Jonathan Freedland

Wormald himself, whose whole job was to find out the whole story of the vetting, talked to the Foreign Office officials.

They didn't even tell him.

Look, Mandelson failed his vetting and we overruled it.

So I think he was trying to say, here's an outfit, the Foreign Office, that had kind of gone rogue, that was making its own decisions and not even telling, first of all, the Prime Minister,

But even a kind of inquiry, a forensic probe into the whole affair, they were keeping all these cards close to their chest as if they themselves were sort of trying to cover up the traces of their own decision making.

Well, this was where he was both strong and weak.

So I think he was strong, and this was in that early part, in taking responsibility for what is the core crime here, the original sin, as I think you put it, the misjudgment of appointing Madison in the first place.

I was quite impressed that Starmer had confronted that head on.

He didn't give an if-pology, which is the word for when people say, if someone's hurt by what I've done, then I'm sorry.

He was much more full front and went out of his way to talk about and to the victims.

And that I thought was admirable or effective to front up and say the key thing was to appoint a man who was close to this abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, and the injury that did to the victims, he took responsibility for that.

So I think that was a strong part of it.

Where it got weaker was in saying that, and actually you get very legalistic and technical here, but there's a document where it could be read as saying, make sure all the vetting is done before you appoint this guy.

He didn't do that.

He announced it to the public in December of 2024.

This is my new ambassador.

And then they did the vetting afterwards.

To anyone else, that seemed mad.

His argument there fell back on, and this is where Starmer was much weaker, when he sounded like an HR director, constantly saying, that's the process.

That was the process.