Morgan McSweeney

That is Morgan McSweeney, the former chief of staff to Keir Starmer and the man who until now has lived in the shadows, explaining why he got it so very badly wrong to support Peter Mandelson as Britain's ambassador to Washington.

I think what was so interesting about his evidence today was to listen to him talking about his relationship with Peter Mandelson, where he says, no, he wasn't.

I was a grown man.

I was in my 40s.

You know, he wasn't my mentor.

I wasn't in kind of hock to him.

I wasn't doing what he asked.

Peter Mandelson, you got the impression, was someone who was such a self-publicist about anything and everything he does that he was kind of busy advancing himself.

Whose idea was it that Peter Mandelson should be the next ambassador?

It was Peter Mandelson's idea that he should be the next ambassador.

Whose idea was it that he should be the chancellor of Oxford University?

It was Peter Mandelson's idea.

Not Peter or Peter Mandelson.

Just Mandelson.

Well, I mean, so many of these relationships are fractured over all of this that, you know, Peter's friends have gone to the hills and there aren't many left who are sort of standing by him right now.

And I just thought that was very interesting as well.

The extent to which, you know, there were other people.

who morgan mcswindy said he spoke to two of whom i've known for a very long time and over the 20 30 years i've known these people they've never spoken about politics gossiped they don't want to do that and those are the sort of people who stay in the shadows and so the idea that it was just peter mandelson this fengali figure of peter mandelson's own creation that was that was so important it

It's actually probably, I thought, very convincingly put, you know, dispelled by McSweeney when he said, you know, there were lots of people I spoke to.

They just didn't publicise themselves in the way that Mandelson did.