Philip Barton in Podcasts

Hello! Lots of different strands of the Peter Mandelson vetting story converged in Westminster today. Can a strand converge? Well, I guess they can now. At the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Dame Emily Thornberry, we had Philip Barton, who was the predecessor to Sir Ollie Robbins as the chief civil servant in the Foreign Office giving evidence. And then, box office this, Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister's former chief of staff, and somebody who's

But perhaps more significant in the long run and more telling is evidence the same day from Philip Barton, who is Ollie Robbins' predecessor at the Foreign Office.

And so the vetting process was also already underway, though what he revealed was that the Foreign Office, not just during his time, but particularly under his predecessor, Philip Barton, had come under quite a lot of pressure from Downing Street to expedite that process.