Good morning. Keir Starmer faces PMQs today with the Peter Mandelson vetting row still dominating the Westminster agenda and – in the view of most observers familiar with the views of Labour MPs – the wagons of doom circling in, ever closer, on the Starmer premiership. In an ideal world, the fate of prime ministers would be decided by the big issues, not arcane scandals and personality spats. But we don’t live in the ideal world; we live in 21st century Britain, where everyone has social media on their phone. And even if you don’t care much about Mandelson, there is a link between how Starmer has handled this and wider government failures.
Starmer’s position got worse yesterday as Olly Robbins, the person he sacked as Foreign Office permanent secretary, gave evidence to MPs. Here is our overnight story about it by Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey.
Pippa and Kiran report: “Labour MPs have been appalled by the recurring reminder that Starmer personally decided to appoint someone with Mandelson’s reputation to the UK’s most sensitive diplomatic post, and warned that his leadership is now on borrowed time.”
Last week Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, was trying to nail Starmer with the charge that he lied to parliament. She failed, because all the evidence suggests he didn’t. In his statement to MPs on Monday, Starmer turned this into a process debate. But that focusses attention on whether he was right to sack Robbins and many people watching the former civil servant yesterday took the view that Robbins should have kept his job.
One of those people is Mark Sedwill, who was cabinet secretary from 2018 to 2020. In a letter in the Times, he says hearing showed that “the calm integrity and intelligence which have characterised [Robbins’] distinguished career of public service”. Sedwill said Robbins should get his job back.
double quotation markThe prime minister appointed Peter Mandelson against official advice, announced that appointment without security vetting having been completed and claims that he would have changed his mind had he been told that the vetting process had raised the concerns about Mandelson’s previous conduct of which he was already well aware.
As Robbins explained yesterday, the question for him was not whether to tell the prime minister what he already knew, but whether those issues could be mitigated enough to allow Mandelson access to the secret intelligence necessary to do his job. He made the professional judgment that they could. Unwisely as it turned out, he shouldered his responsibilities rather than shunting them.
The prime minister should retract his accusations against Olly Robbins and reinstate him to the job the country needs him to do of getting the diplomatic service into shape for the second quarter of the 21st century.
This is bound to feature again at PMQs. It will be one of those day when what will matter most will probably not be what gets said, but the expressions on the faces of Labour MPs.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
2.15pm: Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, gives evidence to the joint committee on human rights about the human rights implications of the Troubles bill.
Afternoon: MPs debate Lords amendments to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. As Sally Weale reports, the government is accepting a Tory proposal for a ban on smartphones in schools to be made statutory. But it is not accepting the amendment from Tory peers implementing a social media ban for under-16s.
5pm: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, speaks at a rally in Barnsley.
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