Britain’s ambassador to Washington said Sir Keir Starmer was “on the ropes” amid the fallout over the appointment of Peter Mandelson and suggested Labour could “remove” him after next month’s local elections, according to reports.
In what will be seen as highly outspoken comments for a career diplomat, a leaked recording released as King Charles visits the US appears to show Sir Christian Turner saying that Lord Peter Mandelson and “potentially the prime minister” had been “brought down” by the affair.
Sir Christian, who replaced Lord Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US after the latter was sacked over his links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, also criticised America’s political system, saying it was “extraordinary” that the scandal “hasn’t touched anybody” on the other side of the Atlantic.
He also said that America’s only “special relationship” – which has been under significant strain for months – was with “probably Israel”, not the UK.
The recording, made in mid-February at an event with UK students visiting Washington shortly after Sir Christian took over the role, was published by the Financial Times, which said it obtained it this week.
During a question-and-answer session, Sir Christian said it was “extraordinary” that the scandal over convicted sex offender Epstein had “brought down a senior member of the royal family [Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor], a British ambassador to Washington, potentially the prime minister, and yet here in the US, it really hasn’t touched anybody”.
He said it was an “interesting question” about the “different levels of accountability in our systems”.
On Lord Mandelson, Sir Christian said it was a “crisis” that “has nearly brought down the government and ended the prime minister’s tenure”.
He said of Sir Keir: “At one stage, he was pretty clearly on the ropes.” The PM’s future looked “quite touch and go”, he added.
Labour’s rules set a high bar to remove a sitting prime minister, he added. Reaching such a bar was “still quite difficult”, and Starmer was “a stubborn guy” who would be unlikely to quit, the ambassador said.
However, he added: “The moment I would look to is the May elections. If Labour does very badly... I suspect the party will be able to go over that threshold and remove him – seems to me to be the conventional thinking.”
He went on: “If they do OK, he might carry on going... That’s just for me as a citizen speculating because I have to serve whomever is there.”
Sir Christian also said of Lord Mandelson that “the vetting thing’s a bit of a red herring”.
“The problem was he had a bunch of associations that were embarrassing to him and the government that had not been revealed,” he added. “And, arguably, once they were uncovered, the prime minister moved to sack him.”
He also suggested he disliked the phrase “special relationship” in relation to the US, describing it as “quite nostalgic, it’s quite backwards-looking, and it has a lot of baggage about it”.
He added: “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States – and that is probably Israel.”
His comments were made in the weeks running up to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
However, he added that the UK-US link was “so strong”, adding: “There is a deep history and affinity between us. Particularly on defence and security, we are intertwined.”
But he added that: “The relationship will carry on, if you want, being ‘special’, but I think it’s going to have to be different.”
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “These were private, informal comments made to a group of UK sixth-form students visiting the US in early February. They are certainly not any reflection of the UK government’s position.”
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