Why Mandelson is causing more problems for Starmer

0:01Sky News, the full story first.

0:10The Chief Civil Servant at the Foreign Office has been unceremoniously sacked. The Prime Minister is furious and this is why.

0:25If you thought you'd heard the last of Peter Mandelson, think again. Hi everyone, Neil here and we're down in our Westminster office for a bit of a change because, once again, the knives, guns and ballistic missiles are out for Sir Keir Starmer. And once again, it's over the man who was briefly our ambassador to the United States. My knowledge of him is something that I regret. Why did many people meet him? He was a prolific networker. Lord Mandelson's appointment as ambassador was always controversial thanks to that long-standing friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. And, we will say, at this point, Peter Mandelson denies any and all wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

1:06But here's where it gets a bit confusing. The Prime Minister has always maintained that Mandelson lied to him about the length and the nature of his friendship with Epstein, but that the vetting process was followed. Now, that's the bit where, in essence, if you're going into a sensitive job in politics, they check out that you haven't done anything that someone else might be able to take advantage of. Turns out Peter Mandelson failed that vetting process. and the line from Downing Street is, we didn't know anything about that. And I'm absolutely furious about that. What I intend to do is to go to Parliament on Monday to set out all the relevant facts.

1:43Well, I sat down with Anne McElvoy, executive editor over at Political, also the co-host of our sister podcast, Politics at Salmon Ants. Just tell me a little bit more about Ollie Robbins. Let's try and flesh the man out a little bit. He has had a fairly starry career in the civil service. I mean, he goes all the way back to the Blair Brown days, I think. He does. I mean, he's an absolute Oxford into the heart of the civil service, known for serving both Labour and Conservative prime ministers. With distinction, there's not a kind of, how did we end up with him in charge? I remember at the Oxford Union, he's incredibly tall.

2:22I just want to point that out as a kind of random fact, but he couldn't miss it when he walked into the room. He has that confidence. I think what happened in the Brexit years when he became basically the face of the attempt to do a soft Brexit, particularly who seems to be very close to Theresa May and that aspiration, deliver Brexit, yes. You know, he's a straight up and down civil servant. He's not one of those people who was always trying to undo it in the back room, like Peter Mandelson. There's going to be an awful lot of kind of insider Westminster knowledge required for this podcast. So can we just start with a couple of definitions for those who aren't as up to speed with things as you are.

2:58First, what exactly is a permanent secretary? Explain. This is basically the boss at the Foreign Office, Neil. It's a person who makes the big decisions. Obviously, they're there to serve ministers. So you've got a foreign secretary, that's Yvette Cooper at the moment. They work closely with Number 10 to make sure that the prime minister's priorities in foreign policy are executed. But, you know, in layman's terms, it's just the big boss at the Foreign Office. It's the corner office, if you like. So that's the permanent secretary bit done. What about this process? It keeps being abbreviated to DEV, developed vetting.

3:37What is that? What's the purpose? Well, there's a two-step process if you're being appointed to a sensitive role where you're going to see sensitive documents on behalf of the United Kingdom. Ambassador to Washington clearly comes into that category. So anyone who is going into that job is going to be able to see some intelligence. Intelligence services are going to want to know that they've got a relationship of trust with that person. But also just everything. Look at what we're going through at the moment. The planning for what follows from the Iran war. Anything that is particularly sensitive where you need to know that this person is a reliable conduit, that they don't have other relationships or perhaps other loyalties in their life or other pressures on them, which brings us perhaps to Peter Mandelson, that might cloud their judgment.

4:27So developed vetting is the layer of that that goes beneath the usual things that if you or I went up for a big job, they'd go through our bank accounts, they'd go through our social media. There's a whole unit that does this in the cabinet office. And I could put it politely and say it's pretty adjacent to the security services, right? It gets a lot of help and guidance from the security. services. But it's a particular office, it's quite secretive, it does exist, it's like a place you could go to, not that they'd ever particularly want to let us in. And that is really where this developed vetting took place in Peter Mandelson, that's where the whole saga, I think, started to unravel, because they didn't approve him.

5:05But the Prime Minister is a lawyer, so he's generally very careful with his words. And what leapt out to me was not just, I did not know that Mandelson had failed the developed vetting. It was that no one in number 10 had been told that DV had been failed. And I'm really sorry, Anne. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that Mandelson went through this process. He failed it. The first thing that they should have done would have been to alert Downing Street that that was the problem. That does seem very bizarre, as you say, if we take, as you say, the Prime Minister choosing his words carefully there.

5:42I have them here on my phone and so to other political journalists sam coates my partner in crime on on sam and ann's podcast and others all have had whatsapps over the last months where we've asked trusted people that we've talked to about the vetting and and what happened we kept all getting the same reply it was done according to the usual rules but you can flip your question if i may and say well why did number 10 not say hang on is everything all right with this vetting if you i mean you would do that if you put your car through an MOT, let alone if you're appointing to one of the most sensitive roles for the British government.

6:19So why did not all of these people in number 10, the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff is now gone over something adjacent related, Morgan McSweeney, his head of communications, who answered a lot of these WhatsApps and inquiries from journalists. At what point did none of them say, you know, what was actually in that vetting? That does seem, If they didn't want to know, you could perhaps think, oh, did they really not want to know? But isn't it more than that, Anne, in the sense that we know that there were, sorry, before the Guardian revelation, we knew that there were concerns raised about Lord Mandelson during that vetting process.

6:57And the reason I know it is because I listened to it on your podcast, The Paid of View, talking about it. If concerns had been raised, again, I don't understand why no one, the Prime Minister included, in Downing Street went, OK, so what were those problems? Well, we think that what happened there was concerns would be raised in a vetting process, particularly, I mean, it wouldn't have taken Sherlock Holmes to raise some questions about Peter Mandelson's links with China and Russia. And I say that as someone who, in some ways, understood some of the reasons why they maybe thought at the time he's a good partner for the Trump administration, etc.

7:31But he was clearly a pretty tricky appointment to make. There is a difference between concerns being raised and then the actual development vetting saying, actually, this is so serious. We advise that you don't go ahead with this. I mean, it is normal, but, you know, people who've had sort of checkered political and business lives, of course, there are going to be concerns raised. You could say, after we've looked at them, we think overall the Epstein relationship is not so deep that this could cause any potential trouble. The big difference is the Epstein files got opened. And that is when Peter Mandelson's account, which seemed to suggest that he had a fairly casual relationship over years on and off, someone I just knew on the international circuit kind of relationship, was much more than that.

8:14You know, it was a deep friendship. There was a bit of a dependency on the advice of the convicted pedophile in whose house he stayed after the first conviction. Now, it is true that Number 10 did know that, and I think they were careless, or the Prime Minister was particularly careless about that. Anne, great to talk to you. Thanks very much. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

8:48A couple of hours later, I brought in her co-host on politics at Sam and Anne's. Sam Coates, our Deputy Political Editor. He was speaking to me from the Elysee in Paris, where he was travelling with the Prime Minister. Sam, in fact, you were the one responsible, weren't you, for what we call the pool clip, the handful of questions that we get to throw to the Prime Minister. I'm just wondering what you were asking about today. Before I tell you what I was asking about, I'm going to just lift the lid a little bit, Neil. I have to say that was one of the coldest pool clips I think I've ever done.

9:20There was no thank you. He just turned on his heel after it was done and walked off. The press aides didn't even meet my glance through the whole affair. That just gives you a sense of the kind of rippling tension I think there is around this story. And I basically wanted to know how he justified his actions. Because in the end, you've got a prime minister who had said on camera and to MPs that due diligence was followed and at a press conference, he said he got security vetting and Peter Madison wouldn't have got the job if he hadn't done it. And those are wrong. And normally, if a prime minister misleads, he has to resign.

10:03So my opening question was, how are you considering your position? Now, it didn't really matter what my questions were, if I'm being honest, today. Keir Starmer was in one of those moods where he turned up with pre-prepared answers, and we just got what he wanted to say, regardless of what was coming out of my mouth. I'm I'm afraid to say. And he just wanted to express his anger at being kept in the dark. He talked about his fury and frustration about not being told about the recommendation of this agency and said that he was looking into it and he'd come to Parliament on Monday. Does any of this ring true to you, Sam?

10:41Does any of this chime with what we know about the former Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, Ollie Robbins, a career civil servant. Does any of this make sense, I suppose I'm asking? In order to understand what happens, you've got to appreciate the big picture context. Throughout the autumn of 2024, Keir Starmer, but more importantly, Morgan McSweeney, his then Chief of Staff, wanted Peter Mandelson to be the ambassador in Washington. And there were warnings. My goodness, there were a hell of a lot of warnings, whether it was the Due Diligence Committee warning about Epstein and Mandelson's association with him after conviction, whether it was cabinet ministers like Angela Rayner, like David Lammy, privately saying, don't do this.

11:23It's a really bad idea. But Number 10 pushed ahead and made the announcement. Now, that's the context in which what we're talking about at the moment was taking place. Number 10 knew every single flaw of Peter Mandelson, and yet they said, we don't care. We just want this to happen. Just get on with it. And then the Foreign Office had to make a decision about the security vetting. Sorry to interrupt, Sam. You say the Foreign Office then had to make a decision. But if Number 10, if the Prime Minister are saying we want him to be our ambassador, I mean, what choice do they have? Well, I think you make a very good point.

11:59I think at that point, the permanent secretary in the Foreign Office will know that number 10 have decided that it is less important to pay heed to the red flags that were manifold. They also included security services, as I understand it, warning about Mandelson's financial situation. They had decided that those were less important than their desire to get that man in the job. But in the period that we're talking about, Peter Madison being announced ambassador. He was packing the boxes. He was preparing to move across the Atlantic. He'd basically begun the preliminary work and everybody accepted in his job.

12:34And the idea, I think, that it would be easy for a top Mandarin in the foreign office to turn around and say, do you know what, guys, there's a hitch. Do you want to think again? Now, that just feels really, really politically challenging. So when we come to questions of whose story we believe, I absolutely fundamentally believe that everybody could see from space that Number 10 didn't want to hear about problems with Peter Maddelson's appointment. I mean, Sam, where does this go next? Indeed, where does the Prime Minister go next? I mean, his is a premiership that has come to be characterised by ignorance and U-turns.

13:13And I'm not sure that that is sustainable in the short term, let alone the medium to long term. So the reason I think that this is toxic is it plays into one of the perceptions, the dangerous, damaging perceptions about Keir Starmer, which is that he doesn't get in the details and get in the weeds and doesn't confront the most difficult parts of the job, whether it was doing the policy work in opposition or really thinking through what he's doing and sort of gaming it out properly. and so I think it does sort of punch a very, very big bruise. Now, we've got a bit of sort of choreography over the coming days where we'll be able to assess the danger better.

13:52Monday, Claire Starmer's going to be in the Commons sort of defending himself probably Tuesday, though that might change. The Front Affairs Select Committee might hear from Ollie Robbins who'll put his side of the story. We've got big blockbuster stuff to look forward to and the allegation is only going to grow that, you know, So Ollie Robbins didn't do anything wrong, but was nevertheless the scapegoat. The bottom line is three weeks before the local elections. And this is rarely a moment where MPs en masse go over the top against their own leader, because you've just got those votes in Scotland, Wales and a lot of England to get through.

14:25And so I think that it's bad. And I'm told that the WhatsApp groups, the Labour WhatsApp groups have gone pretty silent. There isn't great chorus of defence for the Prime Minister. It's a little bit like the silence you get one said after a toddler knows that he's been drawing on the wall. And it's a little bit the pause before the fury to come. But I think this all moves forward to a judgment that is then made after the local elections, not immediately in the next 72 hours. Sam, just a final thought for you on why, on perhaps an explanation for that silence in the Labour WhatsApp groups at the moment.

15:00I mean, who would be a close ally of Sir Keir Starmer right now? I mean, the bodies are piling up left, right and centre under his leadership. One of the charges that is routinely made is that he doesn't really keep friends in politics. He doesn't have a band, a posse, a group of people that he trusts. There's pretty much nobody who's been in there since the start. There is a culture in government where you know that you run the risk of being thrown under the bus. Previous prime ministers have operated differently, defended those of their allies in trouble, taken the blame personally when things go wrong.

15:37And ultimately, politics is the art of persuasion and bringing people with you. But if you treat people badly and you can't bring people with you, that ultimately is the most significant political failing a leader can have. Sam, I'll let you get back to the trip. No doubt more to come from Paris for now. Thanks very much. And that's your lot for this week on This Is Why. Do get in touch with any of your thoughts on anything that we have been covering or indeed anything you'd like us to cover in the future. And I imagine a fair few of you might have some thoughts on today's efforts from Westminster.

16:09We're back again Monday. Till then, take care.