Downing Street on Tuesday denied a claim from a former official that it had applied pressure on civil servants to approve the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK envoy to Washington and seemed to dismiss security concerns. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer remained mired in a scandal over his decision to appoint Mandelson as Britain’s envoy to the United States before sacking him last year over links to the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Olly Robbins, the most senior foreign ministry official until he was fired last week over the scandal, told MPs Tuesday that Starmer’s office had a “dismissive attitude” towards the security vetting for its US envoy pick. There was a “very strong expectation … coming from Number 10 (Downing Street) that he (Mandelson) needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible”, Robbins told a watchdog parliamentary committee. “My office, the foreign secretary’s office, were under constant pressure, there was an atmosphere of constant chasing.” Read more‘Lame excuse’: British papers not convinced by PM Starmer’s Mandelson defence …