Lucy Fisher

Well, look, it was a marmalade dropper of a scoop from The Guardian last week that Peter Mandelson had failed his vetting.

I should say, we don't precisely know why Mandelson failed his security check.

But in the due diligence exercise, another set of checks that were carried out regarding his appointment as ambassador, it flagged up his links to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

It highlighted his links to China.

And so there are a range of issues that have given rise to speculation about what might have been in the developed vetting that was flagged up.

So there's this whole argument in the UK about, well, why did that happen?

And some allies of the very senior official at the UK Foreign Office who overrode that recommendation are saying, well, look, Starmer and his political advisers had made so clear that they wanted this appointment to happen that

It had a momentum of its own.

And there's also been some back and forth about what the rules are regarding the vetting and whether the official in question actually was able to, under the law, tell ministers about what the vetting process had thrown up.

So quite a confusing picture, but at heart, it comes back to

Yeah, and the civil servant that we're talking about here is a guy named Sir Ollie Robbins.

Well, he says that Robbins could and should have come to him and that he repeatedly withheld the information from him.

So very much throwing Robbins under the bus.

But look, this isn't the last we're going to hear about it.

Robbins has his own chance to hit back on Tuesday when he will be appearing in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons and he will be asked for his version of events.

Well, look, I think we have to remember that this is becoming a bit of a pattern for Keir Starmer.

He's a prime minister that always seems to be blaming someone else for the scandals or problems that beset his administration.

He's already been through two cabinet secretaries.

He's had two chiefs of staff.

He's had a whole spate of directors of communication.