Pippa Crerar

But it's damaging for Downing Street because Matthew Dore then received a peerage

from Keir Starmer and is now in the House of Lords.

But shortly after taking up his seat in the Lords, he was actually suspended from the Labour whip.

After it emerged he'd campaigned for a friend who'd been charged with possessing indecent images of children.

So that in itself is damaging for Downing Street.

What is potentially even worse is that there was a massive conflict of interest because anyone who has been following this story closely will remember that during the separate due diligence process that the Cabinet Office conducted, now this is separate from the deep vetting process, which is sort of gets into much more detail.

As a result of that, Matthew Doyle was dispatched by the Prime Minister to investigate Peter Mandelson's responses about the extent of his ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

He then concluded that he was satisfied with Peter Mandelson's answers.

And the announcement of the appointment went ahead.

And what Oliver Robbins told us this morning was not only was the Foreign Office asked if there was an opportunity for Matthew Dole to become an ambassador, but also they were asked to see whether there was a job available for him in Washington working for Peter Mandelson.

Despite the fact that, as we now know, he cleared the path for him taking up the role.

So a real potential conflict of interest there.

And to all those people on the Labour side who have spent years decrying the cronyism that existed under the Tories, I mean, this is exactly the same sort of thing that was happening then.

Well, I think it's very damaging, Lucy.

And as we've already said, at its heart, it comes down to that original sin, the prime minister's judgment or lack of judgment in appointing Peter Mandelson, despite knowing everything that we already knew about him.

We knew about his links to Jeffrey Epstein.

We knew about his business dealings with the Russians and Chinese.

And we knew that he'd been sacked from previous Labour cabinets twice.

And at the time, we were told that Peter Manson was a high-risk, high-reward appointment, but that the reward bit of it, the fact that he could be this Trump whisperer who would get into the White House and secure the special relationship for this Labour administration, outweighed the risk part of it.

That quite clearly was the wrong decision, a catastrophically wrong decision.