Robbins revelations leave Starmer scrambling

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:14Arlie Robbins, the senior civil servant sacked over the Mandelson saga, has just torn the Prime Minister's defense to shreds.

1:22Camilla: He has set out how Number 10 tried to stop Mandelson being vetted at all and put constant pressure on officials to, quote, just effing approve the appointment. Also, Labour peer Morris Glassman says Starmer must go and tells us that growing numbers of Labour backbenchers agree with him. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

1:55Camilla: Tim, the Daily T is going on the road and we have a new bus driver in Ollie Robbins who has proved so adept at reversing over the Prime Minister after he was thrown under the wheels of said bus. Very good. And we will get onto that in a minute, but we have something exciting to announce. Guess who we've got for our Monday the 27th line-up in London? Tell me. Reform Zia Yusuf. Wow. James Cleverley from the Tories. Ka-ching. Rachel Reeves' right-hand man. James Murray, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Very good. We're going to have some kind of three-way ding-dong. You and I are the referees.

2:29It's two Jameses and a Zia.

2:31Camilla: Well, what's not to love? I just want them to be just slinging mud in each other's directions while we look on. You, the Daily Tea audience, will have a chance to ask questions if you attend the event on Monday. So make sure you get your ticket now, which can be found in the link in the episode description or on the Telegraph website. We're all over the website. You and me are big faces. We are going to be in Cardiff on Tuesday, Warwick on Wednesday with Jacob Rees-Mogg. Wow. He's going to be taking on the students there. And then Thursday's event in Worthing is going to be fun. It's going to be a right royal daily tea because we're going to have Phil Dampier, who is a royal reporter extraordinaire, written a number of books, including What's in the Queen's Handbag?

3:14Camilla: And let's describe her as the irrepressible Lady Colleen Campbell, who is a purveyor of royal gossip. Oh, yes. She's fun. I'm slightly worried. We may need to put that particular podcast through robust legal vetting. Yes. Speaking of which, do you see what I've just done there? Very clever. Olly Robbins. Yes. Faced the Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Emily Thornberry. Your favourite. Yes. She was amazing. Emily Thornberry brought to this exactly the right mix of authority and camp, which is what made this country great. It was Rumpole of the Bailey meet Butlins. It was. I had said in my sketch on Monday that she had been dressed by Star Trek in the comments, but today there was a little more Games of Thrones.

4:00She even had a brooch that indicated loyalty to some terrifying blood-soaked house. And she opened by striking an almost therapeutic tone. Yes. It was as if she was saying to him, point to where on the dole Keir Starmer stabbed you. So it wasn't inquisitorial, is my point. her tone was kind as if she was inviting ollie robbins to open up and be as honest as possible and i think that was very clever because it persuaded a civil servant to talk increasingly in personal terms which we should get which we should get to and things can go very differently people forget that in 2016 ollie robbins who's a career civil servant and has worked at the treasury home office foreign office in 2016 he was working at the home office and he was called before the Home Affairs Committee to talk about the budget for the border force.

4:52And his answers were judged to be so elliptical and poor that he was asked to leave the meeting after 20 minutes.

5:00Camilla: Wow. So what a difference. I know. 10 years makes. Maybe he's had some select committee trading. Yeah, it is funny how this bête noire of Brexiteers has now become the hero. Yes. That could be capable of bringing Starmer down. He was Theresa May Sherpa during Brexit. And James from The Spectator joked that the mood among Tories this morning is, can I surprise you? I like Ollie Robbins. I know. Because they thought he was the man who was undermining Brexit in the late 2010s. He was the architect of the Chequers deal that prompted the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson. And we'll bring this conversation full circle with the Johnson factor a little bit later.

5:39So he came to this committee under a lot of pressure. His reputation was under attack too, because the implication of what Number 10 was saying and what many people intuited for several days was that the Foreign Office knew something that it didn't tell Number 10, that it deliberately withheld it. And Starmer is trying to put the blame squarely on his shoulders, which is why he had to go. And so Ollie Robbins is fighting no longer for his job, he's lost that, but for his reputation at the end of a long career to prove that he didn't undermine the prime minister and the responsibility for the decision lay with him.

6:16At the same time, he has that very civil service style, which I find incredibly irritating, of always talking in polite ambiguities. So the classic civil service phrase, which he used a couple of times is, I was not privy to that conversation.

6:31Camilla: Yes. Where do they teach people to speak like this? I know. But then, I mean, career civil servant, having to be diplomatic. Yes. Having served lots of different prime ministers. And not wanting to give away too much. He doesn't want to name names of his staff. He doesn't want to blame his staff. Which is in stark contrast to the prime minister. In stark contrast to Starman. We'll discuss all this. And also aware that he's defending the reputation of the institution as well. Yes. And throughout this, he defended the processes too, even though the government is saying the process is broken. I think this was a very clever example of someone starting from quite a weak hand and turning it into a positive and giving just enough of themselves, showing just enough emotion, not to come across like a train wreck.

7:14No. But a highly educated, professional man who's telling you as much as he can to give you as clear a picture as possible of why it's not his fault.

7:26Camilla: And also a human being who has been at the centre of an absolute media storm. Yes. A couple of occasions we did see him sort of well up and he reflected on how he couldn't get a coffee without being chased down the road and the impact on his family. It says so much about the Prime Minister that he somehow managed to make a chief civil servant look human. Yes, exactly. Let's go through the bombshells then, Tim. Bombshell number one. Number 10 tried to prevent Mandelson from having any vetting at all. We did not know that before. I'm afraid I don't think at the point of his appointment and four days thereafter, it was actually a given that he would be vetted.

8:06Again, if you look at the documents submitted under the Humble Address, there is no stipulation from Number 10 that he should be vetted. The welcome that was sent to him immediately afterwards doesn't say, Welcome to the Foreign Office, subject to vetting. The announcement put out on the 20th of December says that he will be out early in the new year. It does not say subject to vetting. A position taken from the Cabinet Office was that there was no need to vet Mandelson. He was a member of the House of Lords. He was a Privy Councillor. The risks that attending his appointment were well known and had been made clear to the Prime Minister before appointment.

8:49Camilla: Bombshell number two. Number 10 didn't actually consult the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office before the appointment. I hope that if I'd been in the system at the time those decisions were being made, first I hope that Number 10 or the Cabinet Office might have wanted to consult me. I don't think at the time the Foreign Office was consulted. And then I hope my advice would have been that's adding unnecessarily to your risk, Prime Minister. Bombshell number three. And this gives us the context because the question that remains unanswered and it was unanswered by the Prime Minister yesterday when he paid tribute to Epstein's victims, is why on earth, if you care about Epstein's victims, did you appoint this man in the first place?

9:34Camilla: And bombshell number three explains it quite clearly that actually number 10 were agitating for this despite the concerns that were raised. I'm afraid I walked into a situation in which there was already a very, very strong expectation, and you would have seen the papers released already under the Humble Address, that coming from Number 10, that he needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible. The very first formal communication of this to my predecessor from Number 10 private office, being that they wanted all this done at pace and Mandelson in post before inauguration. So that's the situation I faced.

10:14So I'm afraid what that translated into for my team in the Foreign Office and certainly the handover briefing I was getting as I arrived at post was what I felt was a generally dismissive attitude to his vetting clearance. I think throughout January, honestly, my office, the Foreign Secretary's office, were under constant pressure. There was an atmosphere of constant chasing. The perspective of the civil service is supposed to be, I am not the elected person. I am here to facilitate the elected people and what they want to do.

10:57Camilla: Advisors advise, prime ministers decide. Right. So something that kept coming up was the committee wanted to know whether or not Robbins and the Foreign Office had been shown what we've seen in the last few days, which is a series of coloured boxes. Red, amber, green. Right. For Peter Mandelson. Yeah. And what we were led to believe was that the Foreign Office had been shown a big tick or an X in the red box that shows you cannot hire him or you should not hire him. Of course, you cannot hire him, but you should not hire him because the point of the process is not to disqualify a candidate, but to advise.

11:34Now, what Robbins is saying in this committee hearing is it never said, I never saw that box. I'm unfamiliar with that document. What I was told was that the vetting people lent against hiring him. Now, that really kicks it into the realm of it's a political choice. Yes. The vetting service is saying, perhaps not. But that's vague enough. It's not a, oh my goodness, no.

12:05Camilla: Yes. And of course, we don't know the details of why perhaps not. So it could be perhaps not because of stuff we all already knew and the prime minister must have known and has decided anyway to give him the job. And it might not have been flagging the Epstein stuff. It might have been flagging the links to China and Russia. Right. And then on top of that, to take what you've already said, Robbins wasn't in position when the appointment was made The appointment had been made Number 10 is pushing for it The point is that if a civil servant's job is to make things happen Yes And he's being told it's not a definite no It's a choice And the Prime Minister has already made the choice It's not unreasonable for him to have not gone to the Prime Minister and said You absolutely must not appoint that person He's presented with a fait accompli He executes it under the pressure the constant pressure of number 10.

12:53Camilla: So basically, the Prime Minister has sacked Olly Robbins for doing exactly what number 10 told him to do. And what a civil servant is really supposed to do. Contra to the narrative we've been spun by the government in the last few days, which is the vetting said you absolutely must not hire him and the Foreign Office, for reasons we cannot possibly understand, chose not to share that information with us. Yes, we've now learnt that the opposite is true. So let's get into how due process actually wasn't followed at all. And I think it is exemplified by this exchange on the committee. Going back to the point where Sir Philip was still permanent undersecretary, it is reported by, I think it's Sam Coates, that Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff, rang Sir Philip and said, in terms stronger than those that I can use before the watershed...

13:48I think you should. Well, I'll just say that it was just approve it with terms stronger than that. Does that accord with your impression?

13:58Camilla: Just f***ing approve it. I'm sorry, turning around and saying just effing approve it is the absolute antithesis of following due process. But Emily Thornberry nearly said just effing say it to that poor Tory MP who looked as though he was being forced to curse his own mother. I love how she forced him to say it. Well, she said it. Or tried to. She said it. And then when she had said it, I mean, he is one of the whitest people I've ever seen outside of the Arctic. He was basically fluorescent. Somebody send him some tanning drops. But yeah, I know a button was flicked and he went bright Ribena red.

14:38Right. That is classic Thornberry. And you can tell that she had been waiting for about 30 minutes to drop that F-bomb. And I was impressed that she had held it in for that long.

14:47Camilla: She knew the F-bomb was coming. It was just a matter of time. But again, the contrast between the careful choice of words of Ollie Robbins and that little insight into how political staff speak more of the Malcolm Tucker school is really interesting. It just conjures an image in your head of these inscrutable mandarins being shouted at by political appointees, just saying, effing, get on with it. Can we also just give some context to the unanswered question of why Peter Mandelson? Let's just listen to Keir Starmer's gushing tribute to the man who had twice been sacked from government on the day before he met Trump for the first time at the White House after he won a second presidency.

15:33There's a real buzz around Washington right now. You can sense that there's a new leader in town, that he's a true one-off, a pioneer in business and in politics. Many people love him, others love to hate him, but to us, he's just Peter.

15:59Camilla: I think it's important just to note this whole idea that no one else could do this job and the closeness of the labour machine to Mandelson and the indication, and we'll come up to probably the biggest sort of revelation in the whole of this committee in just a moment, how, despite Starmer claiming to be a man of integrity and decency and trying to end the sort of charmocracy of the past, that this was also just a case of jobs for the boys. And it involved a risk. And Peter Karl has said it was a risk and we knew it was a risk. So I come back to when we're wondering why then would civil servants not bang the table and say, you must not appoint this person, something they're not supposed to do anyway.

16:50Why would they not do that? Well, because they would reasonably calculate that whatever came up in vetting, the government knew about and chose to take the risk anyway. Yes. And therefore it all comes back to the original political decision. And this, I think, is the key point at the heart of the whole drama. What does it say about Keir Starmer's judgment that the man he picked to be ambassador to the United States failed or half failed the vetting?

17:19Camilla: Yes. And by the way, what does it say that the man who failed or half-failed vetting, not only for his associations with Jeffrey Epstein, but also with Russia and China, what does it say about the Prime Minister that despite those red flags being waved, he then went on to conduct a charm offensive with Beijing? Right, right. Yes, yes. But the revelation that Number 10 also put pressure on Ollie Robbins to give Matthew Doyle an ambassadorial job is absolutely staggering. There were several discussions initiated by Number 10 with me about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle, who was then the Prime Minister's Director of Communications.

18:10and I was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then Foreign Secretary, which was uncomfortable. Reminds me of Matthew Doyle is this...

18:21Camilla: Former Director of Communications for Number 10, who was later revealed to have been a close friend of a man who went on to be convicted of paedophilia. Yes. So we've got the PM. And I'm not saying there's a pattern there, because it was complicated. I know it was complicated. And other people campaigned for this man too, who denied the allegations against him. And there's no evidence that Doyle remained an associate of his after his conviction, etc. But judgment, Tim. Judgment, judgment, judgment. A man who is a former director of public prosecutions has now been revealed to have agitated for two friends of convicted paedophiles to get cushy jobs.

18:56Camilla: And Doyle was sent to the Lords as well. One somewhere else. What does that say about his judgment? And second of all, why was Ollie Robbins told to keep this idea of appointing Doyle to some embassy somewhere across the world secret from the then foreign secretary? That again suggests this is kind of, you know, people rubbing backs and we don't want Lammy to agitate against this. And as Robbins points out, that could have really peed off whichever diplomat was going to be replaced by this political appointee. And you wonder why there's no moral hazard or why it takes so long to fix things in the public sector, because that's basically what politics is, is the public sector, where if you fail, you are rewarded by being sent to be the ambassador for Micronesia.

19:41Camilla: Yes. Yes. You fail upwards and outwards. I know. But even if you fail, hang on a minute, though, but even if you fail and you're twice sacked from government, you actually get the plum ambassadorial role of all, not least in the advent of Trump 2.0. which is Washington. And newspapers by the Bizarre Convention of Little England are still required to refer to you as Lord. Yes. I wish we would stop doing that. Let's stop doing that. Let's just hear Robbins saying or summarising whether he regretted what has happened. I regret that this process was not done before announcement. I regret that the due diligence process, which threw up, as I understand it, serious reputational risks, didn't colour the Prime Minister's judgement in making the appointment.

20:34There's quite a lot about this situation over the last year and a half I regret. I had no regrets about the work of my brilliant team and the judgement that we came to. Stark contrast for Starmer, who despite running for his present job saying I would never blame things on my staff, has blamed things on countless staff. Yes. Sacked lots of ministers, sacked lots of the people who work from him, from Morgan McSweeney through to Doyle, and is always very quick to find someone else responsible for what he's done. Whereas Robbins, insisting, this is not about the process or the institution or the fine people who work for me.

21:14This is about me. And here I am taking, giving my account of what happened.

21:19Camilla: Yes. Do we think that cabinet loyalty is going to remain? We discussed this yesterday. How could the prime minister be ousted? And until this point, we hadn't really heard too much dissent from his colleagues. Ed Miliband this morning telling Sky News the following. Prime ministers make errors. Prime ministers are fallible. Prime ministers are human. You know, as you know, I steered well clear of Peter Mandelson when I became Labour leader in 2010. But people make mistakes. And, you know, the point about a mistake is do you fess up to it and say, yeah, I made an error? And he couldn't have been, you know, he's been clear on a number of occasions, including yesterday in the House of Commons.

22:08You said that you stayed clear of Peter Mandelson when you were a Labour leader. What went through your mind when you saw we'd been appointed as US ambassador? Well, that it could blow up, that it could go wrong. Did you say that to anyone? I had a conversation with David Lammy about it before the appointment, and I said I was worried about it. I do want to say one thing, though, which is... What did David Lammy say then? Well, I think he was worried about it too. Look, I think... I do want to say one thing. Sure, sure. But of course, and look, a judgment was made. But I just want to say one thing about this, which is Peter Mandelson was a very familiar figure in the sort of 30-year history of the Labour Party.

22:53And it's almost like that familiarity kind of meant that people sort of, it's almost like his flaws and so on just got almost sort of faded into the background. And that was obviously wrong.

23:06Camilla: So we now have this little light just trickling up to the surface of Miliband saying, well, I advised against it. And I think now Lammy coming forward saying, well, he had concerns, although, of course, publicly he decreed this to be a great appointment. So I think Lammy's on slightly tricky ground, but whatever. I'm not sure whether the likes of very upstanding Bridget Philipson is going to be able to hold her tongue. I was born on a council estate. I've improved my lot. I don't like Jobs for the Boys, sort of boys club downing streets. You know, Angela Rayner's out on the campaign trail yesterday.

23:51Camilla: Yes. How long is it going to be before we start getting little kind of tones of discontent? Well, the official Labour line is that this isn't coming up on the doorstep, that this is a Westminster obsession. What? Plus, they are saying that this is about the failure of officials and process, and it's exactly the sort of thing Labour was elected to fix. The mood in Parliament on Monday, I can't speak to Tuesday because I haven't been in, was that this was embarrassing for the prime minister, but not the reason for him to go. That really nothing substantially new had come out of it that moves the scandal further down the road of pushing the prime minister out.

24:35That may change with Ollie Robbins because it once again makes the prime minister's story that I wasn't told look unfeasible.

24:45Camilla: Also, there's something technical that needs to be pointed out here. The Prime Minister's excuse for not immediately correcting the record on Wednesday after he had learned last Tuesday night of the failed vetting was that he needed to carry out a thorough investigation, that he needed time. He needed the time between finding out on Tuesday and Monday to put his statement together, having asked all the relevant people what went on. Why then was he so quick to sack Ollie Robbins? If he'd carried out a thorough investigation, he wouldn't have thrown Robbins under the bush that quickly because he wouldn't have had all of the facts.

25:24True. I'm not sure Labour MPs have much affection for Ollie Robbins. It has to be said. And also many of the people who they blame for this have already gone. And the prime minister's tone of government has already changed. He is moving a little more to the left. He's being a bit more combative with reform in the Tories. He's essentially going towards where the party wants him to be. The people who have spoken out against him are mostly the usual suspects, the left. And we should point out that Emily Thornberry is someone who should have been promoted in a just world. She would be in the cabinet.

26:04But she was overlooked by Steyer.

26:06Camilla: Well, do you know why? Don't you remember? I think I had a role in kiboshing Emily Thornberry's return to a Labour cabinet. They were in opposition. It was the campaign. I asked her whether VAT on private school fees ran the risk of making state school classes bigger. She said yes. I mean, she gave an honest answer, as she often does. And of course, the whole Labour machine closed down and said, no, we don't want her in any future government. Well, there you go. But the most important thing in all of this is we are only, my mass is bad, but let's say two weeks from the May local elections. Yes.

26:43Why would you get rid of Keir Starmer right now?

26:46Camilla: And also, why would you take on the job facing a bloodbath? Precisely. So whatever people are calculating, including Ed Miliband, and I do agree with you that that looked calculated, they're not going to act until at least after the May elections so that he can take full responsibility for that. On whether this is of interest on the doorstep even if it's just the general idea that a Prime Minister who claims to have followed due process hasn't I think it's hugely damaging. Isn't Kemi Bade not quite right here in her summary of this morning on X? I quote The evidence from Ollie Robbins is devastating to Keir Starmer.

27:29Camilla: It is clear that Number 10 not only made the appointment before vetting was completed, but that Mandelson was already acting as the ambassador before the vetting, even seeing highly classified documents. With this and the constant pressure Number 10 applied to the appointment and their dismissive attitude towards vetting Mandelson, it is now absolutely clear that full due process was not followed. Keir Starmer has misled the House. And I think that the public is quite forgiving, actually, when people, politicians particularly, surprise us all and perform a mea culpa. He didn't do that. He fell short of that yesterday.

28:10Camilla: And I think that's going to prove to be his undoing. Yes, he said, in one breath, I take full responsibility for the appointment of Peter Mandelson, and I now accept it's a mistake, except he hasn't taken full responsibility, because if he had, he'd be resigning himself. And second of all, him not saying that he had inadvertently misled the House when the civil servant at the centre of all this has provided a great deal of evidence to suggest that actually he has. I'm sorry, that is going to come back to haunt him. PMQ's tomorrow is going to be absolutely box office. Yes. Also, the public might not be following the minutiae, but I think they will be concerned about how this makes Britain look globally.

28:50A good rule of thumb for what the world thinks about us is the website of the New York Times. And I can tell you the New York Times is covering this story, right? It's up there with Brexit as one of those Britain's gone mad stories. And we don't have a tradition in this country of appointing celebrities as ambassadors. We don't. America does that. Yes. Which is why, for instance, Mike Huckabee is ambassador in Israel, former preacher, Arkansas governor and Republican candidate. We don't tend to do that. But Mandelson was an eye-catching candidate. He's someone who could either have been ambassador to the US or he could have been in I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

29:35Yes. It speaks to the way in which there's been a decline in the seriousness of Great Britain and also how uncertain we were about handling Trump. that someone thought we better get someone in there. Somebody a little bit devious. Someone fun who he will gel with. Fun is one word. Someone who knew similar people to Donald Trump.

29:56Camilla: Let's get a player in. Right. But again, if you're going to get a player, you have got to be extra specially careful. Yes. And a point made by Ollie Robbins, which I think was a very powerful one, was he has to consider diplomats operating in countries like China, and Moscow. And what this row has done is exposed how the sausage is made. Yes. How the foreign office operates, how number 10 interferes with that process. And also those countries will be saying, I'm sure, look at this. Yeah. Look at how the British prime minister appointed a friend of Jeffrey Epstein in order to give him this very powerful position that would give them access to Donald Trump.

30:43Camilla: And he thinks he should be taken seriously as a global statesman. Precisely. He can't even keep things under control at home. And it's always a rule in politics and life, whatever people say about themselves, the opposite is usually true. Keir Starmer was supposed to be all about the process and super serious and doing things the right way. This appointment was fundamentally ridiculous. Yes. And should never have been done. There's been an opposition debate, Tim, and it's just worth a mention of the increasingly frosty relationship between the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, and the Prime Minister.

31:21This makes things even harder for Keir Starmer in Parliament. There was a rumour prior to now that Lindsay Hoyle felt beholden to the Labour leadership. That's certainly how the Tories saw it, because of some history between them. But that seems to have changed. we have seen in the past few weeks Hoyle getting visibly irritated with the Prime Minister dodging questions and also the old saw of the government announcing things outside of Parliament rather than inside it. There was a big bust up that was caught on video where Keir Starmer appeared to bang his little trotter on his chair. And I think a good example of the change in Hoyle's strategy was Monday's debate.

32:04Not just it went on for a very long time, putting Keir Summer through a physically grueling, a grilling, but also the order in which Hoyle invited people in to speak. Notable critics from the back benches, who previously I think Hoyle would have made them wait an hour or two before they could speak. Instead, they're being brought in early. So as things get tougher for the government over this term, I think they're going to face a speaker who is determined, rightly to see the executive held to account.

32:35Camilla: So far, Tim, two senior Labour figures have called on the Prime Minister to go. Anna Sawa, up north, the Scottish leader, and the Labour peer, Maurice Glassman. And we're going to speak to him next.

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34:05Camilla: Labour peer and founder of the Blue Labour Movement, Maurice Glassman, joins us in the Daily Tea studio. Lovely to see you. Now, you told The Telegraph at the weekend about Keir Starmer, quotes, he cannot conceivably continue as a credible prime minister any longer. And that's all because he cannot say, I made a mistake, I'm sorry. Do you stand by that appraisal having watched Ollie Robbins at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee? Yeah, I haven't been given any really profound reasons to revise my judgment on that. Do you think he's made it worse for the Prime Minister, more difficult for the Prime Minister to stay in office?

34:41Camilla: Now he's basically indicated that due process wasn't followed. In fact, Mandelson's appointment was rushed through because it's what Downing Street wanted. Yeah, I mean, this is the bizarre nature of this. This is very typical of the prime minister to turn a basic political misjudgment into a procedural matter. A political decision was made that Peter Manson was the best guy to go to D.C. That was because he did the Good Friday Agreement. He did Lisbon. He's a very, very, very experienced negotiator of complex deals. He actually did do the trade deal with the United States. And I think the basic idea was you send in a snake into a snake pit.

35:24But it was a political decision and it was pushed through. Now, everybody knew Camilla and Tim. I mean, I just knew and so did millions of other people that Global Council was deeply involved with Russian Lager, Do Pasca and with Chinese, in particular Peter Mandelson being an ex-member of the Communist Party for 15 years, just to remind you of who he actually is, was a very big fan of China and globalisation and the EU and multilateral treaties and all of this.

35:59Camilla: I'm just going to caveat all that by saying that Peter Mandelson would doubtlessly deny links to the Chinese or Russian regime, although Global Council did have Chinese and Russian clients. I'm just going to say that to be legally safe. I just want to be truthful. What I'm saying is that everybody knew. Everybody knew that Peter Maddison had extensive contacts and commercial contacts with Russia and with China. So none of this is news. You know, this was all known. Plus, when I went to the inauguration, I was literally bombarded with Americans showing me photos of Peter Maddison with Jeffrey Epstein, blowing out the candles, going underwear shopping.

36:39Peter Mandelson in the dressing room. I had to sit there and say, and they would say to me, why is this guy being appointed as a president? I mean, it was deeply hostile to him, the whole atmosphere. And I was reduced to saying, well, Good Friday Agreement, you know, is a very good negotiation. I mean, and it's openly known that I wrote a memo to Number 10 saying, whatever you do, do not appoint Peter Mandelson. So all of this is just a bad political judgment. that is deeply consistent with the continuity of new labour with this government. But Keir Starmer has apologised for that political judgement.

37:18So what is it that you're unsatisfied with? Well, he's still saying, he's still hiding behind bad advice when I'm saying it was common knowledge, that all of this was common knowledge. Because he has said, I shouldn't have made the appointment, and we shouldn't make that clear. And he has apologised to Epstein's victims. Yeah, this apologies without penance is empty. You know, this is the point, is that all of this was known before. No new information has come. So this was a political appointment, and I make the distinction between good and bad and right and wrong. You know, there's that fantastic clip in the Watergate tapes where Ehrlichman and Alderman say to President Nixon, Well, we could take out this guy.

38:10That's deep throat. And he says, well, that would be wrong from a legal point of view. What I'm saying is that all of this is getting obscured in legal procedures when it's a straightforward bad judgment. And all of this was known. All of this was known 18 months ago. So he has apologized for the appointment, but he hasn't quite acknowledged that the genesis of the appointment is his own flawed judgment. That's correct. Right.

38:44Camilla: I think there's more to it than that. He suggested that he didn't know things which we all know he should have known. So this comes back to the Diane Abbott stroke Kemi Badenoch line of attack, which is, as Morris is saying here, everybody knew, not just around the time of the appointment, but for years and years and years before, that Peter Mandelson was a controversial figure. Therefore, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It isn't credible that a former lawyer, a former prosecutor could be taken in by Peter Mandelson's lies when nobody else was. That's also the problem, isn't it? Well, it's a deeper thing again.

39:27What is the identity of this government? What is its strategy? What is its sense of direction and mission? And it turned out that it turned out to be a new Labour government. And there is no more important figure in that than Peter Manson, who chose Blair and Brown, who had his epiphany in really 92 when he realised that the phrase he uses, Randallson, is that you can't win a Grand Prix in a Ford Cortina, that there had to be a fundamental renewal of Labour's identity. That was new Labour, that it had to be a globalist, it had to be pro-EU, It had to reject the old industrial forms. It had to accept the trade union reforms.

40:19These are really significant changes in our politics. I mean, he's one of the two most significant figures of the last 40 to 50 years. I would say Farage is the other one because of the stubbornness about Brexit. But Mandelson completely transformed the nature of British politics. So that Labour was not just market friendly, but capital friendly. I mean, we've got to give Peter Mandelson his proper place.

40:43Camilla: Yes, I know, but you're still arguing it was wrong to appoint him as US ambassador. Yeah, that's the point. That is why it is. Because of all that stuff. Yes. That's what I'm saying is that's why. The left of the party would agree with you too. What I'd like to know from you is what Labourites, old, new, blue, red, what they're now saying about the Prime Minister, because we've got Kevin Maguire, who's a very senior commentator on the left, used to be on the Daily Mirror, saying that he's being contacted by backbenchers saying Starmer's basically effed. Sorry, we've used a lot of effed bombs in this podcast.

41:17Camilla: What do you think your Labour colleagues are thinking right now? And are they going to agitate for the Prime Minister to resign? Well, the question is, what is the ideological and strategic nature of this government? Now, Keir Starmer was elected to detoxify after Corbyn. And I will always give Morgan McSweeney great credit for really pushing that. So who are they? Who are they now, the MPs? And certainly the membership who elected Keir Starmer. They're on the whole Green remain progressives. So if you ask me what is the greatest threat that faces our country, I would say Islamism and violent Islamism.

42:07China, with its complete repression, and our greatest weakness is the depletion of our armed forces and inability to have a coherent foreign policy. They would say it's climate change and the Reform Party. There we go. Right. So you're saying they're going to stick with him

42:22Camilla: because they think that something even worse could happen, which is Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. But they do want to win, and they don't want their agenda to lose. So are you aware of any more of them since the weekend when you said he should go? Have any more of them started to agree with you? Yeah, but what they may prefer is Ed Miliband or Angela Rayner. Right. That's the point. So the reason people like me have kept our head down on Keir Starmer was holding on to Nurse for fear of something worse, you know. But that's gone now. Now it turns out that he's just simply, in my view, he's not up to the job.

43:01Sometimes you find out in real time he's besieged by endless crises and U-turns and he can't articulate a clear direction for the country. Now just to remind you guys here at The Data, there's three more years of this government. I mean this can be changed, this could be turned around.

43:19Camilla: Don't we know it, Morrison? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but this, so that's where we are. Just to clarify for your listeners, there is one member of the cabinet who I absolutely respect, and that's Shabana Mahmood, and I will always... But she's not going to replace him, is she? No, that's it. But now the judgment, so it's a judgment. Him continuing, or at least a government that will have some sense, a greater sense, and I do think that someone like Angela Rayner would bring a sense of direction. It wouldn't be the one that I would choose. But he seems to be incapable of making and owning decisions where I am.

44:00And right now there's this war in Iran, which I think we're in completely the wrong place. I mean, absolutely the wrong place. In terms of Ukraine, which is another passion of mine, which I still see as a crucial way of rebuilding an industrial strategy and our armed forces. We're so slow. were just so slow. And that was revealed with the ship that was supposed to go to Cyprus.

44:25Camilla: HMS Dragon. They couldn't quite get there. What I'm saying is there needs to be some kind of reorientation. And sometimes you never know. It's like I follow football. You never know when you buy a player whether they're going to do it. I think we've seen enough of the prime minister now for me to make the judgment that I don't think he's... Well, what we'd really like to know is how many MPs now agree with you. If, say, there were a vote of confidence brought by the Tories and Lib Dems, can you guess how many Labour MPs might vote against him? I think the number is growing quite significantly.

45:06What I'm clarifying for you is that they don't agree with me about the direction. No. They might agree with the idea of getting rid of the prime minister.

45:16Camilla: You just disagree on a successor. But how many people do you think in the Labour Party right now may abstain or indeed vote against the prime minister should a motion of no confidence be tabled? I think that there would be a very significant move. And I think that the natural successor would be Angela Rayner, who's making a speech today about direction and a more positive story. So that looks like it's in train. But then, Maurice, let's ask you the sort of killer questions then. The prime minister therefore survives until the May elections, but not afterwards? Oh, yeah. I don't think this is going to be a sniper operation from a rooftop in Tehran.

46:03No. Labour's going to lose Scotland. It's going to lose Wales. It looks like it's going to lose England too. This is existential. We are going through what the Conservatives, what we're looking at in real time is the emergence of Greens and reform as the two forces in British politics. We're looking at the end of a settlement that has lasted for 100 years. Obviously, as a very conservative person, I regret this. I would like to see my party as a patriotic party, borders, stability, order, industry, work. But you've got to be a fool not to smell the way it's going. And at the moment, what Labour MPs will experience in their constituencies is that we've moved from anger to contempt.

46:50That's the key. That's what's shifted.

46:52Camilla: I mean, he's become a, you pointed it out earlier, he's become a ridiculous figure and it's very hard to recover from that. Yes. No, no, that's the tipping point. A couple of more questions just quickly. Have you spoken to Morgan McSweeney lately? No, not at all. And I'm sad about that. I think my lines of communication were his phone. Do you believe that his phone was stolen as described? I've got no idea. I really genuinely have no idea. I don't know. Are the likes of McSweeney now likely to be vindicated somewhat or do you think it was right that he fell on his sword? No, he did the honourable thing.

47:31I really, at this period, knew him very well and was in regular communication with him. But it looks like he really made a huge error with Mandelson. And he did the completely correct thing and he resigned. I mean, I think, yes, he did the right thing. Absolutely.

47:52Camilla: Could we see a cabinet mutiny? Possibly. I doubt that. I very much doubt that. It's not as if, you know, when I think back, when I think about Barbara Castle, when I think about Jim Callahan, when I think about Tony Penn, when I think about Crossman and Crossland, and I think about Dennis Healy and the Labour Cabinet that dominated my childhood, these were giant figures who we knew. I mean, we knew them kind of intimately. we knew where they stood on a huge number of things and who they were. I don't think this is true of this cabinet. I don't think the cabinet is either carrying that degree of weight.

48:35Lord Glassman, thank you very much. Thank you. And we'll be back tomorrow at 5pm.

48:40Camilla: With a barnstorm in PMQs, and you're going to be in the house for it. Oh, yes.

49:18We'll see you next time.

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