Mitigating Mandelson risks would have been impossible, says former MI6 chief

A former head of MI6 has said it would have been “totally impossible” for the Foreign Office to put in place mitigations to manage Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel when he was the UK’s ambassador to the US. On Wednesday, the Guardian revealed some of the concerns that contributed to security officials recommending that Mandelson be denied developed vetting clearance in early 2025. Olly Robbins, the former permanent secretary who granted Mandelson clearance anyway, has said his decision was based on “management actions” being put in place to mitigate the risks identified by officials. However Richard Dearlove, who ran Britain’s Secret Intelligence service, MI6 , between 1999 and 2004, said he did not understand how such mitigations would work. “The whole thing is completely extraordinary,” he said. “What mitigations could you put in place? The only mitigations I can think of is that certain papers that are circulated in the Washington embassy cannot be viewed by the ambassador. …