Laura

We know now also that a couple of very senior civil servants, Antonio Romero, the cabinet secretary, and Cat Little, the head of the cabinet office, both knew some time ago, I don't mean like months and months and months, but in recent weeks.

They, however, you know, here's an irony here, we're sort of trying to find out from a legal point of view, were they able to tell the PEM because there is that law that says security vetting shouldn't be shared.

So that's all kind of quite murky, but you're right, the timeline is going to be different.

Really, really important.

So there's that pressing question of has the PM come clean quickly enough?

And there's two questions here.

One, is that something that Keir Starmer assumed because it hadn't been flagged to number 10?

Two, is that something that he was deliberately told?

Three, why hadn't he asked and checked?

Because this has been one of the hottest, most damaging, enormous, see it from space political controversies that has haunted Keir Starmer and his team for months and months and months and months and months on end.

And you've got one camp in Westminster saying, how on earth can Ollie Robbins have taken this decision on his own without telling a minister?

You've got another camp in Westminster saying, how on earth did Downing Street not ask this basic question?

Because as soon as this thing blows up, imagine you give someone a job, it all goes terribly wrong.

You say, oh God, who checked the references?

Bring them to me right now.

I want to see exactly everything that we knew.

And it appears that Keir Starmer

didn't really do that.

And that's why when you talk to Labour Party insiders and MPs about it, you get back very quickly to the overall sense of disappointment about how Keir Starmer has run his operation.

And somebody said to me, it feels like he has never gripped the danger of this whole Mandelson row.