Chapter 1: What prompted the discussion about Lord Mandelson's security vetting?
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Well, we're back after two weeks and nothing's happened.
It's even more of a mess. I mean, I feel that we depart for a fortnight, we turn our backs for a few short moments and we come back to another gigantic mind-melting mess.
So we thank all the newscasters who've been listening assiduously to newscasts all covering the crises, plural.
Yes.
We are in a way humbly coming back into your earbuds because we're just offering the Saturday newscast, but I have a feeling it's going to be dominated by Starmageddon.
I think it will, because yet again, Starmageddon is unfolding in front of our eyes. Yet again, as one senior MP said to me, oh no, here we go again, because of the saga around Keir Starmer's original decision many, many months ago to give one Peter Mandelson the plum job of being Britain's ambassador to the United States.
And the big question is what will happen next? And that's what we'll be talking about on this Saturday Newscast.
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Chapter 2: How did Sir Keir Starmer's decision impact Sir Olly Robbins?
And therefore, Ollie Robbins was effectively doing the job that he was recently employed to do, which was to enact the government's bidding. The government's bidding was, ooh, Peter Mandelson. No problems have ever come to light with him, have they? He's never had a nickname, the Prince of Darkness. He's never had rich and powerful friends.
He never had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, did he? Oh, yes, he did. Yes, he did have. So they appointed him. That's the whole shebang. They appointed him. Then, Ollie Robbins, it was his job, say his allies, it was his job to go ahead and make it happen.
Let's listen to what Sir Simon MacDonald said. He's somebody who did that same job. So in times gone by, he was also the civil service boss at the Foreign Office. And he was trying to explain where Ollie Robbins might have been coming from on the Today programme this morning.
Within the news cycle, Ollie Robbins had been required to resign. I mean, this shows to me that the number 10 wanted a scalp and they wanted it quickly. I cannot see that there was any process, any fairness, any giving him the chance to set out his case. And that feels to me wrong. Security vetting is a key part of the system, a key part of a posting overseas. It is a confidential process.
So there is a report that The details of that report are very closely held. They would never be shared with Number 10 or the Prime Minister. If there had been a failure, then that fact, that ultimate conclusion, would have to be conveyed to the political level. But the fact that it was not indicates to me that the picture was more complicated than Number 10 wished to present.
So what Simon McDonald is suggesting there, Paddy, this picture is much more complicated than one piece of paper that had a big red cross against Peter Mandelson's name that Ollie Robbins tore up and chucked in the bin and said, nevermind, he can have the job anyway. And it's complicated for quite a few different reasons.
First off, as you say, and I think this is probably the most important one, Keir Starmer had already announced that Peter Mandelson was going to be the American ambassador to the States. The notion of that had been sold to Donald Trump's new White House. For anyone, therefore, to say, oh, stick the brakes on, we can't do this, could have caused a really big political ruction.
It would have been embarrassing for the prime minister. It might have angered the Trump White House. Remember at that stage how carefully Keir Starmer was trying to build a relationship with the flamboyant maverick with a troubled past? the president on his way back to the White House by sending him a flamboyant maverick with a troubled past who he'd concluded was the best man for the job.
So imagine what kind of reaction there might have been if Peter Mandelson's appointment had been torn up and chucked out. The second thing that's really important that you and I have talked about on Newscast a lot, and we reported on it when this all blew up back in September 2005, is this vetting took place after the cabinet office had already done its own process.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Peter Mandelson's failed vetting?
Did the prime minister mislead the House of Commons?
The Prime Minister said things that, given what we know now, definitely gave us a misleading picture about Peter Mandelson's suitability and clearance for the job. And the specific charge there lies actually to an answer that the Prime Minister gave to a question from a journalist when he said that Peter Mandelson had been cleared by the security vetting process.
But did he give a misleading picture? Yes, he did. And that's why Downing Street is so apoplectically furious about this. You know, Keir Starmer has been all over the airwaves yesterday saying how angry he is. He's furious. People in government are flabbergasted at everything that happened. And you can see why.
Undoubtedly, you can see why any political leader would think, well, hang on a minute, I was sent out with information that turns out not to have been quite 100% true. There are, though, to use your word of the day, quite a lot of wrinkles with that. One, how do you define what the actual process is?
If you're Ollie Robbins, you might think, well, I completely followed the process because the process was take a look at all the information, take that report into consideration. But actually, I followed the process because I thought, well, you know what, the risk can be managed and he's already been given the job anyway.
And it's my job to implement the government policy.
Correct. So you could say, if you're Ollie Robbins, I followed the process to a letter. You could also say, if you're in government, well, hang on a minute, civil servants are meant to make sure that ministers don't mislead the House. They're meant to make sure that everything's done accurately. And he didn't do that. So actually, he didn't follow the process properly at all.
Two views are available when looking at the same circumstances. The second wrinkle is that there is also a law here. If you are as sad as I am, and you've been looking carefully at this for the last 24 hours, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, Section 3, it says very clearly that security vetting is nothing to do with ministers.
It's about officials, and officials are bound by confidentiality. They're not meant to be spilling their guts to ministers about what has gone on. If you talk to people in government about that, they say, aha, but yes, you can tell them the outcome of the decision. And officials are also bound by the civil service code, which is a code, not a law.
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Chapter 4: What is the process of security vetting in government?
Three, why hadn't he asked and checked? Because this has been one of the hottest, most damaging, enormous, see it from space political controversies that has haunted Keir Starmer and his team for months and months and months and months and months on end. And you've got one camp in Westminster saying, how on earth can Ollie Robbins have taken this decision on his own without telling a minister?
You've got another camp in Westminster saying, how on earth did Downing Street not ask this basic question? Because as soon as this thing blows up, imagine you give someone a job, it all goes terribly wrong. You say, oh God, who checked the references? Bring them to me right now. I want to see exactly everything that we knew. And it appears that Keir Starmer didn't really do that.
And that's why when you talk to Labour Party insiders and MPs about it, you get back very quickly to the overall sense of disappointment about how Keir Starmer has run his operation. And somebody said to me, it feels like he has never gripped the danger of this whole Mandelson row. And that involves a sort of lack of curiosity about really getting to the bottom of it.
And I spoke to lots of people saying, look, Even if this vetting report said what it said, it is astonishing to imagine that in the managing of this crisis, that Downing Street is only just in the last couple of weeks. managed to actually even find out that that wasn't the case. Now, I'm told that the Foreign Office had been resisting passing this document across.
But there's an awful lot of dispute at the moment about who exactly had done what and this, that and the other. And I suspect also there may well be on all sides some rather convenient hiding behind, well, we couldn't possibly do this because that wasn't convention. And then the other side was, we couldn't possibly do this because of that convention. But
You know, I think at root, this has been a mess for a very, very long time. The last 72 hours tells us very clearly that Keir Starmer, as a leader, has failed to get a grip on it because he keeps being blindsided by more stuff coming out from Peter Mandelson's whole appointment around the US.
It is his party gate. That's what it is. And questions to Ollie Robbins. Sir Oliver, did you...
So I was the Prime Minister last time. Did I do a good job of that or not?
Now I'll be Ollie Robbins. Thank you for coming for our committee. Okay. Did you see the full developed vetting advice, including red boxes? Did you see the full advice or did you see redacted advice?
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Chapter 5: How did Ollie Robbins justify his actions regarding Mandelson's appointment?
So I can say, well, as I've already testified... It's just not done that way, Madam Chair. I don't see the full report. I'm advised of my statutory role to advise the Prime Minister and to carry out the government's programme. The appointment of Lord Manelson had already been announced and it was my clear job under the very well-known statutes to enact the government's programme.
And I had discretion. I was advised. I had discretion legally. And there we are.
We should also just say, Sir Olly Robbins doesn't sound like that at all.
We're being descriptive.
Yes, you're inhabiting the role very well.
Then there's the third answer. I preferred it when I was asking the question.
Don't we all?
Don't we all, yes. So then there's the third version of this, which is where I have told them that I did see the whole report. And then I have to explain there what the consequences of seeing the whole report are. But that's very closely aligned to the first answer because I can't, under the law, I can't say what's in the report.
So I'm then in a very interesting sort of testimony, live testimony moment where I can't, I can tell you I've seen it, but I can't tell you what I saw.
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Chapter 6: What questions will Keir Starmer face in Parliament?
It was. It was known what the scope of some of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes was. And so if you are on the side of victims, you say, actually... You know what I think? If we are going to honestly listen to victims and be on their side, we don't promote, we don't give the top job that I can give, really, one of the top jobs I can give as Prime Minister, we don't give it to a friend.
Now, being a friend does not imply guilt, but it does, to your point about perception, it does seem to say that victims have not been listened to at the point of that appointment.
Look, there are certainly lots of people in the Labour Party who were saying, who believed at the time of the appointment that the Epstein connection, which Mandelson had apologised for, he said that he shouldn't have been his friend, that was all out there in the public domain. But there were people who felt at the time that meant he should not ever have been on the list for that job.
The fact is, Keir Starmer knew it was a risk, but it was a risk that he and his chief of staff were willing to take. Now, politics is about calculated risks. There was a moment when it looked like that risk had really been paying off. The UK got a better trade deal with the United States than many other countries. The relationship between Trump and Starmer initially seemed incredibly warm.
There was all the bonhomie. Some people thought it was absolutely skin-curdling, but other people looked at that and went, well played Keir Starmer. No one would ever have thought that you, of all people, the right-on lawyer from North London,
would have been the person to be able to get a great smooth entry into having a relationship with this maverick, unpredictable, sometimes bellicose American president. But look, here you are laughing and joking in the Oval Office. Wow, well played. Well played, Peter Mandelson.
But of course, when that drip, drip, drip of terrible revelations coming out of the Epstein files emerged, of course, that's when that relationship and that past and the extent of those links became clearer. And then his position simply wasn't tenable. But I was thinking yesterday, I mean, I was just reminded that it did take quite some time.
for Keir Starmer to get to that point do you remember that week when there was more and more coming out and more and more coming out and then there was a kind of oh my goodness he's going to have to go and Keir Starmer was criticised at that time for not seeing the risk I mean not seeing the risk in the first place but not then acting quickly enough
And then in the end, having to fire Peter Mandelson. Then, of course, you know, we spoke to him back at the start of the year. He sort of said, well, Downing Street knew everything.
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Chapter 7: Did the Prime Minister mislead the House of Commons?
And several people had to go already over, specifically over the Mandelson mess. And Keir Starmer, you know, he's the boss. He's not yet been held accountable because of that. But the opposition parties, I think, are going to have a good old go in the next few days for sure.
I should say there'll be names on that list who said, I was at the end of my contract. I wanted to leave. So we haven't got time to go through the full 15.
We'll be here forever if we had. There's a whole podcast series about people. I wasn't defenestrated.
I wasn't defenestrated. O'Connell's wrong. So I just put that in there. Then they can blame me.
No, but for a government that's not yet two years into his life, it is absolutely relevant and valid to point out that an awful lot of people have gone out one way or the revolving door. You know, there have been an unusual number of departures, I think, for a government that still has a huge majority hasn't even been in charge for two years yet and should be still in their pomp.
But they certainly, certainly aren't. We should give you the government statement. There have been lots of quotes on the record from angry ministers, but the government has been saying neither the prime minister nor any government minister was aware that Peter Maddison was granted development vetting against the advice of UK security vetting until earlier this week.
Once the prime minister was informed on Tuesday, he immediately instructed officials to establish the facts. about why the developed vetting was granted so he could update Parliament at the earliest opportunity as part of our commitment to transparency.
We've published a readout of the meeting between the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary and the Cabinet Office's Permanent Secretary where the Prime Minister was made aware. So that's what we were referring to earlier. That was number 10's sort of attempt to... manage the fallout of this by publishing an account of a meeting.
But, you know, another former official sort of old hand in government said to me, why did they just not get all of this out straight away? Give it all to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is a kind of secret committee who could then decide, just hand it all over at the beginning of this mess. That is the basics. They said to me, just get it all out.
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Chapter 8: What does this controversy mean for Keir Starmer's leadership?
That was very rude. Sorry. But actually, they say that the generation that... The editor wants us to stop now, but the generation... I'm enjoying myself. Well, no, it doesn't look like that. But the generation that missed classes through COVID then had some smartphone addiction problems.
Yes.
This is from 18 to 22-year-old panel that's speaking to me. They lack basic socialisation skills, basic human socialisation skills, says these youngsters to us, which is, again, work. You've done a lot more than me, but...
That's super interesting.
But also, well, but the best thing of all is in answer to the question, do you remain optimistic? Oh, 18, 21 and 22 year old. They all said yes.
Well, that's an excellent place to leave our programme.
And we hope very much you've got to the end of this. It sounds to me like 40 minutes and we'll be here tomorrow. We promise less tomorrow, but more interesting.
Less is more.
Less is more.
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