Helen MacNamara

I am, yeah, in the room with my very good friend, Clare Watson, who was the Deputy Chief of Staff to Boris Johnson.

Yes, I can reveal that.

Yes, we were.

And she was being texted by John Cummings at the same time as well.

It was all very lovely, familial.

I mean, it's an overused word, but I think it's actually unprecedented what happened to Ollie last Thursday.

Just being sacked immediately.

Of the many things I find a bit bewildering about the way Number 10 have chosen to handle this sorry situation, choosing to have a fight with Ollie Robbins, who is probably the preeminent civil servant of his generation on national security and the constitution and the relationship between ministers and civil servants.

If I was going to pick a fight with Ollie, it wouldn't be on that turf.

And I probably actually wouldn't pick a fight with Ollie.

And that's one of the really odd things that we learned today in Cat Little, so the Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office's evidence that was this morning.

So we've done compare and contrast of different civil servant styles this week.

And one of the things that became clear when Cat was speaking that it looks like the Prime Minister actually wasn't fully aware of how the vetting process was supposed to work in the Foreign Office.

So that he was possibly under the mistaken understanding that Peter Mandelson had failed his vetting.

I mean, I personally would quite like to never hear the words develop vetting again this week.

One more go.

But the prime minister might not have understood that actually Olly hadn't failed.

So the story in The Guardian was actually just completely wrong.

So the basis for acting in this way and for summarily dismissing a permanent secretary might also have been wrong.

Isn't it, Matt?