert shares are managed by independent experts and that he “is not and will never be the owner of Agrofert shares.” In a parliamentary debate earlier this month, he dismissed the controversy as politically motivated, accusing opponents of having “invented” the conflict-of-interest issue because they were unable to defeat him at the ballot box. But critics argue that the renewed focus on Agrofert obscures a far broader commercial footprint. “Agrofert is only half of the problem,” said Petr Bartoň, chief economist at Natland, a private investment group based in Prague. “The law does not say ‘thou shalt not benefit from companies called Agrofert.’ It says you must not benefit from any companies subsidized by or receiving public money.” The concern, critics argue, arises from the sheer number of companies and sectors with which Babiš remains associated. THE INVISIBLE PILLAR Separate from Agrofert sits Hartenberg Holding, a private-equity vehicle Babiš co-founded with financier Jozef Janov in 2013. He holds a majority stake in the fund through SynBiol, a company he fully owns and which, unlike Agrofert, has not been transferred into any trust arrangement. With assets worth around €600 million, Hartenberg invests in health care, retail, aviation and real estate. Yet it has attracted only a fraction of the scrutiny directed at the agricultural holding, according to Lenka Stryalová of the Czech public-spending watchdog Hlídač státu. “Alongside Agrofert, there is a second, less visible pillar of Babiš’s business activities that is not currently intended to be placed into blind trusts,” she said. That pillar includes FutureLife, whose 2,100 specialists help individuals and couples conceive across Czechia, Slovakia, the U.K., Ireland, Romania, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Estonia. The clinics operate in a policy-sensitive space shaped primarily by national health reimbursement systems and insurance rules, rather than decisions taken directly in Brussels. Those systems, however, function within a broader EU regulatory framework governing cross-border care and state aid. Hartenberg owns 50.1 percent of FutureLife. The company said in a statement that Babiš has no operational role, no board seat and no decision-making authority. It added that FutureLife clinics operate like other health care providers and, where applicable, are reimbursed by national public health insurance systems under the same rules as other providers. Like thousands of other companies, some FutureLife entities received pandemic-era wage support under Czechia’s Covid relief programs. There is no evidence of any irregularity in those payments.  But health care is only one corner of the portfolio. Through Hartenberg, Babiš-linked capital also flows into everyday retail life. Astratex, a Czech-founded online lingerie retailer that began as a catalogue business before moving fully online in 2005, now operates localized e-shops across roughly 10 European markets and generates tens of millions of euros in annual revenue. Hartenberg acquired a controlling stake in 2018, marking one of the fund’s early expansions into cross-border digital retail. In Czechia, shoppers may also encounter Flamengo florist stands, a network of around 200 outlets selling bouquets, potted plants and funeral flower arrangements inside supermarkets and shopping malls. Hartenberg acquired a majority stake in the chain in 2019, backing its expansion and push into online delivery. Other online businesses linked to Babiš include sports equipment, and wool and textile retailers. Through Hartenberg, Babiš has also invested in urban development and real estate. Hartenberg was an early majority investor in the project company behind Prague’s Císařská vinice, a premium hillside development of villas and apartments near Ladronka park, partnering with developer JRD to finance construction. JRD Development Group said the project company is now 100 percent owned by JRD and that neither Babiš nor companies linked to him hold any direct or indirect ownership interest. The firm added that the development has not received EU funds or other public financial support. None of the Hartenberg businesses have ever been accused of misusing EU subsidies. But the long-running “Stork’s Nest” case, first investigated more than a decade ago and still unresolved, shows how difficult it can be to follow Babiš’s business web. The alleged fraud involved a €2 million EU subsidy provided in 2008 to the 31-room Čapí Hnízdo (Stork’s Nest) recreational and conference center in central Czechia, then part of Babiš’s Agrofert conglomerate. Prosecutors have accused Babiš and his associates of manipulating the center’s ownership and concealing his control of the business in order to obtain the subsidy. Babiš has always denied wrongdoing, telling POLITICO in 2019 that the case was politically motivated. He was acquitted in 2023, but an appeals court later overturned that verdict and ordered a retrial, which remains pending. Today, the resort itself is no longer part of Agrofert. It is owned by Imoba, a company fully controlled by Babiš’s SynBiol, the same holding that controls Hartenberg. Hartenberg itself holds no stake in Stork’s Nest. Taken together, Babis’ non-Agrofert portfolio spans health care reimbursement systems, online retail regulation, aviation safety oversight, real estate and city-planning decisions across multiple EU jurisdictions. In theory, a Czech consumer could encounter Babiš-linked companies at nearly every stage of life: the fertilizer on the fields that grow the wheat, the bread on the supermarket shelf, the bouquet for the wedding, the apartment in Prague and even the clinic that helps bring the next generation into the world. And at the end, perhaps, the flowers once more. WHY BRUSSELS CAN’T KEEP TRACK During Babiš’s previous term, the European Commission concluded that trust arrangements he put in place did not eliminate his effective control over Agrofert. A leaked legal document reported by POLITICO this month has since renewed accusations that his latest trust setup does not fully address those concerns either. Babiš rejects that interpretation, saying the arrangement complies with Czech and EU law and insisting he has done “much more than the law required” to distance himself from the company. The Commission said it does not maintain a consolidated list of companies ultimately owned or controlled by Babiš across member countries. Nor does it hold a comprehensive accounting of EU funds received by companies linked to him beyond Agrofert. Instead, responsibility for collecting beneficial ownership data lies primarily with national authorities implementing EU funds. The Commission can audit how member countries manage conflicts of interest and take measures to protect the EU budget if needed, but it does not itself aggregate that information across borders. The Commission confirmed to POLITICO that it has asked Czech authorities to explain how conflicts of interest are being prevented in relation to companies under Babiš’s control beyond Agrofert. Czech Regional Development Minister Zuzana Mrázová on Thursday acknowledged receiving the Commission’s letter earlier this month, saying it will be answered in line with applicable legislation and adding that, in her view, the prime minister has done everything necessary to comply with Czech and EU law. “From my perspective, there is no conflict of interest,” she said. Freund argues that the corporate complexity has become a problem in its own right. “The tracking of beneficial owners or beneficial recipients of EU funds is at the moment very difficult or sometimes even impossible,” said the EU lawmaker. Part of the difficulty lies in Europe’s fragmented ownership registers, which exist on paper across the EU but don’t speak the same language or even list the same owners. Freund described them as “inconsistent,” with some national databases listing Babiš in connection with certain companies while others do not. Babiš’s defenders argue that his steps regarding Agrofert go beyond what Czech law strictly requires. Critics counter that the law was never written with billionaires running multi-sector empires in mind and that resolving the conflict of interest identified by auditors in relation to Agrofert does not settle the wider concerns raised by the scale of his business interests. “For some reason, the perception has been created that once Agrofert is resolved, that resolves the conflict of interest,” Bartoň said. “As if the president were the arbiter of what needs and needs not be dealt with.” In reality, many companies owned through Hartenberg and Synbiol structures continue to operate in areas shaped by public spending, regulation and political decisions without being part of any divestment or trust arrangement. Those assets “still not only [pose] conflict of interest,” said Bartoň, but they are “not even in the process of being dealt with.” From fertilizer to fertility to funeral flowers, the structure is easy enough to trace in everyday life. It is far harder to trace on paper. Ketrin Jochecová contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — The investigation into the Qatargate cash-for-influence scandal can proceed after appeal court judges dismissed claims that prosecutors mishandled the case. The appeal court ruled Wednesday that the parliamentary immunities of MEPs under investigation — including former Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili — had not been breached, Le Soir reported. It also rejected claims by the suspects that the judge assigned to the case had conflicts of interest and found that the Belgian security service complied with the law in investigating the case. Had the judges found serious procedural flaws, the entire prosecution could have been thrown out more than three years after Belgian investigators first carried out raids and made arrests. Now prosecutors can continue with the probe and potentially start a trial. Several European Parliament lawmakers and aides face charges of doing political favors for countries, including Qatar and Morocco, in exchange for cash and gifts. All deny the allegations, although in 2023, Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former Italian EU lawmaker, struck a plea deal with the Belgian prosecutor in exchange for a reduced sentence. The delays in the case have been criticized by lawmakers and officials, who have slammed Belgian prosecutors for their handling of corruption cases involving EU institutions. Lawmakers in December voted against lifting the immunity of Italian lawmaker Elisabetta Gualmini, who is accused of involvement in the scandal, on the grounds that Belgian prosecutors did not provide sufficient evidence. The Parliament’s legal affairs committee did vote to lift the immunity of another Italian MEP, Alessandra Moretti. 

LONDON — Keir Starmer’s ill-fated decision to pick Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. — despite known links to Jeffrey Epstein — has thrown his government into turmoil. And it’s prompting intense scrutiny of a system designed to stop precisely that outcome. As the U.K. prime minister faces continued blowback for appointing Mandelson to the diplomatic post, POLITICO spoke to seven national security experts, current and former officials and MPs familiar with the security vetting system that governs sensitive roles. They say the Mandelson case — in which the veteran politician was given the job despite his ties to late convicted sex offender Epstein — highlights a slew of long-running problems with a set-up meant to ensure candidates for key posts are free from the kind of risks that have now blown up in Starmer’s face. In reality, they say, the process suffers from political pressure, a lack of robust due diligence, a reliance on trust, and stretched resources. Some were granted anonymity to speak candidly about this sensitive issue.  A security official who has undergone the same process as Mandelson — known as Developed Vetting (DV) — said: “If the process was done properly — and he still passed — then everyone who has been through DV needs re-vetting. Because, if Mandelson can pass, anyone can.” For his part, Mandelson — who did not respond to a request for comment for this piece — has said he “deeply regrets” his continued association with Epstein and the “lies” that the “monster” told him. He has said none of the Epstein emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice “indicate wrongdoing or misdemeanor on my part.” He has apologized “unequivocally” for his association with Epstein and “to the women and girls that suffered.” A QUESTION OF TIMING A full DV check is supposed to be a grueling affair, gatekeeping the most senior and sensitive Whitehall jobs. Candidates must actively declare any potential security risks they are aware of. They are routinely subjected to a deeply-personal interview on every aspect of their life, including those which could potentially make them a blackmail target.  Self-declaration forms are filled in, candidates are interviewed, and referees are quizzed to cross-examine the information provided. DV covers everything from a candidate’s foreign travel to their pornography habits. It presses them on any drug taking or affairs, and can probe their entire financial history. Criminal records must be declared and are scrutinized. “The process requires a vast amount of information, including a full travel history, where you’ve been and with whom, and any foreign associates,” the security official quoted at the beginning of this piece said. “It’s intrusive by design. Any normal person would feel uncomfortable, let alone someone with a history.” DV is carried out by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), a body in the Cabinet Office. The questions it asks and the information it collects are confidential and shared only with UKSV and the Foreign Office’s own security team. The prime minister does not have access to its findings. A full DV check is supposed to be a grueling affair, gatekeeping the most senior and sensitive Whitehall jobs. | Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images But Mandelson’s appointment has raised questions over both the sequencing and scope of this vetting. The pick for the U.S. ambassador job was announced to much fanfare in December 2024 — before DV had taken place.  Ahead of the announcement, No.10 Downing Street instead asked the Cabinet Office’s internal Proprietary and Ethics Team (PET) to run a more limited “due diligence” check on the ambassadorial choice, alongside five other candidates then under consideration by the government.  The vast majority of the information the Cabinet Office relied on for the exercise was in the public domain. A summary was then handed to Downing Street, who proceeded with the appointment, after No.10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney emailed three further questions to Mandelson on his relationship with Epstein. Only then did developed vetting begin. Matthew Savill had a long career working in Whitehall and vetting before joining the RUSI security think tank — and is among those raising alarm bells about the sequencing of this process in Mandelson’s case.  “There is a huge question over how Mandelson was appointed and publicly announced before vetting,” he said. “There is no way that that doesn’t slightly tip the balance towards acceptance. If you’re going to hold up the appointment or deny them the clearance, it becomes an issue.”  At the time Mandelson was announced for the job, the fact of his association with Epstein was public knowledge — although the full extent of his longer-term ties to the disgraced financier had yet to be made public in the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of the Epstein Files. “None of us knew the depths and the darkness of that relationship,” Starmer said earlier this month in a speech apologizing to Epstein’s victims for appointing Mandelson. The pick for the U.S. ambassador job was announced to much fanfare in December 2024 — before DV had taken place. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Emily Thornberry, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, grilled Foreign Office boss Olly Robbins about the process last November, weeks after Mandelson had been fired as ambassador over the publication of correspondence between him and Epstein.  Robbins acknowledged that Mandelson — a veteran Labour politician who had held multiple government posts under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — had “jumped the queue” for vetting, with a process done “faster than some people’s clearances will have been.” But he said: “That was not because the process was different; it was because we advanced him up the queue.” Robbins — who was Mandelson’s line manager — told the committee that he had a conversation with Mandelson about his “conflicts of interests” during the process, and the contents of that “needs to be between us.” Thornberry remains unconvinced that enough time was granted to allow full developed vetting to take place — and fears political timescales were at play. “It all had to be sorted out and tickety-boo by the swearing in with the president [Trump] at the beginning of January,” she tells POLITICO. “So there was very little time — and there was Christmas in between. Normally, as I understand it, DV takes months. Keir Starmer’s ill-fated decision to pick Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. has thrown his government into turmoil. | Zeynep Demir/Anadolu via Getty Images “What we did get out of our inquiry was that he wasn’t given a panel interview the way that a non-political appointee would do, and so therefore any questions asked of him seem to have been done pretty informally by [Starmer’s then-Chief of Staff] Morgan McSweeney — which is pretty low-level accountability.” The Cabinet Office declined to comment on the record for this piece. TOOLS FOR THE JOB Others are questioning whether the DV process is robust enough to account for a candidate who may give misleading answers.  Starmer has accused Mandelson of lying to him “repeatedly” about the extent of his ties to Epstein — and that, say those familiar with the vetting process, shows one of its fundamental weaknesses: a reliance on trust over hard information. One former government special advisor who has been through DV said that the interview they faced was “like going to the GP and they ask how many units [of alcohol per week] you have. Nobody fully tells the truth, and I guess they can only go by what you provide them with, unless they can get good data.” In contrast with some U.S. counterparts, British officials remain wary of leaning on polygraph tests to weigh the veracity of answers given in interviews. Instead, the DV process relies on the strength of the intelligence that feeds into it — and the honesty of the person subject to the checks. “There is no lie detector — which the U.K. has been pretty skeptical about in comparison to the U.S. which uses them a lot. If you lie and there’s something that only you know about, which your references don’t, then you might get through vetting,” Savill said. There is only a limited role in the process for Britain’s Intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6.  There is only a limited role in the process for Britain’s Intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6. | Mike Kemp/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images Savill said there are two places where spooks might feed into vetting: a “box check,” in which UKSV runs a candidate and their family’s details against security service records, “to see if they turn up in some capacity;” and during the due diligence check by the Proprietary and Ethics Team (PET) in the Cabinet Office. “This is a point at which you might consult the agencies in the background,” Savill said. Political party whips can also feed into this process.  But, he warned, “questions around political figures that have national security implications are radioactive in the intelligence community.” Britain’s Wilson Doctrine — the convention that MPs’ and Lords’ communications should not be intercepted by the intelligence services — continues to place “pretty significant constraints on how intelligence and politics interact.” PET did not consult the security services during its due diligence process for Mandelson. The Cabinet Office declined to comment on security matters relating to Mandelson’s appointment or any engagement with the intelligence community. There is also some consternation among security experts that Mandelson’s known Russian connections were not viewed as a sufficient risk to stop his clearance. The former Labour politician had a long-standing relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. “I know people who haven’t even gotten their parliamentary clearance because they’ve travelled to Russia once for work, or they’ve had a parent who’s been born in that region but has no links there whatsoever,” the former special advisor quoted above said. “That’s the level of paranoia there is, and about Russia in particular.” Carve-outs for areas of acute sensitivity are possible under the vetting process. Mandelson’s clearance would likely have seen him inducted into STRAP, a high-level, U.K. security clearance allowing access to top-level intelligence material. Obtaining this clearance involves looking at the foreign exposure of an individual — and can result in a subject being denied access to certain pieces of intelligence if deemed a risk. The former Labour politician had a long-standing relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. | Getty Images Savill noted that given that the U.S.-U.K. relationship is “so key,” its ambassador is expected to have access to a vast swathe of intelligence and “it would be really difficult to do his job without this.” ‘FAILED TO GET A GRIP’ UKSV itself continues to feel political heat over its performance — and major questions about the resourcing of DV checks persist.  Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reported in 2023 that ministers had repeatedly complained to UKSV over delays in granting clearances. “The Cabinet Office has failed to get a grip of vetting services since it took over responsibility in 2020,” the watchdog said. “It has not assessed the impact across government that delays to vetting can have when staff are unable to progress work because they do not have the appropriate level of security clearance.” Savill argues that “national security vetting has largely been a car crash for the past decade.” He cites a combination of short-staffing, botched IT upgrades and a lack of capacity for what can be expensive and intrusive work into people’s backgrounds. “It raises the question if DV is fit for the modern era for people who are attempting to evade scrutiny,” Savill added.   At the same time, Savill said there can be quite “a high bar to get over when denying a DV” clearance to a candidate, which leads to emphasis on what’s known as “aftercare” — regular checks on a person’s circumstances to keep an eye on issues identified during vetting. “There has been criticism that DV lets a lot of people through the gate and then it puts a lot of emphasis on checking up on them afterwards,” he said. “The problem is the presumption is towards giving a DV — it is a bit like a trial, the presumption is towards innocence.” SHAKE-UP STARTS Earlier this month, the British government folded to political pressure and agreed to release vast swathes of internal documentation relating to Mandelson’s appointment — but the work to overhaul vetting is only just beginning. Emily Thornberry, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, grilled Foreign Office boss Olly Robbins about the process last November, weeks after Mandelson had been fired as ambassador. | Nicola Tree/Getty Images Starmer’s administration has promised to publish Mandelson’s due diligence report, a conflict of interest form he had to fill out, and information provided to UKSV by the Foreign Office. But it is unlikely that the information contained in Mandelson’s DV process will ever see the light of day. Further documents deemed to be “prejudicial to U.K. national security or international relations” will be referred to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), while an ongoing police investigation into misconduct in public office allegations against Mandelson — who appears to have forwarded on government policy advice to Epstein while serving in Gordon Brown’s government — leaves some elements in limbo. Officers have not yet interviewed Mandelson and he has denied wrongdoing. In a bid to get back on the front foot after days of damaging headlines, the government has signaled that it’s open to a shake-up of vetting. Morgan McSweeney — Starmer’s chief of staff, who was forced to resign over the scandal — called for the process to be “fundamentally overhauled” in his parting statement.  Darren Jones, the minister who leads the Cabinet Office, vowed last week that the government would tighten the process for appointments like Mandelson’s. It will, Jones said, include assurances that “where the role requires access to highly classified material, the selected candidate must have passed through the requisite national security vetting process before such appointments are announced or confirmed.” “This cannot simply be a gesture but a safeguard for the future,” he said. In the meantime, the questions about this particular appointment — and how seriously the vetting process was taken by the politicians calling the shots — continue to mount. “What is extraordinary is that I cannot see how a vetting team could have given him a positive outcome of that process,” a former senior British security official said of Mandelson’s appointment:   “Whatever Starmer and [former No.10 chief of staff Morgan] McSweeney think of him and his abilities — that’s not the issue. The issue is whether you lack integrity and/or are a security risk.”

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron is racing to put guard rails around a potential far-right president of France. The French leader is accelerating key personnel appointments and placing loyalists in top positions to cement his influence and prevent the National Rally from executing its populist agenda, according to four French officials and two former officials. Polls show the far-right party is the front-runner for next year’s presidential election, and Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, its potential candidates, have signaled they would try to undo Macron’s economic reforms and pull back on French commitments to the EU and NATO. “He [Macron] is worried about the dangers ahead and wants to shore up his legacy,” a former diplomat said, while the West faces instability triggered by Russian belligerence and American unpredictability. Macron has already tapped an ally to become the country’s top auditor despite accusations of a conflict of interest. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a sweeping reshuffle is underway that will go beyond the traditional summer envoy swaps in French embassies. More than 60 outposts are expecting to receive new ambassadors in the coming months, including in Washington, London, Berlin and Kyiv. “Everything will be sewn up before the presidential election in May 2027,” a French ambassador told POLITICO. The early resignation of Bank of France Governor François Villeroy de Galhau last week also clears the way for Macron to name a new individual to that post, with a six-year term, before the next election. And Macron’s decision to replace France’s top general over the summer was partly motivated by a desire to have a strong voice in that post to face a potential National Rally president. One of them, a top military officer, said the idea was to ensure that whoever was in the role had sufficient experience that they would be respected if they tried to push back on controversial National Rally proposals — including leaving NATO’s integrated command. The personnel moves go well beyond those of a lame-duck leader attempting to seal his place in history, said the officials who spoke to POLITICO for this article, granted anonymity to speak candidly. They argue it amounts to a clear bid to insulate French institutions from possible National Rally-induced shocks. It’s a tricky balancing act for Macron, though. Appointing very close allies to some of these posts risks weakening their perceived independence and neutrality — whatever the original motive for putting them there. And by placing allies in high posts, the French president may have other deadlines in mind beyond 2027, said the former diplomat. It has escaped no one that Macron, who cannot run for a third consecutive term, has already hinted that he may consider mounting a bid in the 2032 presidential election.  The early resignation of the Bank of France’s governor last week also clears the way for Macron to name a new individual to that post, with a six-year term, before the next election as well. | Martin Lelievre/AFP via Getty Image LOCKING DOWN INSTITUTIONS The National Rally may need to wait to choose a presidential candidate until Le Pen’s appeal of her embezzlement conviction and five-year election ban is decided in July, but it is already crying foul at what it calls Macron’s “illiberal” moves. “President Macron is trying to lock down our institutions, hoping to keep control over them and extend his influence,” Bardella, the party’s “Plan B” presidential candidate, said Wednesday. Asked at a European summit on Thursday about his efforts to safeguard institutions before he leaves office, Macron said it was an “important” question but declined to answer as it was not on the day’s agenda. The French president has courted similar controversy with other personnel moves. He was criticized for injecting politics into the French bureaucracy last year by naming a political ally with limited legal training to lead France’s highest constitutional authority. And Macron’s pick to represent France on the European Commission in 2024, Stéphane Séjourné, also drew scrutiny given their close ties. France boasts one of Europe’s most powerful presidencies, but that doesn’t mean its next leader will find it easy to remove or ignore Macron’s appointees. The personnel moves will pose “a challenge for Marine Le Pen’s grand vision of real upheaval,” French constitutional expert Benjamin Morel said. “President Macron is trying to lock down our institutions, hoping to keep control over them and extend his influence,” Jordan Bardella, the party’s “Plan B” presidential candidate, said Wednesday. | Valentine Chapuis/AFP via Getty Images “The system is built with a number of safeguards. These might not secure Macron’s legacy, but they would limit her executive power even if it appears almost absolute in France.” NOT CHILD’S PLAY More battleground appointments appear on the horizon. Macron will need to choose a new head of the State Council — a key institution that acts as both government legal adviser and judge when it comes to litigation that pits citizens against the state — when the body’s current head reaches the mandatory retirement age of 68 in May. “Administrative law is not child’s play, it deals with immigration disputes, public order, police … all topics that are very inflammable,” Morel said. Within the EU, governments want to bring talks on the bloc’s next seven-year budget to a close before 2027, a European Parliament official told POLITICO. And a debate is looming over whether to try to clinch the renewal of António Costa’s term as European Council president before it expires — shortly after the presidential election in France, the official said. “It’s going to become an issue, that’s for sure,” the official said. “You need unanimity, and [Hungary PM Viktor] Orbán, if he’s still there, and the Czechs are in the same group as Le Pen.” Paul de Villepin contributed to this report.

LONDON — Keir Starmer will strive for “maximum transparency” when releasing files on Peter Mandelson’s appointment as British ambassador to the U.S., a senior U.K. minister said Wednesday. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the prime minister wants to release as much information into the public domain about how Mandelson was appointed, his correspondence with ministers and his subsequent sacking last September over the former Labour peer’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “The prime minister’s going for maximum transparency here,” Streeting, a former friend of Mandelson, told Sky, though added the PM is “obviously drawing a line” by “not releasing information where it might compromise our national security and our security services, or where there may be information in there that might undermine international relations with other countries.” The opposition Conservatives have put forward a humble address — a parliamentary message to King Charles that was favored by Starmer during his time as leader of the opposition — calling for “all papers” relating to Mandelson’s appointment last year to be published. These include “due diligence which was passed to Number 10,” conflict of interest forms over his work in Russia and China, and correspondence (including electronic communications) between Mandelson, ministers and the PM’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney — who encouraged Starmer to send the then Labour peer to Washington. The government has published an amendment to the address accepting the Tories’ request, with the caveat that it will exclude “papers prejudicial to U.K. national security or international relations.” U.K. lawmakers will debate the substance of what should be released this afternoon. “What we’ve seen in recent days also is a prime minister acting rapidly to make sure that Peter Mandelson is stripped of all of the titles and privileges that were conferred on him through public service,” Streeting told the BBC, calling his behavior “so jaw-droppingly stupid and outrageous.” The Metropolitan Police confirmed Tuesday evening that Mandelson is under investigation for alleged misconduct in public office after it appeared he leaked sensitive government discussions at the height of the financial crisis to the late financier. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation on Tuesday evening. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims. And in a Times Newspaper interview that was conducted before the most recent batch of Epstein files were released, Mandelson attempted to explain his historic association with the disgraced financier. “I don’t know what his motives were — probably mixed — but he provided guidance to help me navigate out of the world of politics and into the world of commerce and finance,” Mandelson told the newspaper. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation on Tuesday evening. Mandelson also resigned from the House of Lords and left Labour following the latest tranche of correspondence in the Epstein Files.

A group of researchers is suing Elon Musk’s X to gain access to data on Hungary’s upcoming elections to assess the risk of interference, they told POLITICO. Hungary is set to hold a highly contentious election in April as populist nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faces the toughest challenge yet to his 16-year grip on power. The lawsuit by Democracy Reporting International (DRI) comes after the civil society group, in November, applied for access to X data to study risks to the Hungarian election, including from disinformation. After X rejected their request, the researchers took the case to the Berlin Regional Court, which said it is not competent to rule on the case. DRI — with the support of the Society for Civil Rights and law firm Hausfeld — is now appealing to a higher Berlin court, which has set a hearing date of Feb. 17. Sites including X are obliged to grant researchers access to data under the European Union’s regulatory framework for social media platforms, the Digital Services Act, to allow external scrutiny of how platforms handle major online risks, including election interference. The European Commission fined X €40 million for failing to provide data access in December, as part of a €120 million levy for non-compliance with transparency obligations. The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge to X after the researchers went down a similar path last year to demand access to data related to the German elections in February 2025. A three-month legal drama, which saw a judge on the case dismissed after X successfully claimed they had a conflict of interest, ended with the court throwing out the case. The platform said that was a “comprehensive victory” because “X’s unwavering commitment to protecting user data and defending its fundamental right to due process has prevailed.” The researchers also claimed a win: The court threw the case out on the basis of a lack of urgency, as the elections were well in the past, said DRI. The groups say the ruling sets a legal precedent for civil society groups to take platforms to court where the researchers are located, rather than in the platforms’ legal jurisdictions (which, in X’s case, would be Ireland). X did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment on Monday.

ABOARD THE PRIME MINISTER’S PLANE TO BEIJING — Keir Starmer rejected his Canadian counterpart’s call for mid-sized countries to band together in the face of unpredictable global powers — and insisted his “common sense” British approach will do just fine. The British prime minister arrives in China Wednesday for a trip aimed at rebooting the U.K.’s relationship with the Asian superpower. He’s the latest Western leader to make the visit — which will include a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping — after trips by Carney and France’s Emmanuel Macron. Carney used a searing speech at the World Economic Forum last week to warn of the “rupture” caused by “great powers” acting in their own self-interest. While he did not namecheck Donald Trump’s administration, the speech riled the U.S. president, who insisted: “Canada lives because of the United States.” The Canadian PM had called for middle powers to work together to “build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.” Starmer was pressed on those remarks on board his flight to China Tuesday. Asked whether he agreed that the old global order is dead — and whether smaller powers need to team up to push back at the U.S. and China, Starmer defended his own policy of trying to build bridges with Trump, Xi and the European Union all at once. “I’m a pragmatist, a British pragmatist applying common sense, and therefore I’m pleased that we have a good relationship with the U.S. on defense, security, intelligence and on trade and prosperity,” he says. “It’s very important that we maintain that good relationship.” He added: “Equally, we are moving forward with a better relationship with the EU. We had a very good summit last year with 10 strands of agreement. “We’ll have another summit this year with the EU, which I hope will be iterative, as well as following through on what we’ve already agreed. “And I’ve consistently said I’m not choosing between the U.S. and Europe. I’m really glad that the UK has got good relations with both.” Starmer’s government — which faces pressure from opposition parties back home as it re-engages with China — has stressed that it wants to cooperate, compete with and challenge Beijing when necessary, as it bids to build economic ties to aid the sputtering U.K. economy. “Obviously, China is the second biggest economy in the world, one of our biggest trading partners,” the British PM — who is flying with an entourage of British CEOs and business reps — said Tuesday. “And under the last government, we veered from the golden age to the ice age. And what I want to do is follow through on the approach I’ve set out a number of times now … which is a comprehensive and consistent approach to China. “I do think there are opportunities, but obviously we will never compromise national security in taking those opportunities.”