BONUS: Can Keir Starmer survive the Mandelson vetting scandal?

0:00Patrick Maguire: That I wasn't told that Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting when he's appointed is staggering. Starmer has misled Parliament, he's lied to the public, they knew that Peter Mandelson had failed vetting and they still sent him to Washington. If he's saying he didn't know, he is telling the country that he is incompetent and that means he shouldn't be running the government. Welcome to a bonus edition of The State of It, the political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times. We're coming to you today as the vetting scandal surrounding Lord Mandelson threatens to undermine Keir Starmer's premiership.

0:39It's a proper moment and it's really difficult for him. You've got me, I'm Stephen Swimford, the political editor of The Times. I'm Patrick Maguire, chief commentator for The Times. I'm Laura Spirit, deputy political editor at The Sunday Times. We will kick off by just telling you what we know at this stage of affairs. And we will give you as detailed a narrative as we can. So what we have been told is that at the end of last month, so this is several weeks ago, Kat Little, who is a very senior official in the Cabinet Office, she's the Permanent Secretary there, so she's the boss of the Cabinet Office effectively, received a document that she had been trying to get out of the Foreign Office for weeks.

1:17and this document was completely politically explosive. It was the vetting file for Lord Mandelson and it revealed that the UK vetting office, which sits within the Cabinet Office, had formally advised against Mandelson's appointment effectively, saying don't give him clearance. Now, the reasoning for it, it's in black and white, don't give him clearance from what we said, and we are told it wasn't a borderline case. This was cut and dry. it was categoric that he shouldn't get the role and it went into great detail obviously the report had interviews with mandelson extensive interviews they'd spoken to his friends to other people and they'd looked into his business interests the links with ebbsen everything that you would expect and they had come down and said no now when cat little received this she was obviously quite surprised given that all everyone in number 10 including the prime minister had been operating under the assumption that mandelson had been given security clearance in fact the prime minister had said as much publicly and had been saying that for months so she then had to take legal advice we're told before she could show this to the prime minister so she sat on this effectively while waiting for this legal advice for over a fortnight and then on tuesday she got the clearance and she went to see antonio romeo i'd love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation but um antonio i've just heard this thing.

2:41They went to see the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister blew his top, ordered an inquiry, and you are in this incredible situation where nobody was told about it. And from what we can gather, that is true. Ollie Robbins, the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office, his allies confirmed he didn't tell anybody about the vetting advice and where it got to.

3:03Patrick Maguire: No, and the initial reaction in government, Steve, was this cannot possibly be true. How is this even possible? And those people who were around Keir Starmer at the time, the Anning Street advisors, I mean, we spoke to one of them in the hours after this story broke yesterday, Steve, and the response was categorical. It was emphatic, and that is uniform, across the entirety of Keir Starmer's circle. It was, if we had known this, there is no way we would have played fast and loose with global security, because developed betting, that betting for sensitive appointments, for government advisors, is, our contact was telling us, the sort of gold standard for Britain and its allies, saying, you know, you can trust us with your security.

3:48Patrick Maguire: So the reaction has been one of disbelief. But as we sort of go through the procedural weeds of this story, and we hear the defence from allies of Ollie Robbins, like Kieran Martin, who used to run the National Cyber Security Centre, we get back to the place where we started. the reason why we are obsessing over every cough and spit of what people may have said to each other on whatsapp that's going to end up uh published in the commons in the coming weeks why is that because the prime minister's judgment is under questioned here and listening to accounts from people in government it all comes back to the prime minister maybe morgan sweeney chose their man and wanted him at any cost and the system responded to that that is the defense with him of Oliver Robbins and the reason why he didn't pass it on.

4:35Patrick Maguire: He felt pressured. Yes. And the thing to remember is he is two or three weeks into his job as Foreign Office Permanent Secretary. As an ally of the Prime Minister said, not unsympathetically to Ollie Robbins. This isn't a conspiracy theory. It's Ollie Robbins for very understandable human reasons saying, look, for weeks and weeks, if not months, the Foreign Office has been telling you, no, we don't want Peter Mandelson. These are our concerns. You know, I'm told Philip Barton, his predecessor, in the words of this, I love the prime minister, basically had a breakdown because he was under so much pressure.

5:06Patrick Maguire: That's not why he left, not the sole reason why he left. But Ollie Roberts arrives. He's getting clear political direction. Loads of pressure, says one government source to me earlier, to let this happen, to make this happen. And to be seen as a job, he doesn't want to be a faceless Mandarin saying, actually, computer says, no, I'm going to humiliate the prime minister. So bear in mind, this appointment's already been made. And here we are now. And here we are now. So, Laura, we should talk about this, because this is going to fall firmly into your aegis at the Sunday times. But obviously on Monday, Sir Keir Starmer has to go before the Commons, and he has to try to justify what has happened here.

5:42And he's going to face and is facing very serious accusations that he misled the Commons, that by claiming that due process had been followed, when it clearly hadn't, an exceptional process had been followed, that was anything but due, he had misled people. and misled the Commons. And I think that that moment on Monday, it's going to be a blockbuster because he's going to be fighting for his political life. Yeah, and they have to get that right for many reasons. I mean, that detail that you've just shared on the last few days is really interesting. But of course, MPs will have a number of questions about still precisely who knew what when and really to be persuaded by Kistarmer on Monday by his apology, how profusive he is and exactly what he lays out about the reasons behind what we've seen in the last few days.

6:27I think we've obviously got the contours of the Ollie Robbins response now in the form, as Patrick mentioned, of Kieran Martin, a friend of Robbins, but we still don't know exactly what it might be that Robbins might subsequently come out and say about this process. And of course, one of the disagreements seems to be whether or not he had interpreted his role correctly when he decided not to say anything to ministers two ministers and those who were in control. And we should say, of course, there are a number of people in the Labour Party who are sceptical that that point is true. And that will be something that Starmer wants to land and land unequivocally on Monday.

7:03Of course, we also have, and I've just been speaking to Kemi Badenock over in Westminster, we also have a concerted effort from opposition leaders and parties to really seize on this moment and to make it a kind of unifying moment for those opposition parties to see if they can make any headway with regard to trying to remove Starmer. And I mean, a number of them came, Bairdnock included, and also Sered Davy, who was much more forthright than some had been expecting on the airwaves today, of saying that it looks like this is the moment when Starmer might have to go. And so they will be watching this closely.

7:35There's a number of interesting parliamentary hurdles that they might have to clear. It's not really on their side, the timeline at the moment, because of course, you've got prorogation coming up, we've got this King's Speech coming up. There isn't an opposition day at the moment that is in the calendar when they might be able to seize on it, as of course the Conservatives did previously, and with great effect with that humble address, which of course forced the government to release many of these very fascinating and revealing files about the appointment of Mandelson, of which of course we've only seen the initial tranche with more yet to come, and we're expecting those in the coming weeks.

8:10And one senior government source saying, certainly before, they would hope, before the King's speech. So let's see where we get to on that particular question. But I think whether or not we see from Starmer a convincing performance on Monday, as you say, Steve, is now going to be the definitive question as to what Labour MPs make of all of this, which, of course, Kemi Baden-Ock and others are quite open about. This is the most important thing. What do Labour MPs make of this? At the moment, what I'm gathering from Labour MPs is actually a sheer sense of disbelief at this, a level of confusion and obviously a sense that they want to wait and see exactly what comes out and whether this is clarified before making a final judgment.

8:47But their judgment come Monday and how they respond to what the prime minister has to say will be absolutely crucial.

8:52Patrick Maguire: And let's pause for a moment and consider the very rich, pungent irony of all of this for Keir Starmer himself for two reasons. One, how did this emerge from a humble address? Now, listeners will have heard that phrase repeatedly in recent weeks. A humble address is basically a parliamentary battering ram. It is like a, you know, an early form of FOI available only to MPs who can, if the Commons asks for it, they can basically demand anything of the government. And who pioneered the use of that archaic parliamentary process? once a Keir Rodney Starmer, KC Husty then MP in 2017, 2018, when he was humbly addressing the government's legal advice on Brexit.

9:41Patrick Maguire: And a minister who was speaking in that debate, I remember them telling me this story in recent weeks, they left the dispatch box and a Tory MP and a fellow lawyer, a fellow lawyer to the prime minister came up to them and said, one day that'll happen to you. One day you're going to be on those benches in government when we've done that to you. And now you see it. And the other thing, of course, is you've got a senior Foreign Office Mandarin in the firing line. Everyone's waiting with bated breath to hear what he says. You've got MPs, despondent, disgusted. They're in sheer disbelief, as Lara was saying.

10:22Patrick Maguire: And there are big questions about the Prime Minister's judgment, his associations, and the nature and extent of his acquaintance or intimacy with the truth. And that is either a description of Boris Johnson circa 2021-2022, or it's a description of Keir Starmer in 2025 and 2026. And who was the most forceful and forthright moral critic of Boris Johnson on those exact grounds? One Keir Starmer. You know, it is, you know, when the history of this period, if Dominic Sandbrook is still alive in 40 years and, you know, God willing our great colleague will be you know that is the paragraph where you summarise the end of Keir Starmer's premiership and the rich irony in that he is falling foul, one of his own parliamentary manoeuvres and two exactly the same critique that did Boris Johnson.

11:19Someone writes a lot about Labour and all the rest of it. Let's do a cards on the table moment let's ask the question uh political predictions are a mugs game they never work out but let's let's try it anyway will starmer survive this so i am going to put my head out there and say i think he will i don't detect the appetite the people are already baked in they had terrible judgment over mandelson and i'm not getting additional people saying he's got to go but that there is a big caveat because if something comes out that we didn't know then that could change that and i could be proven catastrophically wrong but i'm gonna i'm gonna say it i think he survives for now

11:56Patrick Maguire: uh as a senior labor figure said to me earlier look the diagnosis was already terminal and it's a bit like a a terminal cancer patient you know the difference between them sort of drinking green juice and undergoing experimental treatments to prolong their life or in keir starmer's case you know still persisted with the bad habits that gave them the condition in the first place. So, you know, he didn't, it's the political equivalent of, you know, smoking outside a hospital at the moment for the government. I think is the, I think that's, I think that's the big problem, right? So look, cards on the table here.

12:28Patrick Maguire: I'm one of the commentators who first column of the year said, Keir Starmer is going to survive longer than you think. When this last blew up, I wrote perhaps the most false column of my career. Several people don't speak to me now because of it, or are less keen to speak to me now because of it, when I said, it's going to be over soon it's terminal then a couple of weeks ago i wrote actually you know the prognosis might be a little bit better i think we're back into the territory now when there are bigger question marks over may but you know is this the end i mean we're already in the end is this going to do for keir starmer i mean this is the whole mandelston round this is the whole question about judgment bit like party gate it's a slow bleed and you never know when the the vital signs you know when the the heart monitor is just going to flatline if i can stretch that medical right for just a bit Lara, beat that for medical metaphors, whatever you want to.

13:16What have you got? I'm actually going to give a metaphor free answer to that. Boo. I think I would agree with you both. If I had to put money on it, I would say that he would be likely to ride at least this initial period out. I think the timing for reasons that we've mentioned is not massively in the favour of those who would like to see him imminently go. I also am not detecting from those Labour MPs that I'm speaking to a huge amount of motivation to move quickly on this. I think they remain in a kind of pensive state. They want to see exactly what comes out at the moment. I think if number 10 can continue to successfully deny that anybody there was aware of this, and if you are still in a position where it looks like Oli Robbins can fully keep this to himself and there is no suggestion that he shared it any more widely and that Kistama has not lied, then I think it will be hard to build momentum to remove him.

14:11But I definitely think we're in a different political space than we were 48 hours ago, not least because, as we've mentioned, we now have opposition party leaders who are now actively calling for him to go. And for reasons that we've also discussed on this podcast, of course, I think the feeling that Labour MPs will experience if indeed there are catastrophic election results in just a few weeks time will be difficult for them to be able to preempt physiologically, mentally at this moment in time. I think it will be a really interesting state to find themselves in after that point. And you often can't prepare yourself for what a loss of that magnitude necessarily feels like.

14:46So I hope I've caveated that as extensively as I possibly can to protect myself. But I think I'm with both of you.

14:54Patrick Maguire: Yeah. So we all agree, basically, that it's not imminent.

15:00Patrick Maguire: Someone connected to Number 10, did something on the phone earlier that, you know, when most of the lobby, when the lobby agrees on something, it's almost always wrong. And the lobby has been in furious agreement over the past 24 hours that this is really serious. So if we agree that, I don't know where that leaves us. I mean, if there's consensus here, maybe we're wrong. Maybe he goes by the time we publish this emergency podcast. I don't know. But it's, look, it's as tricky as the last crisis for the Prime Minister. And that was pretty tricky. Well, look, that brings, I think, this bonus episode of The State of It to an end.

15:30We've got to go actually do some more reporting to try to find out what the hell has just happened. So we will give you everything you can on The Times and The Sunday Times. And then we will be back on Tuesday where you can, basically we will be judged on whether we were actually accurate in our predictions here or not. But thank you for listening to us. And thank you. Let's do the big red button. Do you want to do the big red button?

15:50Patrick Maguire: Well, thank you very much as ever to, well, there's only one podcast producer on the recording. And that's the great Harry Kitson who finally gets first billing. Star billing. And as ever to the absent Molly Guinness and Ewan Daughtry. Thank you.

16:09Thank you.