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The Record Is Missing. The File Is Hidden. The Vetting Found Something Worse.
Three things emerged from Thursday's committee testimony that have not yet received the attention they deserve. Taken together they do not merely damage Keir Starmer's position. They suggest that what has been disclosed so far is not the whole story.
Start with the missing record. Cat Little, the most senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office, told the Foreign Affairs Committee that she would expect to see a formal record of the meeting at which the Prime Minister decided to appoint Peter Mandelson. No such record has been found. In British government, decisions of this magnitude are minuted. They are documented precisely so that accountability is possible. The absence of a formal record of the most consequential ambassadorial appointment in a generation is not a filing oversight. It is either a governance failure of staggering proportions or a decision that was deliberately kept off the formal record. Cat Little did not say which. She did not need to.
Then there is the vetting file. Little was asked directly whether the security vetting contained anything beyond what was in the due diligence report. She began to answer and stopped herself, saying she could not respond without revealing something. Emily Thornberry pressed her. Was there something in the vetting that was different, more worrying, of more impact than the due diligence? Little declined to confirm directly but made clear the vetting could contain more information by the nature of the exercise. The due diligence report flagged Russia, China and Epstein. If the vetting found something beyond that, something serious enough that the Cabinet Office's most senior official would not discuss it in open committee, the question of what Mandelson was granted Strap Three clearance despite knowing is considerably more serious than anything yet made public.
And then there is the most extraordinary detail of all. In March, Little asked Robbins to hand over the vetting summary document and the audit trail around the decision. Robbins refused. A sacked civil servant, already the subject of a bitter public dispute with Downing Street, declined to hand the Cabinet Office chief the documents she needed to brief the Prime Minister and comply with Parliament's Humble Address. Those documents are still not in the public domain. The information that would answer the central question of this entire affair, what the security services actually found and on what grounds the Foreign Office overrode it, is being withheld.
Starmer's response to all of this has been to accuse his political opponents of making any allegation they can. That framing requires the country to disbelieve Cat Little, who contradicted his account twice in a single morning. It requires the country to disbelieve Robbins, whose sworn testimony directly contradicts Starmer's selective quotation at PMQs. It requires the country to believe that the absence of a formal record of the appointment decision is normal. And it requires the country to accept that whatever the vetting found, beyond the Russia and China concerns already documented, is simply none of Parliament's business.
Karl Turner, a suspended Labour MP, has written to the Speaker urging a privileges committee referral. A senior government source has told journalists that the wheels have stopped turning and the question is no longer whether things can go on but when people move. That is not the language of a government managing a crisis. It is the language of a government that knows the crisis is no longer manageable.
The record is missing.The file is hidden. The vetting found something worse than what has been disclosed. And a Prime Minister who calls that a political allegation is a man who has run out of road.
"Little asked Robbins to hand over the vetting summary document and the audit trail around the decision. Robbins refused."
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