Rob Wright

@neveragain499 @NealOKelly @alexwickham I think he said he didn't know if there was a note of that meeting as it would have been written and held by the security team. And the brouhaha about records of calls from No 10 is nonsense. No-one apparently spoke directly to OR as distinct from his office.

@NealOKelly @alexwickham Wrong. He said there are no minutes of the meeting. That is unusual and against rules, as the chair made clear. Just as conveniently there are no daily notes about the apparent daily chase calls (again the chair made clear that is basically unheard of).

The key point of process that determines if you believe Keir Starmer or Olly Robbins is right is still unclear this morning. The Cabinet Office - led by Antonia Romeo and Cat Little - say they discovered a UKSV document that clearly recommends against giving Mandelson clearance, with a tick in a red box for ‘clearance denied’. Bloomberg reported on Friday how Cabinet Office officials found this bombshell document on a secure portal while complying with the humble address and everything then developed from there. That document is the basis for Starmer’s claim that Mandelson failed his vetting and that he should have been told about this recommendation by Robbins. On the face of it, it does seem absolutely extraordinary that officials would keep this apparently clear written recommendation on such a high-profile appointment from the PM and cabinet secretary. That is why Robbins was sacked. But Robbins testified yesterday that he never saw this document. Instead he said he only had a verbal briefing with the Foreign Office security team that, in his words, only ‘leaned’ against recommending clearance be granted. He says they were then able to mitigate the concerns and approve Mandelson’s clearance. The Cabinet Office version of events and the document they’ve found, and Robbins’ version, appear to be inconsistent. Robbins’ contention is essentially that this is all a huge misunderstanding, that Mandelson did not fail his vetting, that the problems raised by UKSV were resolvable by him and he resolved them, and that he shouldn’t have been sacked. Robbins says any pressure from No10 did not impact the decision-making of him and his officials. Sources say the missing person in the story is Dr Ian Collard, a former senior FCDO security official. He is the person who had the verbal briefing with Robbins where they agreed they could mitigate the UKSV concerns, they say. Collard has since left the government. It seems Collard might be able to clear up whether UKSV did firmly recommend against Mandelson or only lean that way, and therefore whether Robbins was right to try to fix the problem himself with mitigations, or if he should have rejected Mandelson’s DV on the advice of UKSV and told No10 what had happened. If the UKSV concerns weren’t that grave and were possible to mitigate, Robbins has a good argument that he was right to do that and clear Mandelson’s DV without raising it up the chain, and therefore that he was unfairly sacked for trying to do what the PM wanted. If the UKSV concerns were more clear cut, as the UKSV document produced by the Cabinet Office implies, it’s harder for Robbins to argue he did the right thing. You’d have thought Collard and senior Cabinet Office officials will be called by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to try to clear this up in the coming days…

There is certainly a plausible scenario that, when Starmer (or more likely his officials in No 10) saw the original (misleading) leak they thought "Yay! A chance to blame someone else for this fiasco!". How wrong they were!

@brucemcd23 @alexwickham The form itself is ambiguous. It refers to a "decision or recommendation". In process terms, I believe it can only be the latter as the formal decision taker is always the employing department, ie the body that puts in place mitigation/management measures and carries the risk.

Desperate attempt to search for a smoking gun. Surely the telling point is that Robbins said yesterday that not only had he not seen this traffic lights document in respect of Mandelson but that he had never seen such a document. Which supports the proposition the traffic lights were à layer in the process . Robbins also explained the fuller process how there was deliberation between the UKVA and FCDO team ( Estates and Security) which culminated in the briefing Robbins received ( borderline leaning against) . What flowed from that was the decision that the flagged issues could be appropriately mitigated and hence the nuclear option of withdrawing the appointment ( with reputational damage to Starmer approaching the scale he now faces) was not necessary. Robbins was doing imv a conscientious job of not creating a bigger hole for the PM than he had already dug by making , against advice, an appointment covered with more red flags than the bunting at a village fete. Now the PM is at the bottom of a deep hole of his own excavation officials ( and thereby the media) are putting a weight on the traffic lights document which is not warranted. But this is helpful to a beleaguered PM in shunting the blame for his appalling decision making elsewhere. Starmer might have called the UK’s stance on Trump’s war wisely ( other views are available) but this whole Mandelson/ McSweeney/Doyle network of cronyism stinks to high heaven . It smacks of a power and influence network which , while not as odious as Epstein’s , is deeply unacceptable in British public life. Starmer should be held to account for his part in facilitating it . That’s where the spotlight should be shone . Not treating a traffic lights document as a smoking gun, which if taken seriously , affords Starmer a level of exoneration from his own appalling decision making he truly doesn’t deserve

@BethRigby @trionanic Starmer was told, on the basis of a pernicious leak, that Lord M had "failed" his DV and the FCDO had "overruled" that decision without telling him. On that basis, he'd every reason to be furious. The glitch is that what he was told was not true. A decent man would admit this.

Quick take: Back to the no smoking gun. Badenoch sums it up: "I cannot accuse the Prime Minister of deliberately misleading the House, but everyone can see what has happened here. This was not due process. Everyone knows the price of misleading the House. Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility and go?" The Q on Thursday night was has the PM knowingly misled the House, that he's cleared of... BUT the impression it leaves: pressure to get appointment done, lack of attention to vetting, trying to rush it through, ignoring red flags raised before the appointment announced, putting Mandelson in and giving him case-by-case access to docs despite his background, the sacking & then blaming of Robbins. It looks terrible for a PM that promised to lead a government of integrity, accountability and stability

@stuey_beef @TimPollard2 An interesting scenario which appears to be completely wrong in every material respect.

Strip away the Whitehall jargon and this is what happened: security professionals looked at Mandelson’s finances, contacts and past scandals – including his association with Jeffrey Epstein – and said “No, this man should not have the keys to Britain’s most sensitive secrets.” Political officials then quietly overruled that expert judgment to save the PM from the embarrassment of admitting his chosen ambassador was a security risk. Only when journalists, MPs and the courts dragged 147 pages of documents into the open did they finally admit what had been done – and even now, not a single minister has resigned over it.

Sir Olly's point is that fail/pass is dependent on what FCDO vetting team decide, in this case in agreement with FCDO Perm Sec. What the form looks like to make the recommendation is irrelevant. Sir Olly made this correction multiple times during the committee session, so journalists should reflect it.

@Haggis_UK Weirdly, this is a lie.

Darren Jones: "There has been accusations made of the Prime Minister... of lying... that has been shown, today, by evidence in the foreign affairs select committee to be not true."

My guess is that Starmer won't reinstate him. That would require him to recognise that he/No 10 reacted hysterically to the news of the original leak - which he would never admit. But maybe his successor...? OR has shown himself to be an outstanding public servant.

@TheNewsAgents @Nick569 @EmilyThornberry @maitlis This is bizarre. It's a total misrepresentation of the evidence she heard this morning. Absolutely clear she set out to defend Starmer and to kebab officials in No 10 and Olly Robbins. What a nasty, manipulative piece of work she is.

Olly Robbins was "bullied" into giving Mandelson the job, @EmilyThornberry tells @maitlis. "The pressure was coming from Morgan McSweeney. He was a protege of Mandelson, he was trying to deliver him the job."

@Matt_VickersMP @BBCNewsnight An appalling, vicious, deceitful performance. You lied repeatedly about Roɓbins's evidence this morning. I hope he sues you too.

📺 Catch me on @BBCNewsnight shortly 👍

@BethRigby @AndrewW66619812 @JayneSeckerSky Dearlove was an appalling, weak head of SIS who has subsequently sold his soul to Reform. Whatever he says, you can be sure is wrong.

Former head of MI6 makes point here to @JayneSeckerSky that Starmer should have known he knew enough about Mandelson not to appoint him & Robbins shouldn’t have granted vetting. It reflects in many ways the nub of this scandal: that the PM’s massive error was to pick Mandelson in first place. It has jeopardised his position as PM, led to resignations in No 10, forced Robbins out of a job, left the relationship between this government & the civil service badly damaged and Starmer’s No 10 extremely weakened

The individual responsible ought to be in no doubt as to the gravity of the situation, for it is entirely conceivable that a custodial sentence may follow. Such matters are not treated lightly, and the consequences, once set in motion, tend to be both serious and far reaching. As for Pippa of The Guardian, it is quite possible that she may be required, whether by lawful authority or formal process, to assist in bringing the full circumstances to light. Should she decline to do so, she may find herself exposed to further scrutiny, and potentially to consequences of her own. In such situations, cooperation is seldom a matter of choice, but rather of necessity.”

@nickareay @TimesRadio Yes. MI6 doesn't make such "decisions". They recommend. It is up to the FCDO to decide if identified risks can be mitigated or managed.

Does the FCDO have power to override security decisions of MI6? @TimesRadio

What Robbins has scrupulously not said is that Starmer has misled the House by claiming that Mandelson had "failed" his vetting and that that decision was "overturned" by the FCDO. That is rubbish.

@nickreeves9876 @TallDaveSE11 Prick for hire. A total grifter, mediocrity and waste of fucking space.

@nickreeves9876 @Deborah77129964 Frost, the famously slack jawed slobbering giblet of no discernible intelligence or talent. Quelle surprise

@LizWebsterSBF The vetting process worked. It found Mandelson posed risks, and measures were put in place to mitigate these, which is allowed. Sir Olly Robbins was doing his job - yet he’s been summarily sacked by a PM who made a terrible error and thinks an apology is enough. Awful.

Gus O’Donnell, GOD, who served under Blair, Brown and Cameron, delivers a stark warning on the Mandelson row: Sacking Olly Robbins exposes three grim ironies. He wasn’t the Blob, he was leading reform inside the Foreign Office. And now Keir Starmer, the first PM to have been a permanent secretary, presides over a serious rupture between ministers and the civil service. O’Donnell’s warning is blunt: 👉 This risks a “serious and sustained chilling effect” on officials giving frank advice. A rare intervention from someone who has run the system and understands exactly what happens when trust at the top breaks down.

Of course the system is is dysfunctional. How else would a tit like you become PM? @trussliz

@PaulBowyer19 @SandraDunn1955 @Hepworthclare But as I understand it, this is what Olly Robbins was doing. Which is presumably why they have kebbabed him.

@Hepworthclare Night of the long knives required in the civil service. We can start with the foreign office,the Buffoon appears to have cocked the place up, and he was only there 5 mins before he was sacked. A certain reporters partner should be the first out.

Or maybe the Journo who broke the story needs to come clean that her partner holds a senior post in the Foreign Office .