Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 523. The Starmer-Mandelson Scandal: Lying or Incompetence? About this episode Can Starmer survive if it emerges he was previously told about Mandelson's failed vetting? Is he developing a pattern of blaming others when things go wrong? Will this lead Labour MPs to start questioning their leader ahead of crucial local elections?
Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more.
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2:48 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. And me Rory Stewart. Now Rory and I were hoping to have a nice quiet day today and we're going to have a nice quiet day because we've got, well, no, we've got other things on, but I think we have to say something about what's been going on overnight regarding the seemingly never ending saga of Keir Starmer's appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States. So Peter Mandelson was appointed, then had to resign over his links with Jeffrey Epstein, which Keir Starmer claimed not to know the full detail. Then the launch of a process to look at the process by which he was appointed. And in that investigation of that process, it has emerged that Peter Mandelson was failed in part of the vetting process that's run by
3:33 Alastair Campbell? the Cabinet Office, but that the Foreign Office decided he should be appointed anyway. So what has happened is that it has emerged that the Cabinet Office vetting process through which I went through, I don't think you probably did Rory because you were a minister, but I certainly went through it. I went through it as a civil servant. Oh, of course, before that, yeah. As it pertains to Peter Mandelson, it seems that the Cabinet Office vetting process decided he should not be cleared for developed vetting, which is top secret information. This was not taken into such account by the Foreign Office that they basically said, well, that means he can't do the job. On the contrary,
4:17 Alastair Campbell? the Foreign Office decided that he could do the job. And it seems, or it is claimed, that nobody in Downey Street and no ministers were told.
4:28 Alastair Campbell? About this key fact that Peter Mandelson's vetting process had thrown up something which had led them to suggest he should not be appointed. Have I given a reasonably clear explanation? And now that Ollie Robbins, the head of the Foreign Office Civil Service, Permanent Secretary, he has been fired unceremoniously, just in the manner as Peter Mandelson was fired by Ollie Robbins, after Peter Mandelson's, the depth of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein became clear. Now Rory, we're not going to do a full, you know, forty five minute, hour long episode in this. Doubtless we'll talk about it again next week because Keir Starmer is going to have to make a statement on Monday, but I think it is important enough for us to have to say something. So what's your, what's your thoughts?
5:11 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, so just to explain for people right to the beginning, what is the developed vetting process? It's about the security service in particular, going through all your background, all the evidence on whether or not you can be trusted to keep secret information safe. So traditionally, people will remember it was about whether somebody could leverage you, whether you were particularly indiscreet, whether you were subject to blackmail. If you fail the developed vetting process and you're a normal person, so, you know, I went through it as a civil servant, you don't get the job. It is theoretically possible in, for the Foreign Office, in this case, the Permanent Secretary, to take the advice and to overrule it. And so the claim is that Ollie Robbins, who was the Sir Humphrey figure at the top of
5:54 Rory Stewart? the Foreign Office, received this advice, saying Peter Mandelson had not passed the developed vetting, but decided that, taking other things into consideration, he was still going to use his prerogative to appoint him as Ambassador to Washington. Now, questions. Number one, why would Ollie Robbins do this without informing Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister, or the Foreign Secretary? I think that's extremely unlikely. No permanent secretary I would have worked with would ever have done that. The normal permanent secretary approach would have been to come to say, Prime Minister, look, it's a little awkward. He's failed the developing process, but I do have the power
6:35 Rory Stewart? as permanent secretary to decide that he only narrowly failed it for reasons one, two, and three. We can proceed with the appointment. I just wanted to let you know that's what I'm doing. Now, that's what every permanent secretary I've ever worked with would have done. It's possible for some reason Ollie Robbins didn't do that. Why? Well, maybe he was too much in the number ten system. He'd been a private secretary in number ten. He was trying to protect his bosses. So he thought that this was something they didn't need to know, a little bit like Henry the Second's assassins going out to kill Becket and not being quite clear whether the kings told them to do it. What is inconceivable is that after Mandelson was fired
7:16 Rory Stewart? and Starmer was being asked to answer questions in the House of Commons. What is completely inconceivable is that the Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary didn't at that stage, four months ago, say, okay, let's go through this with a fine tooth comb and work out exactly what happened. I need to know all the information. What did happen? We're saying he passed the vetting. Did he pass the vetting? Was it overruled? What was the process? That must have happened. If that didn't happen, and of course, if it did happen, Keir Starmer's a liar. But if Keir Starmer's not a liar, he is the most incompetent prime minister I've ever heard of in my life. Over to you.
7:51 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think in this area of personnel, if you go through it, so since the election, less than two years, he's lost the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner. He's gone through two chiefs of staff, Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney. I think he's lost three directors of communications. Two cabinet secretaries have gone now. The first one was maybe you and I both thought he should go, Simon Case, who'd been so much part of the Johnson government. But then Chris Wermold, and now he's gone. And they've now lost also the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office. So at the very, very least, it shows a disinterest in key issues or personnel. These are really important jobs where you have to be absolutely sure you're getting the right person.
8:37 Alastair Campbell? And look, I I would like to think there is no lying going on here. But I find it, like you, almost unfathomable, even though the process, the process in developed vetting is such that ministers should be kept separate from it. Because as you say, it's been carried about the security services, they're digging deep, they're finding out all sorts of stuff. Which isn't necessarily known by the minister and frankly, doesn't necessarily have to be known. But what then gets made is a judgment, as you say, a judgment in the round. Now, the thing about Peter Mandelson is that a lot was known already. There had been two very high profile resignations and listeners and viewers may be thinking, well, wasn't he vetted for that?
9:20 Alastair Campbell? The the the crazy thing about our system is unlike in America where they go through, you know, hearings and all that stuff. Our MPs and ministers are not vetted in the same way. It's reserved for civil servants.
9:33 Rory Stewart? Yeah, just to interrupt for a second. I mean, that's what I remember feeling very strongly, having been a civil servant, gone through this very advanced developing process, having been trained again and again on how to handle documents, what the different classifications were. When I was a cabinet minister and sitting on the National Security Council, so with the head of MI6 and the Prime Minister, there was none of that stuff at all. Somehow we we jumped the whole process.
9:55 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, it's so. So there may have been an assumption, oh, well, Peter Mandelson's been through, been in government, he's been effectively Deputy Prime Minister. You know, everything that is to be known about him is probably known about him by now. And of course, what's what we don't know is what it is within the cabinet office vetting that led somebody to say he is not suitable for developed vetting. And it is a very, very intrusive process. Remember when I was being vetted? And of course, I'd already started the job. We won the election, we get into number 10, and then there's a list of us. Me, Jonathan Powell, a few others who had to go through the developed vetting process. You're already seeing stuff. You know, so had I been a Russian agent, okay, and I've been got into daddy's street, I'm already seeing some very, very useful stuff. But then the vetting process starts.
10:40 Alastair Campbell? And it takes quite a long time. I kept getting phone calls from people saying, I just had this really weird guy turned up at the house, wanted to ask whether. You know, you ever had a three in a bed rob with somebody or, you know, whether you took drugs at university or why you kept going to Russia as a tourist in your youth and all this sort of stuff. So it was very, it was, it was serious. And eventually you got a sort of message, I think it might have been Robin Butler who said to me, oh, by the way, your DV stuff went through fine. But what he wouldn't have done, I don't think, had the vetting process shown up something that might, that might have been a cause for concern. I'm not sure he would have gone to Tony Blair. Um, and there is, if you look at the process that they're following, this is the process that Darren Jones, who works with the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's office now,
11:25 Alastair Campbell? is saying that they think needs to have, needs to change, is there is something that says you should separate it.
11:30 Rory Stewart? Yeah, can I question this though, because?
11:32 Alastair Campbell? I'm not saying it's sensible, but I'm not saying it's sensible. I'm just saying that's the, that is the process.
11:37 Rory Stewart? But if Robin Butler had, was looking at somebody who was already very controversial, who'd already had to resign twice, who there were already a lot of questions around, where the Epstein stuff was already out there in the public. And that person failed to develop vetting and they decided to overrule the vetting.
11:55 Alastair Campbell? That would be odd.
11:56 Rory Stewart? You don't think that they would, you don't think they would have wanted to have a quiet word with somebody senior to say, just to let you know, I've done this because it's a massive ticking bomb.
12:05 Alastair Campbell? Well, I wonder, and I don't know, I have actually been speaking to some of the people involved in this whole thing in the last 24 hours. I wonder, they're all denying any knowledge. But I wonder if we're, we're talking here possibly about verbal conversations rather than anything that's written down. Or whether we're talking, um, you know, conversations that say things like, you know, would it make that much difference if? Rather than this has emerged during the vetting. And of course, what's, you know, people probably, most of our listeners, viewers probably don't care whether it's fair or unfair at the moment to Peter Mandelson because he's, you know, being, being investigated by the police over misconduct or the Epstein stuff and what have you.
12:48 Alastair Campbell? But of course, none of us know what it is that led them to say, listen, we don't think it might have been, his business dealings with Russia or China, it might have been his private life, we just don't know. But the point about this is that. This is a, this was an appointment that one was very important because of Trump back as president. That's why it mattered who they put there. When it happened, when the appointment was made, you and I discussed the pros and the cons and the pluses and the minuses. And my minuses were mainly in the risk category, partly because of what we already knew. And I, as you, you know, as you, you outed me, a private conversation
13:28 Alastair Campbell? that you outed on a previous episode, I was kind of fairly gently and then less gently suggesting that maybe David Meliband might be a better, a better choice because there was less risk, I would argue. And so that's, that's the process. And I wonder whether what's happened inside the Foreign Office, and remember, Ollie Robbins had just, he'd only just started in the job. He'd been having a very lucrative life in the private sector after the whole Brexit, because he was so much part of the Brexit debate with Theresa May. Whether he just thinks, well, I kind of know what the Number Ten want, and I need to sort of, you know, so he's having the conversations that lead it in a certain direction. Now, I hope I'm not being unfair to him, because I think he's a, I feel really sad
14:10 Alastair Campbell? for Ollie Robbins today. I think he's a really good guy, very good civil servant, and it's tragic in a way to what's happened to him. But I, I can only imagine that, that when they talk about the process, actually, it was a lack of process here that has caused the problem.
14:24 Rory Stewart? Okay, so then the second thing, let's say you're right about all of that. What I cannot believe is that once Mandelson resigned, and once people started demanding to know what was happening with the vetting, that at that stage, and it's been four months, somebody didn't go and say, okay, Ollie, what was the details here? What happened?
14:44 Alastair Campbell? Oh, yeah.
14:45 Rory Stewart? What kind of vetting we did? I mean, let's imagine you were Director of Communications at Number Ten.
14:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
14:48 Rory Stewart? Right? So that's what, but Starmer's claiming he knew nothing till yesterday. That can't be true. It can't possibly be true that you lose your ambassador in Washington effectively over the issue of whether he was vetted properly or not. And that nobody at a ministerial level has been informed at any stage that actually he failed the vetting and this was overruled.
15:11 Alastair Campbell? He lost the ambassador over the exposure of the full nature or a fuller nature of the relationship between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. And then announced the process by which every single piece of email and WhatsApp and any communication to do with the appointment would now be examined. So what they're saying is this is part of that process. Where I agree with you, it's taken a bloody long time. Where I also agree with you, I just can't understand how somebody, and I'm trying to work out who it would have been in our system, it would definitely have been me if nobody else was doing it, who said, okay, if we're going to go out and defend this on the basis of a process that we're prepared to defend, we have to be absolutely 100% convinced.
15:56 Alastair Campbell? And I cannot believe nobody asked the question, because it said in Peter's contract of appointment, it said that you have been cleared by the vetting process, it said that. So I cannot believe that nobody said during the process before he was appointed. Now, listen, Peter's a big, colourful, controversial figure. He's never been vetted before because he's been a politician, not a civil servant. In the vetting process, has anything come up, A, that we don't already know, or B, that gives you cause for concern? I cannot believe that question was not asked.
16:30 Rory Stewart? Well, the obvious way that it happens is the scandal breaks, Mandelson resigns, you're aware as the director of communications that Starmer is having to go out in the House of Commons in January, saying, I don't know anything about it. First thing you do is you call in Ollie Robbins. And you sit him down and you very carefully, for as long as it takes, say, I'm going to go through every single stage of this process. Help me understand exactly what happened here. Who did the vetting? Where did the recommendation come from? Did he fully pass it? Was it overruled? How did it get through? And Ollie Robbins would be completely honest if you did that with him. There's no way he would lie to you in that situation. So why did nobody do that?
17:10 Alastair Campbell? What's happened overnight? Given, as I said earlier, that the process is that the Cabinet Office does the, they oversee the vetting and then the Foreign Office Permanent Secretary can make a judgment, as you say, in the round. Why, if that is the case, wasn't the defence that Keir Starmer, Number 10, made yesterday? We were not involved in that process for reasons which are well established. Now, that would still have, you'd still have faced a political outcry and people would have thought, what the hell? Is that really how this thing works? So he'd still be in a bad place. But I think you get into a worse place if essentially you're, because you said at this time, either he's not telling the truth or he's incompetent. What happens if it's a mixture of both?
17:55 Alastair Campbell? Look, I've said this to people in Number 10 before and I remember early in, in the early days, there was a, it was, there was a senior official being appointed in Number 10 and I heard who it was and I thought, this is a really bad move. And as you, you know, I don't agitate much. I really don't. I know you think I spend my whole time sort of, you know, trying to run Number 10. I really don't. But I just, I said, this is not a good idea. And I wasn't getting through. So in the end, I did say to Keir Starmer, I said, listen, you need to take an interest in this. This is a really important appointment. And there's probably about, you know, the Prime Minister can't know everything happening inside the government, but he has to have a system where he depends and trusts people
18:38 Alastair Campbell? who will make sure that when he does need to know something, he knows it before anybody else. And so I would say he is, it reflects badly on him. It reflects badly on the system. It reflects badly again on Morgan McSweeney, who was the one, we all know this, pushing hardest for Peter Mandelson to get through. Clearly, in the way it's been presented today, it reflects badly on on Ollie Robbins. But I think when Ollie Robbins presumably will have to testify before presumably the Foreign Affairs Select Committee or or some such body, I suspect he will at least be able to say, I actually was following the process, but maybe I should have been a bit clearer that things had emerged which should have worried them.
19:20 Alastair Campbell? I guess that is, but I, and this could not be happening at a worse time either for the, you know, you've got the local elections coming up. I was speaking to a couple of MPs this morning who said that they felt Keir Starmer's handling of the Iran war and, you know, the health service feels like it's getting a bit better and felt that things were politically at least, you know, not quite as bad as they had been. This is going to be really grim. And of course, Monday is a big, big day because he's going to have to stand up in Parliament on Monday. You've got every single party leader at the moment calling for him to resign. As you know, I don't think calling for resignation is very sensible unless you think, you know, it's likely to happen, but he's going to face massive pressure in Parliament. And there will be Labour MPs over the weekend thinking, you know, what do we do?
20:05 Rory Stewart? And presumably, if Ollie Robbins appears and says, actually, he did inform someone. And I still find it impossible to believe that Ollie Robbins didn't inform someone, at least after Mandelson's resignation. Maybe not on the press's phone, but after resignation, then Starmer's got to go, right? Because he's been so clear in claiming repeatedly that he had no idea.
20:25 Alastair Campbell? And also we've now this pattern of he's been, he's been, he's been let down. He was let down by Peter Mandelson. Peter Mandelson lied to me. He was let down by the system and now he's been let down by, by Ollie Robbins. You know, not for nothing was my, one of the posters that was on my wall in Downey Street the whole time is get a grip. You have to have a grip of process because if you have a media like ours that isn't that interested in policy, loves scandal, loves personality, loves process, don't let, don't give them, don't feed them the stuff that's going to allow them to gorge on it in the way they're going to gorge on this.
21:01 Rory Stewart? Well, this is also why that famous American, the buck stops here matters because I think a prime minister or a minister feeling in the end, they have the responsibility that they don't get to say, oh, it's my civil servant's fault. It's my underling's fault. I've been let down. If you feel that, you get a grip, the two things that connect it.
21:21 Alastair Campbell? It also breeds loyalty amongst the people who work for you.
21:25 Alastair Campbell? You know, I have never, ever, ever named the person who was actually responsible for the so-called dodgy dossier, which has now been morphed into the one, the main one in September 2003, which it wasn't, it was a different document. And, and the reason for that isn't because I didn't think the guy completely screwed up, and nor is it that I didn't give him absolute bollocking for doing it. But what I didn't want is for everybody else who worked for the communications department to think that every time you make a mistake, you are going to get thrown under a bus. And what it feels to me is that Ollie Robbins has been thrown under a bus.
22:03 Rory Stewart? And, and the civil service will feel it right the way through. I mean, they will, they will feel this is a number 10 that is not sticking up for the civil servants, that's making them carry the can, blaming them for everything that goes wrong.
22:14 Alastair Campbell? And ultimately, though you, though we say it was the Foreign Office appointment because it was a senior ambassador, that appointment was made by the Prime Minister, and that's exactly as it should be. A really senior diplomatic position like that, that you've got to be happy that the Prime Minister has confidence and trust in this person to do it. And I think the other thing here is that I, everything I heard at the time is that Keir Starmer wasn't that keen on Peter Mandelson. He was, he was, he was, he was seeing the risk at the time, but the whole, you know, the Morgan McSweeney in particular thing was pushing him. He's got to get a grip of his own appointment of big personnel issues inside the government.
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