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Chapter 1: Is Keir Starmer losing control of his cabinet?
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I think that there is an element of genuine fury about where Keir Starmer is. You think cabinet is done? There is a very real conversation amongst Labour MPs about whether or not they'd be better off with someone else. A leadership challenge. That would be a pretty weird thing to do because it would ruin the UK economy.
But you've cleverly shifted to another question, which is whether or not it would be wise to do. And there's only one candidate out there that might even improve Labour's rating, and that's... I do not think that you automatically have to have the succession plan in place for it all to fall apart.
At any point in the last seven days have you considered your position and thought about resigning? I think it's very important to see what's going on here. Last week, my political opponents were saying that there's no way a civil servant wouldn't have told me about the outcome of developed vetting, the security exercise. Turns out my political opponents were completely wrong about that.
Then they said that I was dishonest.
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Chapter 2: What are the implications of the Mandelson appointment crisis?
It turns out they were completely wrong about that. They are now putting any allegation that they can. And I'll tell you for why. They're opposed politically to what this government is trying to achieve.
That is Keir Starmer this lunchtime, not quite answering the question about whether he thought about resigning. But it has been a horrid and torrid week.
We are a week on. from that breaking news about the Mandelson vetting story. Has that changed everything or nothing? Welcome to The News Agents.
The News Agents.
It's John. It's Maitlis. And the latest part of the drama was a lull because today we had the Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, Cat Little, giving evidence to Emily Thornberry's committee. And there were no bombshells.
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Chapter 3: Are Labour MPs considering a leadership challenge?
There were interesting details that emerged that perhaps we didn't know, some of which were kind of quite sympathetic to Ollie Robbins, some of which were very helpful to Keir Starmer. But it doesn't change the basic thrust of where we are. And realistically, nothing much changes now.
in the absence of new revelations until next Tuesday, when we hear from Morgan McSweeney, who was Keir Starmer's chief of staff and the person who was instrumental in getting Peter Mandelson to be our ambassador in Washington.
I wouldn't underplay that quite so much because to give you the context around this, Cat Little, who is the one speaking this morning, is the permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office. She is still in the job. She is a civil servant in the job and her role is to basically protect. put forward the Prime Minister's view, the Prime Minister's needs.
And I think there was quite a lot of disquiet amongst civil servants and ex-civil servants about the fact that the Foreign Affairs Select Committee had called her in the first place. It was understandable that Ollie Robbins had been called. Ollie Robbins was the person who became the centre of this story because of his decision to
to take the vetting as he saw it and make a balanced decision that Peter Mandelson would nevertheless be confirmed in the role of ambassador to Washington. So the idea that Cat Little was being called when she is somebody who's still in the job, who actually... isn't meant to be public-facing. None of these civil servants, really, are meant to be particularly public-facing.
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Chapter 4: How does public sentiment affect political leadership?
The idea that she had to come forward essentially just to give the Prime Minister's perspective whilst probably feeling quite jittery about the fact that one of her most senior and respected colleagues had been fired... This time last week, I think was a pretty uncomfortable position.
Of course, I don't I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just thinking in terms of new revelations that have emerged that fundamentally change our understanding. Well, let's go through a couple. So she says, well, let's just finish my point. Yeah.
You know, the fact of the matter is that we've had the Ollie Robbins account of what happened and we've had the Keir Starmer account of what's happened. And this was sort of designed there to be more supportive, obviously, of Keir Starmer because she's a serving cabinet secretary. And you're right. This is the middle of a political dogfight.
And in the middle of a political dogfight, you don't normally put up a civil servant to be part of that. They should be apart from the fray.
So what she does is she actually contradicts some of Robbins' evidence. And I think it's worth just taking you through that.
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Chapter 5: What was revealed during Cat Little's testimony?
Because one of the bombshells that we heard from Ollie Robbins was that the Cabinet Office weren't interested in vetting. They almost sort of threw the idea of vetting away. And she says that the Cabinet Office did not try to avoid Mandelson getting developed vetting, as Robbins had claimed. And she says she can actually produce the papers, what we call the audit trail, essentially,
to show that there was a debate between security officials and the Cabinet Office advised the Foreign Office that he should go through the vetting. So immediately, we have got a discrepancy there at the top. Obviously, she's in the Cabinet Office. She has to...
support the role of the Cabinet Office, but she makes us question some of that evidence where he said, oh, they were pretty dismissive, there was never really a question of vetting. She also tells us, I think confirms for us something that has been in the press, that she found out the state of Mandelson's vetting in March of this year, March the 25th of this year.
The Prime Minister, we now know, didn't know until... Tuesday of a week ago. And so one of the questions for her was, why did you sit on all that stuff for so long without telling the prime minister? This bombshell has just hit you. Why aren't you immediately going to tell people?
Chapter 6: How does the relationship between Starmer and civil servants impact governance?
And what she says, I think, reveals just how much pressure and how much concern there is over this whole issue. She went to get legal advice first. She had to get her legal ducks in a row. She had to go to her line manager first.
first before the prime minister could know so i do think that sort of takes you into the heart of something that for most people feels arcane it's not about the cost of goods it's not about the war in iran it's not about us standing on the world stage it's not about uh you know sort of um terrorist attacks around North London.
So you could be sort of forgiven for saying, well, what's all this about? I think it's about the deterioration of relations between Keir Starmer and his civil servants. And I also think it is allowing the cabinet around Keir Starmer to try and work out How grave this is for him and therefore for them. Are they willing to move? Do they think this is, in other words, terminal?
Because he is acting like he's not going to go anywhere and he's not going to go anywhere because they're not going to push him out. But at some point, do they decide this is actually pretty bad?
Well, let's speak now to Sam Coates from Sky News, who joins us in the studio.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential consequences of a leadership challenge for Labour?
And it's great to have you here, Sam. Look, you were the person who was on pool duty last week where you get to ask the questions of the prime minister. And it's made available to all broadcasters immediately afterwards. And you did put this question to him, which seemed to get to the nub of it.
...resign when they mislead the public and mislead Parliament. Are you considering your position?
That I wasn't told that Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting when he's appointed is staggering. That I wasn't told that he'd failed security vetting when I was telling Parliament that due process had been followed is unforgivable. Not only was I not told, no minister was told. And I'm absolutely furious about that.
What I intend to do is to go to Parliament on Monday to set out all the relevant facts in true transparency so Parliament has the full picture.
Prime Minister, why do you always end up sounding like the passenger in this government rather than the driver? Are you really expecting us to believe that a senior civil servant, off his own back, without any sort of direction about the importance of Peter Mandelson being ambassador, unilaterally overruled security vetting to approve a political appointment?
And they made clear it was political. I was not told that he had failed security vetting.
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Chapter 8: What insights were gained from the interview about royal protection officers?
No minister was told that he'd failed security vetting. Number 10 wasn't told that he'd failed security vetting. That is completely unacceptable.
The passenger and not the driver is a metaphor that's really kind of lasted. Sam, when you met him, there's been a lot of talk about his faux outrage. Did you think it was faux outrage or did you think he was actually furious?
I think that there is an element of genuine fury about where Keir Starmer is. But we can't see behind those eyes. And I did wonder whether the outrage was solely at that ex-head of the Foreign Office, Ollie Robbins, who he'd sacked the night before we had that interview with.
whether it actually was about something a bit wider, whether it was more to do with that sense that there is at the moment that nothing is going in his direction and that the government that he wanted to lead and the tone that he wanted to set hasn't ended up being where... We quite evidently are. So I suppose my answer to that is, yes, he was cross.
And I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't all aimed at Ollie Robbins.
Do you find him a slightly unknowable character in the sense that there have been other prime ministers who get a very strong sense of what their personality is and what kind of makes them laugh or whether they're gossipy or what? And I get the impression from people who serve with him, that he keeps himself to himself. He doesn't speak to anyone very much.
He reads a lot of papers, but doesn't engage.
So... Can I be completely honest? On one level, I think that's slightly unfair. Like, I've known him on and off for, you know, over a decade. Our paths have crossed before he was leader of the Labour Party. He can be chatty and he can be warm. He can be much more warm than Theresa May, for goodness sake. You had somebody that you could engage on a human level.
Like, I struggle a bit with people who are so obsessed by football. It's just not something I do. But it's... But there's a limit to it. And I was most struck by this on a journey back from India last autumn. And the prime minister at the conclusion of a trade delegation to India came to the back of the plane.
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