Michael

I don't think many Labour colleagues will appreciate coming back from a day canvassing for Thursday's elections to see energy being wasted on leadership speculation and talk about deliberately causing byelections, most of which comes across as rather entitled and about self-interest rather than the stability and success of the party.

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…

What do I think really happened with Mandelson and vetting? In October, November and December 2024, No10 indicated it wanted to appoint Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington. It was presented with an array of people telling them not to: Cabinet ministers, spooks, officials in a vetting report. All raised major red flags. Starmer and McSweeny made clear they weren’t interested in any objection, and this must go ahead at all costs. So Mandelson’s appointment was announced mid December 2024. The vetting we are focussed on today came later, in January 2025. Vetting of ambassadors is the responsibility of the FCDO and Olly Robbins. One bit of the system said no - the UKSV agency said don’t appoint Mandelson. We don’t know on what grounds, but probably the grounds No10 had seen and rejected as a reason to block. Olly Robbins cleared Mandelson. Very quietly, Mandelson didn’t get the very highest level of clearance when he got the job, but he got the overall OK because of Robbins. Robbins did No10 a favour. This is because Olly Robbbins knew that going to No10 post announcement, and saying the Mandelson appointment can’t happen, was politically impossible. And civil servants want to deliver for their political masters. So Olly fixed it for Keir: and is now paying a price. Olly Robbins has - incidentally - done No10 a second massive political favour. The really really toxic claim doing the rounds last night was that surely someone - anyone - in No10 DID know the UKSV agency turned down the vetting Olly Robbins is making clear he didn’t tell people the UKSV verdict because that would be inappropriate as part of the process he followed. It’s not even clear he saw it. No10 don’t seem to realise he’s done them a favour, and are releasing documents to challenge alternative versions of events. Let’s see how it plays out. The bottom line is No10 wanted Mandelson come what may. They rammed it through. One quango; post appointment announcement, was never realistically going to be allowed to stop Mandelson taking the job because the top of Government had publicly committed to it. They hadn’t wanted to heed the warnings earlier; and were in too deep That’s where I think we are

They can attack me all they want. I literally don’t care. Suicide of a Nation is now the Number 2 book in Britain. Because people know I have a point. We are losing our country. I will never stop speaking the truth.