BRITAIN’S CHINA CRISIS: Starmer Fights for His Political Life as Security Vetting Scandal Exposes Cost of Labour’s Bet on Mandelson and Beijing

The Bureau has reported for months on Lord Mandelson’s undisclosed dealings with Chinese state-linked financial entities and his email correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein.

LONDON — Sir Keir Starmer faces calls from every mainstream opposition party to resign, after a bombshell Guardian investigation revealed that Lord Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting before being appointed British Ambassador to the United States — and that Starmer’s Foreign Office had overruled that recommendation using a rarely invoked authority.

The Prime Minister claims he was kept in the dark, and will fight for his political life in Parliament, as critics across the floor charge that his position is ludicrous and untenable.

The department’s permanent under-secretary, Sir Olly Robbins, was sacked late Thursday night after both Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper lost confidence in him following the new disclosures about the vetting process. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch sharpened her attack today — noting acidly that Starmer had now sacked the chief of staff who recommended Mandelson, the cabinet secretary who overruled the vetting, and the Foreign Office’s most senior mandarin, yet remained the one man in the chain who approved the appointment and the last one standing.

The view from the press gallery was captured by journalist David Maddox, who noted he had exposed the vetting failure in Downing Street seven months ago — making the government’s claim that it learned of it only this week impossible. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey declared Starmer “must go” if it was confirmed he had lied to the British public. The Green Party and Reform joined the chorus.

The Prime Minister’s position is now more precarious than at any prior point in his tenure — and the vetting scandal does not appear, as Downing Street has tried to frame it, to be merely a bureaucratic failure inside the Foreign Office.

It is the latest piece in a pattern that has been building since The Bureau and others began documenting the collapse of a generational Beijing spy case inside Westminster, along with the full scope of Mandelson’s undisclosed relationships — with Jeffrey Epstein, with Chinese state-linked financial institutions, and with a Beijing political network inside the nation’s elites that Britain’s own security services apparently concluded posed unacceptable risks.

Mandelson was initially denied clearance in late January 2025 after a highly confidential background check by security officials — but Starmer had already publicly announced the appointment. Faced with a dilemma, the Foreign Office used a rarely exercised authority to override the security recommendation and grant Mandelson what is known as “developed vetting.”

For months, Starmer had insisted due process was followed, stating in February that “security vetting, carried out independently by the security services which is an intensive exercise, gave [Mandelson] clearance for the role.”

That statement now sits at the center of a potential parliamentary contempt proceeding. British documents released related to the vetting process confirmed that Starmer chose Mandelson despite written warnings that the appointment could expose the government to “reputational risk.”

The security services’ concern almost certainly centered on territory The Bureau has been mapping since February: Mandelson’s private dealings with Chinese state-linked financial entities, his role in establishing a Beijing lobbying network while still a serving Cabinet minister, and his communications with Jeffrey Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis — communications that are now the subject of an active Metropolitan Police criminal investigation.

That the vetting scandal and the spy case collapse are part of the same story has become harder to deny.

The Sunday Times revealed that Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Collins — the government’s sole witness in the collapsed Westminster espionage prosecution — privately acknowledged that the decision not to describe China as an “ongoing threat” was “political.”

The paper further disclosed that Jonathan Powell, a former banking executive who rose to become Starmer’s National Security Adviser, chaired a meeting in September 2025 attended by Cabinet Secretary Christopher Wormald and MI5 Director-General Sir Ken McCallum, in which, according to the Sunday Times account, “the general theme of discussion was how the UK’s relationship with China was going to be damaged by this case.” If accurate, that account directly contradicts Starmer’s assurance to Parliament that “no minister or special adviser was involved” in the decision.

The Bureau reported in February on the tranche of Mandelson-Epstein correspondence released by a United States Congressional committee — a cache of emails that depicted, in Mandelson’s own words, the architecture of his Beijing network and the transactional logic underpinning it.

In emails from 2009 and 2010, Mandelson appeared to pass on to Epstein assessments of potential UK policy measures, discuss a planned tax on bankers’ bonuses, and confirm details of an imminent eurozone bailout package before any public announcement. More significant for British national security were emails showing Mandelson building his Beijing network while still serving as Business Secretary.

Writing to Desmond Shum, a Shanghai tycoon with documented access to the Politburo, on August 30, 2010, Mandelson described wanting to stay on in Beijing “unofficially to meet people and network for the future” — specifically noting that he wanted “to be independent of the Embassy.” Epstein’s reply to that plan was succinct: “STAY, you should move there for two years.”

By April 2011, Mandelson confirmed to Epstein that China International Capital Corporation — a Beijing investment bank operating under Communist Party guidance — had retained his newly founded lobbying firm, Global Counsel. “CICC retain us cos think we have something to offer Chinese,” he wrote. Another thread of emails revealed how a four-way network was established between Mandelson, Shum, Epstein, and CITIC — a Chinese military intelligence-linked investment fund — and how Mandelson noted that “Henry K,” almost certainly Henry Kissinger, had advised his firm to position itself as intermediaries for parties with commercial disputes with Beijing.

The Mandelson vetting crisis lands inside a broader pattern of Chinese Communist Party penetration of British political institutions that Starmer’s government has, at each juncture, appeared to minimize rather than confront.

The case against two British men accused of spying for China between 2021 and 2023 — Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher, and Christopher Berry, a teacher and consultant — was dropped last year reportedly within the context of the former banker Jonathan Powell’s advice.

Washington’s China hawks framed the collapse as linked to a pattern of British accommodation of Beijing — a pattern exemplified by Starmer’s approval of China’s new London mega-embassy near the Tower of London, which proceeded over the objections of Five Eyes allies, British security services, Hong Kong democracy advocates, and the United States House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

Then came the Scotland Yard arrests of March 4.

Counter-terrorism officers arrested three men in London and Wales on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service, including David Taylor, the husband of Labour Member of Parliament Joani Reid — a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Taylor, a lobbyist and director of the Asia House think tank, was accused of assisting a foreign intelligence service. Reid voluntarily suspended herself from the Labour whip pending the investigation.

Since then, a transatlantic coalition of lawmakers has demanded that the 48 Group Club — a London-based private organization with 500 members and deep access to the current British government — produce records documenting its relationships with individuals tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, the covert influence arm Beijing uses to groom foreign elites and shape the political environments of democratic nations.

The April 9 letter was addressed to the organization’s chairman, Jack Perry Jr., and signed by four senior lawmakers from the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, including Moolenaar and Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Central to their concern is alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo, whose United Kingdom tribunal proceedings last year revealed he had cultivated an “unusual degree of trust” with Prince Andrew while serving as an honorary member of the 48 Group. British security officials argued that Yang’s membership in an organization with prominent United Kingdom figures could be exploited by China for political interference.