Ministers rally around Keir Starmer as leadership questions grow over Mandelson saga – UK politics live

Keir Starmer would have withdrawn Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US if he had known he had not passed security vetting, Liz Kendall said, even if it was close to Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Kendall told Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One that Starmer would have rescinded the job offer if he had been told – regardless of the timing ahead of Trump taking up the Presidency.

She said: “If the prime minister had known that UK security vetting had not cleared him, the appointment would have been withdrawn.

“It would’t have mattered how close that was to the president’s inauguration or any of that, I believe that because there is no way that the prime minister would have continued with it, had he known the facts that he now knows.”