George Parker

George, thank you very much for joining us.

I think he's a component of the Spangali figure, hasn't he, at Westminster?

And as you say, he's worked behind the scenes.

And until last week when he was at a conference in Kiev, I don't think anyone really had heard him speak.

And I think he's been sort of given quite a calm account of

his extraordinary role at the heart of the number 10 operation.

I mean, you heard there in that clip, what he's basically saying is that he did make the recommendation for Mandelson to get this job.

He thought that Mandelson would be the right person to deal with Donald Trump.

He said that if Kamala Harris had won the American presidential election, he didn't think that Mandelson would have gone to Washington.

But given the fact that Trump was there, this extraordinary politician, they needed someone with extraordinary talents to go out and be up against him.

Well, this is all about the appointment of Peter Mandelson and the circumstances around his appointment.

And Philip Barton was the head of the Foreign Office at the time when the initial announcement was made.

He basically said he was given about a week's notice of this appointment coming down the track.

And he admitted, basically, that if Mandelson had failed the vetting process after he'd been announced as the preferred candidate to be the ambassador to Washington, there would have been a crisis on everyone's hands.

The King had already been told that Mandelson was going.

Donald Trump had already been told that Mandelson was

was going.

There were no contingency plans in place in the event that Mandelson failed the vetting process.

So it was interesting evidence, but I'd say that on that front at least, I don't think Keir Starmer's got anything particularly to worry about.

It basically confirmed that although the Foreign Office felt under pressure to speed up a decision on Mandelson's vetting,