Enda Brady

If you look at ambassadors and diplomats, a lot of the time they're, you know, quiet, intelligent, serene people who you could imagine being trampled by Donald Trump and J.D.

Vance.

And Starmer's view was that Mandelson has got tough political steel running through him and he can stand up for himself.

And then secondly, he's a Labour Party grandee.

And I think there was a feeling that if Mandelson's got the energy at his age, well, we'll use it.

So number 10 has insisted that the prime minister had no knowledge that the security officials had advised that Mandelson shouldn't be given the clearance.

So they go away, they look into your background and whatever they felt was there in Mandelson's background, they felt he shouldn't be given the clearance.

Now, number 10 is insisting that Keir Starmer didn't know this, that he'd been denied clearance.

And the Downing Street view is that responsibility lies with the Foreign and Commonwealth and Development Office.

And the UK government put out a statement saying that the decision to grant developed vetting to Peter Mandelson against the recommendation of UK security vetting was taken by officials at the Foreign Office.

So really, the view from government is that they're passing this one on to the Foreign Office.

And they're saying that Starmer didn't know that he had failed the vetting process.

And they're saying that, you know, as soon as the prime minister was informed, he immediately instructed officials to start establishing facts about this whole vetting process.

But of course, ultimately, the prime minister pushed on and gave him the job.

It massively undermines number 10 and it is another knife wound in Keir Starmer.

So Ollie Robbins, one of the top officials at the Foreign Office until Starmer sacked him last week, he gave more than two hours of testimony to this Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

He was very precise with his words and he said that number 10 took a dismissive attitude to the vetting.

He said that Mandelson was given access to the Foreign Office building and higher classification briefings even before he was granted security clearance.

And he said that the whole number 10 apparatus had created this atmosphere of pressure, which made it almost impossible to deny clearance for Mandelson.

And of course, he'd already been announced for the job in the first place.