Luke Tryl

And so basically their contention is that was a massive failure on the part of the Foreign Office in general, but him as the figurehead in the civil service in the Foreign Office in general.

because why on earth, so goes the argument from Downing Street, would you not tell the Prime Minister so consequential a piece of information or set of pieces of information around the appointment of someone to such a high-profile role?

who has worked in the bowels of government and understands vetting procedures, but also the handling of this kind of stuff, who makes the argument that not only, in his view, did Ollie Robbins not act badly, he acted exactly how he should do in that role because the protocol is that this kind of stuff is incredibly sensitive because this kind of vetting, and I've spoken to various people today who've been through this kind of vetting,

It is incredibly invasive about your life.

And there's a recognition that it is that because it has to be that.

But this sort of stuff shouldn't be sort of sprayed around on the, you know, the office WhatsApp group or whatever.

I say that to be facetious.

Or passed on to the prime minister in this case.

Yeah, exactly.

So the argument is it doesn't get passed on.

Now, what intrigues me is...

Is there a line between those two positions where someone like the Prime Minister could find out the headline without finding out the detail or find out the conclusion without finding out the detail?

By the way, I can tell you this afternoon that we've established that in these processes, there's kind of a traffic light system, red, amber, green, or sort of yes, no, maybe, if you like, where yes is you're clear.

Then maybe the amber is the kind of... There's one or two things that you're going to have to mitigate or you're going to have to sell those shares or whatever it might be, and then you're okay.

And then there's a no.

And in Lord Mandelson's case, it was a no.

Right.

So there's two things there.

There's the actual...

result of the vetting and whether Ollie Robbins overruled that, or it was a more nuanced thing than that, which is what friends of Ollie Robbins like Kieran Martin are saying.