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00:00How is it that Peter Mandelson came into this role?
00:02How is he defenestrated of his US ambassadorship?
00:06You want not to have to be in the position that you've created a basically delayed detonation.
00:11You can move at speed and you can bulldoze through some of this stuff
00:14and just make stuff happen if you really want to.
00:17You are the most powerful person in the land.
00:20Why not lean into that a little bit?
00:22Another week, another set of embarrassing HR problems for the Prime Minister.
00:26From the Mandelson scandal to an Inquiries Minister who is currently subject to an inquiry.
00:32Today we're asking, does Keir Starmer have a hiring and firing problem?
00:36Why does this keep on happening and what can you do to fix it?
00:39I'm Clea Watson. I'm a former Special Advisor to Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
00:44And I'm Helen McNamara, the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary.
00:47And this is In The Room.
00:54Welcome back to In The Room.
00:56Thank you for coming back to us if you listened last week.
00:59And if you're a new listener, welcome.
01:01Helen, let's get into it with a clip.
01:04This wound, this lack of trust can only be healed by actions, not words.
01:13I know that.
01:16So that was Keir Starmer when Labour first got into power, if you remember, and they were going to stop
01:21the chaos, which when it comes to his staff, I'm not sure that that's actually happened in practice.
01:28They haven't quite taken it to heart, have they?
01:31Yes, as always, I think actions speak louder than words.
01:35And these HR problems continue to rumble on.
01:38We've got the Mandelson scandal, which is continuing at pace following the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Window last week.
01:46Peter Mandelson was arrested on Monday in what can only be described as a bit of a mix-up involving
01:52the Met, the House of Commons Speaker.
01:54In fact, the House of Lords Speaker as well.
01:57It's all going on.
01:58It's quite an extraordinary one, that one.
02:00It's all going on at once.
02:01And the most interesting bit about that is that the House of Commons Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, got embroiled in
02:07the whole thing because he was on holiday in the British Virgin Islands last week.
02:11Oh, no, he wasn't on holiday.
02:12Clearly, the Speaker was visiting in part of his official role, in fact, because one of the things that the
02:17Speaker to the Commons does is travel around the world quite extensively.
02:21So I think he was, it was some big occasion.
02:23This is the 75th anniversary of the reopening of the legislature of the British Virgin Islands, which I'm sure we
02:28can all agree needs marking formally.
02:32From the mother of all parliaments.
02:33From the mother of all parliaments.
02:34That's why they call him Long Haul Hoyle.
02:36Well, he does do quite a lot of trips, I think.
02:39There's been some reporting in the past about the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
02:42Of taxpayers' money that this costs.
02:45I don't know what to say about that.
02:46I wish I could do a few of those.
02:48I have actually thought about how do you become the Speaker of those.
02:51He looks like a really great job.
02:53There's like fancy house.
02:54There's a robe.
02:55You get to shout at people and tell them off and you get to do a lot of travel.
02:57Well, Sir Lindsay had to explain all this just before PMQs on Wednesday that he was, in fact, the source
03:03for the Mets tip-off to arrest Peter Mandelson as a potential flight risk to the British Virgin Islands.
03:09And it should be said, Peter Mandelson obviously denies this.
03:12He had no intention of going there.
03:14We should also say that, of course, both Andrew Manbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson have also denied that they are
03:21guilty of what they are being accused of.
03:23Which is malfeasance in public office.
03:25Thank you for saying malfeasance.
03:26I've been quietly bemoaning the fact that misconduct in public office is being used instead of the old common law
03:33term of malfeasance.
03:35So Lindsay Hall announced this just before PMQs and then Kemi Bainock stepped up against Prime Minister Keir Starmer to
03:42have a bit of a go at him at PMQs.
03:45He is not governing because he cannot govern.
03:47He is distracted by Labour scandal after Labour scandal.
03:50Mr Speaker, even today now, there is an inquiry into the Inquiries Minister.
03:55That is all that they have offered since they came in.
03:58The defining moment of this man's premiership will not be breakfast clubs.
04:02It will be the site of the man he appointed as ambassador to Washington just last year getting arrested.
04:08Now this comes hot off the heels of the Prime Minister's various staffing problems with number 10.
04:14He's lost his chief of staff.
04:15He's now got two to replace Morgan McSweeney.
04:19He's lost his director of communications, who I believe has not been replaced yet.
04:24And in the meantime, this week, he's got problems with his appointment of Matthew Doyle to the House of Lords
04:29and his connections to a man he campaigned for whilst he had been charged for the possession of indecent images
04:36of children.
04:37That man has since been convicted.
04:39The issues with the Met, which we're going to explain shortly, and the appointment of Antonio Romeo as the new
04:46Cabinet Secretary, who has, I think it's fair to say, got a bit of a cloud around her as well.
04:51Beyond that, there's Josh Simons, who is in the Cabinet Office.
04:55He's a minister there, the Minister for Inquiries.
04:57The Inquiries Minister that's being investigated.
05:00He's being investigated for his links to Labour Together, which is the think tank that got the Prime Minister really
05:05made leader of the Labour Party and exactly what they were up to.
05:10And we'll be getting into that shortly with investigating journalists and how they were declaring their donations, which is boring
05:17but important.
05:18Here I am again, Cleo, hi, jumping in and doing the legal notes, which is, of course, Josh Simons has
05:23said that he is not, in fact, guilty of what he's been accused of.
05:26The problem is it's really not a clean slate and the Conservative Party are making great hay with this.
05:31It's particularly unfortunate for Keir Starmer that he's had the, he's been put in the situation where the anti-corruption
05:37minister has had to resign because of corruption and the homelessness minister has had to resign because of how renters
05:43were treated.
05:43And the housing secretary has had to resign because of not paying stamp duty.
05:47It's got kind of a lovely kind of poetry to it, which is not helping the perception in any case.
05:52So needless to say, all of this business about hiring and firing can seem almost unbelievable to the everyday person.
05:57And as a writer of political satire, I literally couldn't make this up, which is saying something.
06:03Yeah, look, for what we know from when we were there, Cleo, me in the civil service and you in
06:08the political advisor side and both of us in the room trying to deal with, you know, similar situations that
06:13this stuff does happen and it keeps happening.
06:15So next, we'll tell you why this keeps on happening to Keir Starmer, the sort of genesis and the continuation
06:21of the Madison scandal and why the prime minister is probably wrong to think that the winning defence of it's
06:29all the process's fault isn't actually going to do him any favours.
06:32We should hunt down whoever this process is and really give them what for.
06:35I mean, yeah, I mean, to paraphrase, Mike Tyson, everyone's got a plan for how they want to govern differently
06:41until they get punched in the face.
06:45So, look, before we get stuck into this, we should just remind you that please follow our podcast.
06:50You can do that on any of the platforms available.
06:52So, Helen, let's get back into it.
06:55What we really want to talk about is how a situation like the Madison scandal even arises.
07:00You were Deputy Cabinet Secretary, you were head of the Propriety and Ethics Team, you were black eyes.
07:07So, I'd love it if you could just talk through the process of where should we begin?
07:12Would you like to go Mandelson first with the Met?
07:14Would you like to go Josh Simons in the Cabinet Office?
07:17Would you like to go Matthew Dahl in the House of Lords?
07:18Pick your scandal.
07:20What a bounty of riches we have to talk about this week.
07:23Should we start with one of the things about Peter Mandelson and the Metropolitan Police and what's happening and Parliament?
07:30We touched a bit on this last week, but it's a really odd situation where what we have is there
07:37is a live police investigation into accusations that Peter Mandelson is guilty of misconduct in public office.
07:43And the police have decided that materials that are relevant to their case, which are also highly relevant to asking
07:52and answering the big political question, which is what did the Prime Minister know when he appointed Peter Mandelson about
07:57Peter Mandelson's links with Jeffrey Epstein?
07:59Because that's really the heart of this question is about the Prime Minister's political judgment, which when you go right
08:05back to the core, it's always about the Prime Minister's judgment.
08:07What did the Prime Minister know about Peter Mandelson and what did he look over?
08:11What did he not know?
08:12What did he think was okay?
08:15And these key documents, the police have said that actually they can't be released to Parliament, can't be released to
08:20the public, that nobody can see them because they're material to the case, which, I mean, it sounds a bit
08:25insidery, but it's really extraordinary that this is a, first and foremost, a thing about parliamentary and public accountability.
08:33And it's a very odd thing to do, to put a live police investigation happening at the same time, the
08:38normal thing to happen would be you'd have parliamentary process, you'd have a government process, the government would establish itself,
08:46what it's supposed to be, what is the crime that's been committed against it, if you like, and then there
08:51would be a police investigation that would follow.
08:53One of the things I genuinely am puzzled by is, why is it that the police investigation is happening at
08:59the same time?
09:00That's an odd, it's an odd thing to do.
09:02And it has actually got in the way of parliamentary democracy and accountability.
09:06And it extends and prolongs the political pain.
09:09It's a really, it's a quite self-defeating process step to have taken, to be honest.
09:14And I think one of the confusions seems to be, who has higher precedent, Parliament or the Met here?
09:21And my understanding is, it's Parliament.
09:24Well, I mean, yeah, they're the, yes, yes, clear, well done, constitutional big tick.
09:29But no one wants to, but no one wants to, I mean, why aren't they just cracking on and releasing
09:33some of these files then?
09:34I mean, if I were in government, I'd be wanting to get this done quickly, not eke it out.
09:39Well, again, you have to say hats off to the Conservative opposition for, in fact, instead of something that could
09:44have been wrapped up and done and dusted very quickly on the political side.
09:47And then, obviously, police investigations could follow if they needed to follow.
09:51The police is independent.
09:52It can follow its own, follow their own processes afterwards, instead of which we have the prospect of the Mandelson
09:58and Epstein affair being drawn out for months and months and months, if not longer than that.
10:03So basically what you're saying is, we just have to wait to see what the Met has to say.
10:07And in the meantime, this is just going to rumble on as a bad smell over the government, unless they
10:13choose to do something punchier.
10:15Yeah, I guess so. Yes, absolutely.
10:17OK, well, let's move on to the second scandal, which is Josh Simons, a Cabinet Office minister, the Inquiries minister
10:26who is facing the inquiry.
10:27I should say that he denies all allegations placed against him, but he's in a bit of trouble too.
10:34So he took over from the former chief of staff to Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney at Labour Together, which
10:42is a think tank, which really propelled Keir Starmer in as leader of the Labour Party and helped clean up
10:50the party, shall we say, after Jeremy Corbyn.
10:52And they have been in trouble for some time because they have some misdeclared money that they have received, which
11:03is nearly three quarters of a million pounds.
11:04And in the meantime, it turns out that whilst Josh Simons was chief executive of the organisation, they hired an
11:14American public affairs firm called Apco to investigate some Sunday Times journalists, particularly Gabriel Pogrand.
11:22And unfortunately, that report's got back to him and he's quite a good journalist and he's caused them a few
11:27problems.
11:28It's incredibly invasive, by all accounts, the research that was done into this person.
11:34And it's caused Keir Starmer problems mainly because his own MPs are so infuriated.
11:40They can't believe that this is something that Labour people would do.
11:44They're never the baddies.
11:46That is part of it is, you know, whenever the Labour Party is under pressure, step forward the Labour Party
11:51to punch themselves in the face, which is exactly what happened this week.
11:55I think it does, it is worth pausing on this one.
11:58It's quite complicated what has happened.
12:00So you're absolutely right.
12:01This is entirely historic.
12:02It's that Labour Together, who are this Labour-supporting think tank, there was, I mean, they paid a fine in
12:092021 because they had misdeclared some of their donations.
12:14And the reporting of this was, it turns out, taken by Labour Together very personally and seen as a political
12:20campaign against them or whatever.
12:22They commissioned this investigation into journalists and then the fact that that investigation happened has now come out.
12:29Now, I am here, here she is again, before you puzzled.
12:33I am really puzzled by elements of this one.
12:36So to start off with, what we've been told is that the Prime Minister asked civil servants in the Cabinet
12:42Office to establish the facts about what had happened in Labour Together, which is an independent think tank, before the
12:502024 general election.
12:52So I have no idea why, what auspices or what remit the civil service has to start popping up at
13:00a think tank and ask them to establish the facts.
13:04I mean, just standing back from that, it's like, firstly, that is not what taxpayers' money should be spent on.
13:08It seems like a Labour Party problem, not a government problem.
13:12It's not to do with, I mean, we'll get to this, there might be something to do with conduct in
13:16government.
13:16But I don't know if you remember when we were in Downing Street, that quite often, you know, it's quite
13:23nice having your own little set of internal narcs that can go around and find out the facts.
13:27So it wasn't uncommon occasionally, both working for Mrs May and Mr Johnson, that somebody around them would be, you
13:36know, pop up and say, oh, Helen, could you just have a little look into this?
13:39And I quite often would just be like, no, no, thank you.
13:43That looks like your problem, not my problem.
13:45Yeah.
13:45My remit is very closely over the government and nothing else.
13:49And that's, there's good reasons for that.
13:52Which is an interesting part of this Josh Simons case, because he inadvertently managed to send a text message to
13:58all Labour MPs this week on WhatsApp,
14:01essentially exonerating himself, saying the PM wants to move fast, whatever that means.
14:07And the propriety and ethics team have found he has done nothing wrong.
14:11But of course, that team only investigate him as a government minister.
14:14They're not interested in his time before government, unless it's something actually criminal.
14:20And I find it slightly bamboozling because I'm afraid to say, certainly when I worked in government, there were plenty
14:26of scandals within the Conservative Party that included things like, you know, Islamophobia inquiries to expenses handling to the conduct
14:35of certain ministers.
14:36Bits and pieces about wallpaper.
14:38If you can, and if you can, you'd much prefer to run an internal investigation.
14:44Why would you want to get the government involved?
14:46Not least because a political party can't be FOI'd.
14:49So you can actually run a kind of quiet...
14:51In many ways a safe space.
14:53In some ways not, but it does have its own protection.
14:56But it seems a very odd decision from the Prime Minister.
14:58And we will get into why we just think it's a mistake to call in propriety and ethics, to talk
15:03about investigations and processes as a sort of defence mechanism, as a holding line for everything is fine.
15:09So I chair a think tank.
15:10If some people from the Cabinet Office, nice as they might be, turned up with some clipboards,
15:15I'm like, can I just have a little bit of a look at...
15:17My response would be slightly closer to the jog on than do come in and have a cup of tea.
15:21Yeah, do wait in the stationary cupboard.
15:23Exactly.
15:24It seems totally bizarre to me.
15:26So kind of wrong, sort of bad on its face.
15:28And the other thing that really worries me about this one is that what happened in the House of Commons.
15:34So Darren Jones, who is the exotically titled Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister.
15:40Back in our day, he's basically doing the job, which is being the person who runs the Cabinet Office.
15:45And one of the downsides to that role is that you are the person who is always sent along to
15:52Parliament when there's been any kind of scandal to explain the decision the Prime Minister has not made, just made,
15:58might make.
15:59It's pretty...
16:00It's pretty...
16:01It's not a real upside to the big office of state.
16:04I've made that call.
16:05I've been like, hi matey, hi buddy.
16:08Yeah, great.
16:09PM thinks you're doing a fantastic job.
16:11Here's the thing.
16:12We need you to go to Parliament and get your face kicked in for three hours.
16:17It's all good.
16:18Don't worry.
16:19We shuffle around the corner.
16:20Big future ahead.
16:22But no, no, no, no.
16:23Don't worry.
16:23We're going to give you all the best lines.
16:26I wouldn't ask any questions.
16:27I'd just probably best you don't know.
16:30Anyway, good luck.
16:32I mean, that was, I don't know if you remember that when...
16:35So, I don't know, where should we start if you pick the investigation to Priti Patel?
16:40Which was for bullying at the Home Office.
16:42Yep.
16:43And, or any of those, what would happen is we'd have these conversations, very small group
16:48of people with the Prime Minister.
16:50And then at the point at which the decision had to be made or the announcement, the public
16:54had to be told this is what had been decided.
16:56I would be sent trotting through the link door to go and see the Chancellor of the Duchy
17:02of Lancaster, gloriously titled, basically the most senior minister in the Cabinet Office.
17:07Who would quite often try and palm it onto someone more junior.
17:09Quite often.
17:10But on the big ones, they really couldn't, you couldn't get away with that.
17:12So, sometimes it was the junior minister if you could get away with that.
17:15It was one of those things that's just like, no, no, no, after you, after you, after you.
17:18But for a big one, it has to be that guy.
17:20And this is, you know, that's why Darren Jones had to do Josh Simons this week.
17:24But you'd sit there in the room and it was kind of excruciating because the special advisors
17:28to the CDL will be looking at you like absolute daggers because they'd absolutely hate that
17:34you'd put their boss in this position and you would basically hand over a piece of paper
17:39and you'd be like, this is what you need to read.
17:41And then they'd ask you questions and you'd be like, yeah, no, I can't tell you that.
17:43Do not deviate.
17:44No, I can't tell you that.
17:46No, I can't tell you that.
17:47No, I can't.
17:48I think you have to ask the prime minister or the political team, Secretary of State.
17:52So, it's a pretty excruciating thing to do.
17:54But anyway, and you normally, it is a proper taking one for the team moment.
17:57You go and stand there in the commons.
17:58Everyone knows it wasn't your decision.
18:00Everyone knows you're not really involved.
18:02You have to answer these questions.
18:03It's extremely excruciating.
18:04Although this time, what Darren Jones did was two kind of unusual things.
18:08Firstly, to go back to my point about what on earth is the civil service doing, he said
18:12he relied very heavily on, oh, the civil service has been looking into establishing the facts.
18:18And it's fine because they're all bound by the civil service code and they're impartial
18:22and have integrity, which, I mean, they absolutely are.
18:24But it's a real kind of, it's really unfair for the civil servants in question and a massive
18:29kind of, whether it's a naive or deliberate mischaracterization about impartiality, I'm
18:34not sure.
18:34Because the point is, yes, the civil service is impartial, as in it will serve a government
18:40that the country elects.
18:41It's not impartial, as in it's like this way, that way about the government of the day.
18:44It is entirely on the side of the government of the day.
18:47So it's not entirely fair to say the civil servants in question are entirely independently
18:52of anything able to investigate.
18:55And the second thing that he did, which was pretty unusual, was accused by John Trickett,
18:59who, when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, was the shadow cabinet office minister.
19:03And John Trickett said that he'd taken money from Labour together, so he shouldn't be speaking
19:08there.
19:08And Darren did this amazing kind of like strong, I've not taken a penny or a pound from these
19:12people.
19:13Dazzler.
19:14It turns out that's technically true, but only technically true, because he did take
19:19quite a lot of value in kind.
19:20And in defending himself so strongly, he also, instead of doing the taking one for the team
19:25thing, just threw everybody else under the bus.
19:27Just on this point about donations in kind, it's not a sack full of cash, admittedly, but
19:34it is transport, it's food, it's accommodation, it's clothes, it's whatever else you might need.
19:39Or in this case, I think it's literally two members of staff.
19:41So it's not a kind of...
19:42Which is quite a generous donation kind.
19:46It's definitely a strong link.
19:47Yeah.
19:47In many ways, it's trafficking.
19:50Could it be worse?
19:52I don't think any actual humans were hurt in the making of this donation.
19:55No, that's true.
19:56I'd like to just get on to a third scandal, if that's okay, Helen, because then I really
20:00want to talk about these different vetting processes, which is obviously what you ran,
20:04which is obviously Matthew Doyle being given a seat in the House of Lords.
20:10If we could just run through quickly how that process works, because I think one of the
20:15mysteries for me about Keir Starmer's defence on appointing this person to the House of
20:19Lords is that the process is already underway by the time he knew the information about him
20:26and that nothing could be done and that a thorough process was followed.
20:30And as I understand it, he just wanted him to go into the House of Lords.
20:34And that's what was happening.
20:36Look, and we've both been there when the Prime Minister has made a promise to somebody, usually
20:41somebody who's been, you know, pushed out of the door to some degree.
20:45And as part of the agreement for them going, or as the thank you, or as whatever you want
20:49to describe it, and this is all a bit hold your nose territory, has been told they are
20:53definitely getting a peerage.
20:54And there's a thing that's often underestimated, which is about kind of momentum of decision
20:58making, is once you've decided that you're going to do, going to appoint somebody to this
21:03role, or you're going to give somebody this honour or this privilege, it's quite hard in
21:08any case as a human being, but definitely in politics, then reverse out of that and not
21:12do it. So decisions are actually made much earlier than they are made, if you like.
21:18And I think this feels very much like a classic example of that is the train had left the
21:22station. So the question became, should we stop it, rather than, is this a good idea at
21:28all? It's another, I mean, I'm afraid it's here where I'm again puzzled, it's another
21:32really puzzling one, because the defence, which has been it was too late to stop anything,
21:36it just isn't true.
21:37Right, he could have been stopped literally right up to the point that he put his ermine coat
21:41on to go in and...
21:42Also, the other thing we forget about this is that the human being themselves can also,
21:46it also has agency and ability to think, actually, maybe I should stop this, maybe I should call
21:51time on this, maybe this is not a good thing, maybe this isn't the right time.
21:54And as a former director of communications, do you think they have a pretty good idea about
21:58how this might look on the front page of the Daily Mail?
22:01So look, I have deep respect for former and present. Director of communications is a really
22:05hard job. In my experience, they're not always 10 out of 10 are making decisions about
22:09themselves.
22:11That's fair enough. Yes, so with that in mind, with the individual having agency, obviously
22:15the Prime Minister has said that Peter Mandelson has not been entirely honest with him and
22:20that he's sorry for believing Peter Mandelson's lies. One of the things I wanted to ask you
22:26about is, you know, you've run processes for getting people appointed to very senior roles
22:31and frankly, you've run processes for people being removed from those roles.
22:36Those ins and outs.
22:37Yeah. And I'd really like to talk to you about how these things come about at all. How is it
22:44that
22:45Peter Mandelson came into this role? How is he defenestrated of his US ambassadorship?
22:51I think this is one of those things where it's really, it's where the political side of the
22:55operation, the civil service side of the operation meets and sometimes that works really well and
22:59sometimes it doesn't work well at all. So from the civil service side, it's really unusual for
23:04you to be involved right at the beginning of the idea of this person should be appointed if it's a
23:09political appointment. I mean, sometimes you are, but most of the time, by the time that you are asked,
23:16you know, we're thinking of appointing this person. Can you find out stuff or what? Sometimes it's
23:20like, what do you think? Sometimes it's, can you do some checking? Sometimes can you do some light
23:23betting? Sometimes we need to run a real process. Again, to my point about decisions of 70% of the
23:30way there really, unless it's, you know, we're thinking about these two or three people help us
23:34to work out whether it should be person X or person Y, which quite often is the case for ministerial
23:39appointments. But for something as high profile as this, they have sort of almost made their mind up
23:44and that is part of the problem that, that you get involved quite late in the day. Yeah. And then
23:48you are trying to scramble around and you're trying to find out what you can find out from
23:53mostly publicly available information. And that's, sometimes that is, you are showing, I've had
23:58experience of my very, very good team would go away and they just do some really excellent Googling
24:03back in the day. And, uh, I really hope that they're not relying on chat GBT, but you know,
24:10just really excellent Googling is a skill and they'd find all sorts of things because in
24:14the end, part of the trick is you are, you need to do what a journalist will be able to
24:18do. And
24:19of course, a small team in the cabinet office, neither has the skills or the expertise of the
24:23resources as some extraordinary investigative journalism outfits. So there's going to be
24:27things that you can't get to. Although Peter Manderson's life is fairly well documented.
24:31I mean, there's a lot, maybe that was the problem. Maybe there was so many things that
24:34they had like the, their two pages couldn't quite get it all in, but there is a thing about
24:38you are just relying on what you have in open source. And then sometimes you are also trying to find
24:42out from what people within that, what, what are the questions that haven't been asked?
24:46What's not been made public? What don't you know? So again, for big appointments, I would
24:51usually try and talk to people who'd work for people before you do lots of informal referencing
24:55and checking. And then sometimes you would go to the chief whip in my case. So you'd say,
25:02uh, look, I know all of this stuff from the civil service and government side. What do you know
25:06from the party side? Because again, there is a, there is a proper, by the way, space between
25:11these two things. And there'll be all sorts of stuff that a political party will know that actually
25:16never comes near government and sort of sometimes kind of vice versa. So you'd be trying to get as
25:22much as possible around a picture. And the reason you're doing that isn't because it's really fun
25:26to find out juice about people, although, but it is sometimes it's quite fun. Um, is that you're
25:32trying to make sure that the government is protected. So the whole point of this is that you're
25:36putting somebody in a job, you want them, the government to be function, to function well,
25:40you want not to have to be in the position that you've created a basically delayed detonation.
25:46And that's what it feels like to me that Keir Starmer is in a situation where he's got,
25:50God knows how many delayed devices that are just going to come back because they haven't done.
25:56I just want to cut in there because I've definitely been involved in some of these tangles with you
26:00where I'm afraid to say we weren't necessarily completely on the same side. And there was,
26:05there were categorical examples of lying, of being quite deceitful, very obviously playing
26:11political games that were going to cause the government problems.
26:13But there also is, there is, there's a point where the political team don't want to tell
26:17the prime minister everything. So it's a bit like this momentum, isn't there? Where you've got like,
26:22we're going to do this appointment. And you said to me last, one of the things you said last week
26:26is I
26:26was one of those people that could open the door and go and see the prime minister. And that was
26:30precisely why the, the reason why that matters is because you have to be sure if you're the civil
26:35servant involved, that the actual prime minister has been told the full facts and being reassured
26:41by someone who works for them, who might have different incentives that of course, yeah,
26:45of course he knows all of that stuff. It's like, does he really?
26:47Yes. Meanwhile, on the political party side, I definitely had situations where I said to the
26:54prime minister, who was then Boris Johnson, this person has to go. They were an employee,
26:59the conservative party, not the government. So I didn't have to bring you into that.
27:04And I said, you don't need to know why.
27:06Yes.
27:06That was how you could see him thinking, phew, so glad not to know. But well, yeah,
27:10there were definitely times when it was not helpful or I felt what the boss doesn't know
27:16won't hurt him. And then I think bloody hell, Helen's just snuck in and told him all about it.
27:21I've had that feedback that wasn't always helpful in many ways.
27:24But I guess the point I would make is we've definitely had situations where we were not
27:29entirely on the same side as each other, where the political and the civil service teams had
27:36different ideas about who should be appointed to what roles or whether they should be fired
27:39or not. And ultimately, your team would come up with a very detailed and really quite excruciating
27:48set of advice about why someone had technically done something wrong. But it's ultimately up to
27:54the prime minister to decide, have they categorically broken the ministerial code? And how do I feel
27:59about it?
28:00Have the hard questions been asked? Because one of the things I think that it's particularly
28:03hard when you think about, if you start from the working assumption that I am a good person
28:08and all my decisions are good, which is an unbelievably dangerous working assumption,
28:12but let's assume that that's what you start with. And that all the people who are aligned
28:16with my political party are good people who want to do the right thing, which again, I
28:19think you can you can see that from space that that's where it's one of the problems that
28:22Labour government have created for themselves is in fact, kind of having that mindset, so
28:26hardwired, it's perfectly feasible that there were questions that just weren't asked.
28:31And it's reasonable. Why would you ask questions if you don't really want to know the answer?
28:34But it's not it's not even that you allow yourself to think. So, you know, there have been
28:38circumstances where people are very deliberately not asking questions because they don't
28:41want to know the answer. And, you know, my job used to be like, hello, here are the
28:45questions you haven't asked me, but I think you need to know. But it's very easy to just
28:49think, well, it's not so much looking the other way, but it's not even thinking that
28:53you need to ask the question because your underlying assumption is everything is good and fine
28:58and all my people are good and fine and we're just all doing the right thing. And I think
29:01there was a there's a common theme among along all of these scandals, which is that assumption
29:06is really damaging.
29:07Yeah, I think that's totally true. And you should be much more suspicious of people. And dare I
29:10say, as a former director of public prosecutions, you should be a bit more inquisitive about
29:16people's contact and behaviour and motives.
29:18Or just not so wedded to the process. And this is that I think again, this is like if you
29:22look at like what are the fundamental issues here that cause a problem is the ministers,
29:28including the Prime Minister, describe process as if it is some kind of holy sacrament that
29:33cannot possibly be changed and must be followed at all times.
29:36Yes, but I want to talk to you about that when we come back from the break, because I think
29:41that is such an important part of the advice we'd give if we were in the room now.
29:47So yes, I think it's fair to say Keir Starmer does fall back on the idea of the process a
29:52little bit too much. And perhaps as a former director of public prosecutions, this isn't
29:57entirely surprising. Earlier this month, he was forced to confront Mandelson's appointment
30:02as US ambassador head on. I wonder what he'll say.
30:05The information now available makes clear that the answers he gave were lies. He portrayed Epstein
30:16as someone he barely knew. And when that became clear, and it was not true, I sacked him.
30:28It's so aggressive that, isn't it? I still am surprised by the Labour Party's ability
30:34to turn on to self. It's really extraordinary.
30:36Yeah, I completely agree. But I'm interested in him saying, I've been lied to, the process
30:41has turned against me, the advice has been wrong, which he is no stranger to, I'm afraid,
30:46in the last year or so. But what is the alternative to getting caught up in the process? Is it
30:52acting
30:52quickly?
30:52So I think there are two things here. There is obviously a kind of fetishization of process
30:57that's going on, which is super unhelpful. It's almost like he thinks that there was a
31:03process by which he became prime minister, which is spoiler alert, no, there wasn't. It
31:07doesn't work that way, that the country kind of goes through this extraordinary process
31:10and then anoints the person who is most fit to be prime minister. Your business is politics.
31:15So it's quite surprising that actually under pressure, what he goes to is process rather
31:20than politics. And by constantly creating these processes that take time and creating
31:27the impression that they somehow are laws of gravity, that you cannot be changed and
31:31altered, it's really, really not helping him. I mean, politics is a post to paint business,
31:36not a kind of on the one hand, on the other hand, fine detail. And there's a common theme,
31:41I think, in all of these things, which I feel like I'm going to do this on this podcast a
31:45lot, but the kind of boring things I used to say repeatedly in my old jobs was, if you
31:49have to take two or three sentences to explain why something is okay, firstly, you sort of
31:55know it's not okay. And it's just not going to work. So, you know, take, we've got two
32:01examples here of the prime minister having to explain why an association with a paedophile
32:08was okay. That, that can't be a two or three sentence explanation. There needs to be one
32:13sentence, which is, I could not possibly have known at the time. And as soon as I found
32:17out, I did something. That's the only thing you can do in those circumstances. You can't
32:21have a yes, but technically, because of this, and actually, at the time, I didn't and whatever,
32:25you're toast. And I think there was a failure to understand those multi clause explanations
32:29of why something is okay, is a real kind of problem. And they need to get much faster
32:34getting to the political answer, which is, you either have a very, you've got a very
32:39binary choice to make at the beginning. Is this okay? Is this not okay? The Labour
32:42Together thing is a great example, not to do with government, everything to do with Labour
32:46politics. Is it okay to have paid money to have a journalist investigated personally?
32:52Well, I would say no, it's not, it's not a very complicated question that. So what is it
32:57that you are waiting for, in order to be able to come to that conclusion? Because it is
33:02much, much better for you in every sense, politically, process terms, all of these things,
33:07and kind of save your capital P process for the times when you really do need it, and it
33:12really does matter, and then do that properly. But don't keep on dragging this kind of artifice
33:16of there being a process into things which are just straightforward, political, and quite
33:21easy, I would say.
33:22Yeah, and I think that is, you're right, there's a time and place for being able to say,
33:26a process isn't underway. I don't want to prejudice the investigation. This is, you know,
33:31a wide ranging inquiry, and I don't want to get into the way of that. Sometimes you do
33:37need a bit of a holding line, because you just don't know what the fuck is going on.
33:41And meanwhile, your team are like beaving away trying to get to the bottom of things. And
33:45you actually don't want to say something you're going to have to row back on. But I also think
33:51there's a mistake in thinking that can hold for a long time. And you need to try and act
33:56on these things really quite quickly. And I think politicians of late, and I would put
34:02Boris Johnson in this camp over things like the COVID inquiry, which we all know is now
34:05going on for years. Sometimes by saying, I'm going to be incredibly transparent and make
34:13this completely wide ranging, and I'm going to make it independent and kind of open to
34:20everybody. You bring in all kinds of problems for yourself later down the line. It's kind of
34:24those examples of the pipe bombs you were talking about. Similarly, I think that the
34:31Labour Together thing in particular, I'm interested in, because I just don't understand why, perhaps
34:37there is something going on, they don't feel the need to announce it, why you would not be
34:40doing an internal party investigation. Get a team of lawyers in, because he presumably has
34:45a lot of faith in lawyers for this kind of thing, and get to the bottom of what has actually
34:49been going on here. Similarly, if I was on the political team, even if the Mandelson files
34:55have not been released yet to the Met by individual cabinet members, or indeed to the parliamentary
35:01committee that will be scrutinising it, show them to me. Because if you won't release them,
35:06that means they're bad, and you should be finding a way to leave government, like a few notable figures
35:11have done in recent weeks. Or do show them to me, and let's start to build a bit of a
35:17picture
35:18of how well you actually knew this person, and how bad these actually are, and you're
35:22defending yourself. Totally. And on the Labour Together stuff, the thing that they have allowed
35:24to happen is this festered, and it festered for a few weeks, and what's happening now is
35:30everybody's being dragged into it. So if I was a cabinet minister who'd been involved in
35:34Labour Together, and Labour Together have done some great work like this. Well, most of them
35:36are on the board of Labour Together. Exactly. This is very, very close to home. I would feel
35:40really angry that somehow I was now being dragged into all of this stuff, and actually there
35:44is a way of, when you find wrongdoing, own it straight away. Everybody's much more respectful
35:50of that, and again, it's how the language and business of politics works. Made a mistake,
35:54looking back on that now, I cannot believe what I did. You're absolutely right, it was
35:58in the heat of the moment, it was whatever, and we all know that that actually works.
36:02So this delayed detonation method, the extending things out of the process, the constant kind
36:08of like, let's find somebody else to tell us that we've done something wrong, is a really
36:11weak move. It makes you look weak. Be bolder about it. Step in, lean in, say, actually,
36:16I've looked at this, it stinks, it's terrible. This person has said, sorry, we've made these
36:21changes, we've done it, and deal with it quickly. That's the disinfectant that's needed.
36:24And the bit I would actually really like to add on to the Labour Together business is that
36:29it's the matter of investigating a journalist, and that the attacking freedom of the press is
36:34the problem. I'm afraid that all political parties have attack units, and they assemble all
36:39kinds of dirty dossiers on members of opposition parties, and they unearth all kinds of stuff.
36:47And they are very good at waiting till the time is right and using it. That is part and parcel
36:51of politics. It's evidently something Keir Starmer is not keen on. But unfortunately, that is how you
36:58become Prime Minister. There's some mucky stuff down in the weeds that we've discussed psychos might like
37:03to get involved with and can actually use to affect. The really damaging thing here is going after Sunday
37:09Times journalists. It's nuts.
37:11I mean, yes. And also leaving a really obvious, and this is a terrible thing to say, but also leaving
37:16a
37:16really obvious paper trail. There's an element of like, some things are conversations, not documents
37:21that you write down and are commissioned. I mean, not in any world defending what I think is foundational
37:27to our democracy and is kind of horrifying to imagine that people are trying to shut down journalists who
37:32after all were just doing their job. That really kind of sends chills, to be honest. But that said,
37:39to do it in a mechanism where there is a paper trail and you've commissioned a kind of, and here
37:42we are,
37:43and here are the 74,000 things that we're doing, and here are the bullet points. It's like, oh, come
37:46on.
37:47You can be baddies better than that.
37:49But also, I think this gets back to, it gets back to some of the advice we gave Keir Starmer
37:54last week,
37:54which was, in some ways, be Prime Minister as though you don't care about not being Prime Minister
38:00anymore. And that goes for some of this hiding behind process and there's an investigation and
38:06I wouldn't want to prejudice that stuff at the moment. You can move at speed and you can bulldoze
38:11through some of this stuff and just make stuff happen if you really want to. You are the most
38:15powerful person in the land. Why not lean into that a little bit? So, say what you think.
38:20They can use parliamentary privilege to just, if they want to, release the Madison Files now.
38:24They can ignore what's going on with the Met. They override them. They can do an internal
38:28investigation into what's going on with Labour together. They can get to the bottom of that
38:32very, very quickly. They didn't have to eke these things out. Matthew Doyle does not have
38:36to be a member of the House of Lords anymore. And actually, he didn't at the time because
38:41he had plenty of time to row back on these things. And, you know, the number of times we
38:45have sat in the room with the Prime Minister, not the current one, needless to say, and said,
38:51this is the situation. It's basically up to you, though. All we can do is advise them
38:56and they have to decide. And unfortunately, it's always coming back to his judgment.
39:00I agree, but I also, if you think about a couple of times when we were there, having
39:02to face the Prime Minister who does not want to take this decision with, okay, so you don't
39:06want to get rid of this person. But that means when someone says to you, which they will
39:10do, how comfortable are you that you appointed this person to this job knowing full well that
39:15they had been associated with this thing or done this horrible thing, it's going to
39:19be you that stands up in the House of Commons. It's going to be you that's on the media who
39:22says that. Are you okay with that? And quite often, that is the spine stiffening moment
39:27where they suddenly think, oh, actually, maybe I'm not. And maybe as much as it is grim and
39:31I don't want to do this thing, I'm going to have to do this thing. So they have to kind
39:35of be better at winding forward to what is the worst thing that could happen as a result
39:39of what I'm doing today. Can I look that in the eye and say, I'm still in this many
39:44months time, going to be comfortable with my decision now? Or is it a kind of, hang
39:49on, I'm not sure I really want this? Because, I mean, it just keeps happening. It just keeps
39:54happening. And it's like, you have to confront the worst thing. Then come back to today and
39:58say, am I okay with that? Do I think I'm going to get away with it? Because the answer
40:02is you're not. You're never going to get away with it.
40:03The trouble is with kicking something into the long grass. It's still there, but now it's in
40:07the long grass. It's really hard to squish. I definitely agree with the kind of final
40:14store when particularly trying to kind of program Boris Johnson into making a decision
40:18on this stuff would be, he'd say, you know, no, no, no, no, we can't be doing this. Obviously
40:23I, you know, we've got to stick with this person or whatever. And then you'd say, okay, well,
40:26let's pretend you're on the Today program tomorrow. Other good media outlets are available.
40:31The first question is going to be, do you think it is acceptable that XYZ, would you do that?
40:37And then they immediately think, yeah, they've got to go. They've got to go. So I think just
40:44on the kind of hiring and firing, having come in as a special advisor, there isn't really
40:48a process for that. I was hired and I started the next day. And when I was fired-
40:52It's very efficient.
40:54A bit like Morgan McSweeney, I'm still not sure if I was fired or if I resigned. I had to
40:58sort
40:58of fire myself with Boris Johnson.
41:00I think you fired yourself.
41:01A couple of times actually.
41:02Right. It was very weird. But does he have a point actually about some of the process stuff
41:08on hiring and firing?
41:08One of the things that worries me, and it worries me about kind of what has happened to the civil
41:12service and their ability to operate and their appetite and incentive to tell prime ministers
41:18things they don't want to hear. Because it is entirely true that over recent years, the
41:24civil service has not been incentivized to-
41:26Well, they're in their tepid bath, aren't they?
41:28Well, very comfortable.
41:29Who can be incentivized in the tepid bath? So, you know, do you really want to risk annoying
41:35everybody who really wants this appointment to happen by turning up and being the person
41:39in the room going, oh, hiya, here I am again, just to make your lives miserable by saying
41:43this as well. And I do think there might be a gap in the way that he's being serviced or
41:48definitely was in the past. I don't know if that's the case now. He's hired some absolutely
41:51extraordinary, excellent civil servants into that building recently. So maybe that will
41:55change. But there has to be an element of the civil service has to be tough enough.
41:59And confident enough and confident enough it's not going to be undermined to be able
42:03to tell uncomfortable truths inside that room. And I suspect, but I don't know that
42:08that just hasn't been happening. And I don't blame anybody for that because, I mean, look
42:12at what happens to them. But this is a foundation on a fundamental problem is people don't feel
42:18that they can do that thing when the door is closed and saying, look, this is what's
42:22really going on. You might be comfortable with this and that's entirely for you, not for
42:25me to tell you what to do, but this is what you're facing and this is the full picture
42:29and this is my best advice to you and then over to you.
42:32Yeah, it's a weird combination of sort of ignoring them in the moment and then later
42:36saying, well, you didn't do the right process for me and I now blame you and I'm relying
42:41on you too much.
42:42I now blame you.
42:42And now I solve all my problems with my own political party as well.
42:45I now blame you and you're totally impartial and you're, on the one hand, you're totally
42:48impartial and independent. On the other hand, do this. It's not a pretty place for them
42:51to be.
42:52Yeah, so use them properly, basically.
42:53Always. Always use your symbols.
42:55Don't use and abuse that process.
42:57Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Please don't forget to follow us,
43:01raters, reviewers, all of those things.
43:03And you can keep up to date with us by following the podcast on Instagram, which is at intheroom.pod.
43:10This podcast is part of the Independent Podcast Network and is produced in association with
43:15Next Chapter Studios.
43:16The executive producers are the amazing Carrie Rose, the extraordinary Olivia Foster and the
43:22incredible Sam Durham.
43:24Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.
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