Archie Bland

That is a really significant intervention in all of this, I think, and one that creates really difficult questions for Olly Robbins over why he made that call in this case.

Yeah.

And Tuesday is certainly going to be a box office moment for those without a dog in this fight to mix my metaphors.

I mean, it is going to be a really interesting day to see Morgan McSweeney giving evidence because he is one of the central figures in all of this.

And one of the questions has been whether he is the person who applied the pressure that Roggins said was felt in the foreign office over Mandelson's appointment.

He has said yesterday that he doesn't recognise that description.

MPs will certainly want to ask him about it.

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.

That's so important because actually Robbins was only in place for the last couple of weeks of the process of appointing Peter Mandelson.

And when he gave evidence earlier this week, he said that he understood, in a very civil service kind of euphemistic way, he said basically that it was what he had understood about Philip Barton's period.

in charge that had led him to the conclusion that this pressure had been applied.

Keir Starmer has denied any pressure was applied in the Foreign Office to get this through.

If Philip Barton contradicts that, that creates a situation where there was either some astonishing miscommunication or one or other of them is misleading the public.

And obviously, if Keir Starmer is deemed to have misled the public, his position, again, looks very difficult.

So, yeah, I think there has been a feeling that, and this is what counts for good news in Downing Street recently, that things have been flatlining rather than cratering because there's a war.

Yeah, you know, hooray.

But because of the war in Iran and because of the position that Starmer staked out and how that has contrasted quite helpfully with the position set out by Reform and the Conservatives, and because of a sense also that changing leaders in the middle of an international crisis is not something that the public are particularly keen for you to do.

That has all felt quite helpful for him.

The Mandelson stuff, it's the story that doesn't go away.

And this iteration of it is is arguably the most difficult for the prime minister.