Meatless

He's studied it.

He's been a top civil servant.

He's been a civil servant for a quarter of a century.

And so he is trying to make the judgments based on what he feels he's learned and the job that he has now been given.

So he doesn't tell Chris Wormald and he certainly doesn't tell Keir Starmer because there is meant to be a dividing line between the decisions that the Foreign Office takes as civil servants.

And what ministers are told by all ministers, even the prime minister has to know is that the decision has been OK.

So he has painted the picture of a Prime Minister who, A, had already announced before the vetting was completed, OK, against better advice.

B, was not really in control of the facts, didn't understand about the division between the civil service and ministers in terms of what they were told.

And after all that comes the bombshell.

Another friend of another paedophile, we are told, being recommended for an ambassadorial role.

And at that point, all gloves are off.

We'll be back.

So put aside the man who we now know was friends with a paedophile and got an ambassadorial job, Peter Mandelson, and turn your mind to Robin's next revelation, that he was asked to find a

an ambassadorial role, what they call a head of mission, it's just one below an ambassador, for Keir Starmer's then chief of communications, a man called Matthew Doyle, who was recently suspended over his links to another paedophile.

And this is Robin's response to being told in March of last year that it would be really great if somebody at the Foreign Office could find Matthew Doyle a cushy job.

He's a political person, not a civil servant.

Look, the fact that Robbins told us today that he was told by Keir Starmer's private office not to tell David Lammy, who is the Foreign Secretary, because Matthew Doyle is still in the post and may not have known that Starmer was trying to replace him.

This is when it gets really murky.

This is where it gets really kind of disgusting, actually, because up until this point, you're thinking, was this an error of judgment?

Was the Mandelson thing a sort of, you know, ambition over good sense?