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In The Room | Full reaction: Does Olly Robbins’ testimony signal the end for Starmer?Credit: In The Room/The Independent
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00:00Welcome to In The Rim. Now, you might have noticed that we're recording a little early this week, and that's
00:05because it's fair to say there's a lot going on.
00:09I'm Cleo Watson. I'm a former Deputy Chief of Staff in Downing Street for Boris Johnson and Political Advisor for
00:14Theresa May.
00:15And I'm joined by my co-host, Helen McNamara, who, as the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary, couldn't be a better
00:22person to be speaking to today,
00:24because we're, of course, talking about the appointment of Peter Mandelson as our ambassador to the US,
00:30and the process, something we love to discuss and something Keir Starmer loves to fall back on about how he
00:36had that role.
00:38And what can only be described as the devastating testimony from Sir Ollie Robbins this morning in Parliament to the
00:46Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
00:47So hold on to your hats, because away we go.
00:50Right, so I'm just going to do a very quick sort of potted summary of how we've got to two
00:54o'clock on Tuesday, which is our recording time today.
00:58So as people will perhaps remember, The Guardian broke this sensational story last Thursday,
01:04claiming that Peter Mandelson had failed his vetting to become US ambassador.
01:10We're going to get into that, but that is not entirely accurate, actually.
01:14And then the Prime Minister promised to come to the Houses of Parliament yesterday, which he duly did at 3
01:20.30,
01:21to give a statement on his account of what went on.
01:25And he took what ostensibly were questions from MPs, but was more like a kind of barrage of fire from
01:32MPs,
01:33essentially getting down to his judgment, his integrity, his curiosity, his gullibility.
01:40Yeah, it was kind of extraordinary, wasn't it, Helen?
01:42It was extraordinarily clear. We've got used to seeing Prime Ministers get hammered at the dispatch box in recent years,
01:48I'm afraid.
01:48And yeah, it was pretty grim watching.
01:52We're going to get into Oli's testimony, because I think it is, yeah, you're absolutely, talk about a contrast.
01:58And I really want to hear your take on it, because I got to listen to it with you.
02:02And it was so interesting seeing kind of game meets game, how he received what he was saying.
02:07But I'm just going to give a very quick summary of what happened yesterday.
02:10At 3.30 yesterday, Keir Starmer stood up in the House of Commons and gave a statement explaining
02:16that he was not given the relevant vetting information on what has been characterized as a failure.
02:24Peter Manderson failed the vetting process to become US ambassador, but he was duly appointed anyway.
02:31And that Keir Starmer would not have appointed Peter Manderson, despite the various warnings he'd already been given in the
02:38due diligence process to the Post,
02:41had he known about the security vetting failure.
02:44And I think the big question was, he has been coming to the House of Commons for the last couple
02:49of months,
02:49assuring MPs that the full process had been followed.
02:54And that doesn't seem to be true.
02:57And he also refused to say whether he had misled the House of Commons.
03:01He feels he has not misled anybody.
03:03He feels he has not lied.
03:05He feels that he gave a fair and accurate account based on what he thought to be true,
03:12which, you know, side note is, is not the standards that Boris Johnson was held to by the by the
03:19now Prime Minister in 2022.
03:22So how about we have a quick listen to a couple of the questions that came up over the two
03:28hours and 25 minutes that the Prime Minister was on his feet.
03:31Let's hear what Diane Abbott said, the mother of the House.
03:34It's one thing to say, as he insists on saying, nobody told me, nobody told me anything.
03:42Nobody told me.
03:43The question is, why didn't the Prime Minister ask?
03:51And just a reminder, that is obviously one of the Prime Minister's own Labour MPs.
03:57And I don't think it got better.
03:58Yeah, it was quite hard to tell the difference yesterday.
04:00Yeah, it really was.
04:01It really was.
04:02And well, how about for comparison, we have a little listen to Sir David Davis, a Conservative MP.
04:08The Prime Minister has twice rebuffed, both the Leader of the Opposition, then the Leader of the Liberal Democrats,
04:15when they said that the then Cabinet Secretary's advice to the Prime Minister was to get the clearance before the
04:20announcement.
04:21So I'm going to read in one sentence from a document entitled Options for HMA Washington from the Cabinet Secretary
04:28of the Day to him, him personally.
04:30It says, if this is the route you wish to take, you should give us the name of the person
04:35you would like to appoint,
04:36and we will develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any
04:43potential conflicts of interest
04:45or other issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice.
04:59If anyone's interested in the answers to those questions, they were essentially stonewalled.
05:05I think one of the problems the Prime Minister had yesterday was he had his very carefully thought through PAC,
05:12which is the big sort of file you see ministers with at the dispatch box where they have the kind
05:17of notes
05:17and let's say little crib sheets on giving answers to things.
05:21He was very careful to read out the exact wording, and it was pretty much the same answer for pretty
05:26much every question.
05:28So we're going to get into a kind of full analysis of how you think his committee appearance went,
05:33but what do you think were the kind of three top bombshells that Olly Robbins dropped on the government this
05:38morning?
05:38Wow, I like that you're disciplining me to three, but let's do that.
05:42So number one, I think Olly Robbins patiently and clearly and with great precision pointed out
05:49that what we've been told since last week about Peter Mandelstall having failed his vetting process is not true.
05:57So that, again, very patiently, Olly pointed out the same thing that some of us have, in fact, been saying.
06:03Which is security vetting is not a pass fail.
06:07The extraordinary step that number 10 took last week to publish the kind of blank form that UK security vetting
06:13use,
06:14which has like a red, absolutely classic, red, amber, green kind of, and some boxes that you can tick in
06:19it.
06:20And they were using that the whole basis, the whole basis for this awful mess is that the Prime Minister
06:28believes or has been told by somebody
06:31that Peter Mandelstall failed his vetting process because in the relevant form in Peter Mandelstall's vetting files,
06:39there's a cross or a tick or something.
06:41We don't know yet.
06:42Which we should mention, by the way, Olly Robbins pointed out this morning, he has not seen this form.
06:47So he does not know what kind of has been thrown up green and amber and red.
06:52So it's for the want of a tick in a box, effectively, that this massive misunderstanding has arisen where Olly
06:59Robbins, who is, I mean, I don't see this lightly,
07:01he is literally the leading expert in the country on security vetting, the appointment of people.
07:08You know, he's, there's nobody more deeply expert on all of these things.
07:11He was the Deputy National Security Advisor.
07:13He was the Prime Minister's Principal Private Secretary.
07:16He ran, he has more game on this stuff than pretty much anybody else living and breathing.
07:22And so it was an extraordinary decision to take to choose to, firstly, not really ask him any questions, it
07:29turns out.
07:29But secondly, to disregard what he has said consistently all the way along, and he said it very patiently this
07:36morning, that Peter Mannerson did not fail his vetting process.
07:40The vetting process, which is done in the Foreign Office in a particular way for very good reasons, which, again,
07:46Olly explained very clearly this morning, relies on a number of inputs.
07:50One of the inputs is from the UK Security Vetting Service.
07:53The other inputs are from the Foreign Office's own deeply expert team.
07:58And it's all of these things taken together that then allow people to put in place mitigations if they're needed,
08:04and to say that somebody can be cleared.
08:06And that's what happened.
08:07So the first bombshell is that the foundations of this whole sorry mess are, in fact, wrong.
08:14And Olly, I think, persuaded even the committee members who were a bit befuddled and carried on.
08:20Kept asking him again and again.
08:21And, you know, all credit to him.
08:23He behaved with such grace.
08:25Never have the words with respect been so heavily overused.
08:29I mean, it made my civil service heart happy.
08:32I mean, that's, you saw today, the very best of us, I would say.
08:36And he did it really well.
08:37So that was the first bombshell that actually, there's just a fundamental misunderstanding.
08:43I mean, for a civil servant, Olly used some language this morning, which you're right, we sat there in our
08:47pyjamas together watching it together.
08:48And occasionally, my reactions would be like, oh, that's a low blow.
08:53He just said the word unusual.
08:54And you were like, no, no, that's like the C word for civil servants.
08:59But, I mean, Olly said that the prime minister had a dangerous misunderstanding about the confidentiality of the process, which
09:07is pretty strong language.
09:09That's bombshell number one.
09:13Bombshell number two, and this is genuinely staggering.
09:17And again, when we were watching it, we were both kind of sharp intake of breath.
09:20Like, what on earth has just happened?
09:21Was that Olly revealed that he used it as an example, beautifully, that about political appointments and pushing back against
09:31number 10, insisting on political appointments.
09:33So, he used the example of having been asked to find an ambassadorial job for the prime minister's outgoing director
09:40of communications, Matthew Doyle.
09:43And that Olly was told both to find him a job and second, to not tell the foreign secretary.
09:50And just to be clear, it's to find him a job as an ambassador somewhere.
09:54And I might just give you a quick note on who Matthew Doyle is, because it reveals an unfortunate parallel
10:00with the Peter Maddelson story, I'm afraid, which is Matthew Doyle was Keir Starmer's director of communications in Downing Street.
10:08And it was revealed when he was given a peerage on his way out of Downing Street that he had
10:16very close associations with a convicted paedophile, also a different one, which is an unfortunate running theme just now.
10:25I don't think that parallel will have been lost on Olly.
10:27And there's definitely elements of the Lady Bracknell about this, that two, trying to give two ambassadors who've got relationships
10:35with convicted paedophiles.
10:36Who are both political appointees.
10:37As political appointees does look slightly more towards the careless end of the spectrum, I would say.
10:42Yes, and we'll get on to that later, but I suspect it has not been lost on Labour MPs either
10:46this afternoon.
10:48No, and then, you know, bombshell number three, I think.
10:51And I mean, you know, there'll be lots of other things that people will notice in this.
10:54But Olly was categorical that what has happened since last week has actually damaged our national security.
11:01So he said very clearly that the leak to the Guardian apartment.
11:06So Olly said that he didn't know that the Prime Minister had grave concerns about not being told about this
11:13one element of the point in the security vetting process.
11:16He didn't really know.
11:17Then he was told.
11:19And then a few hours later, it was in the Guardian.
11:20And again, for somebody who used his language very carefully, Olly said that that was how damaging that was and
11:27that there should be prosecutions and investigations and criminal action taken against people who've done that, which is a very
11:33strong thing to say.
11:34And he said it was a grievous breach of national security.
11:37Yeah, and that guy knows what he's talking about.
11:39So he said that's damaged national security.
11:42His second point was that he said that the kind of very emotional, reactive, I would say, you know, thoughtless
11:50steps that have been taken to immediately remove the Foreign Office's ability to manage security vetting in the way that
11:57it is,
11:57to elevate the UK security vetting service to be the ultimate judge and jury of all of these things.
12:03That is not how the system has worked, as many of us have been explaining.
12:07And Olly's very strong view, as he said to the committee in a very proper way, that he thought that
12:12that step had also damaged our national security.
12:15And that taken together, these things effectively, like the winners out of this, are countries that are our enemies.
12:22And Olly didn't hold back in saying that.
12:24He said that the people who are going to win on this are the China and Russia.
12:28And it's our country that's losing.
12:30It's been one of the big defences of the Prime Minister and Darren Jones, who's the Chancellor of the Duchy
12:35of Lancaster, that they've been able to say,
12:41we've acted incredibly fast and we've taken this power away from the Foreign Office to be able to make these
12:46kinds of judgment calls on vetting.
12:49And it's so interesting.
12:50You know, it's not just that there is an argument here between a top civil servant and the Prime Minister
12:55on a he said, she said.
12:56But Olly Robbins is going so far as to say, I also think that your, you know, immediate judgment calls
13:04after all this stuff has come to light have been wrong too.
13:07Brackets including firing him, I would argue.
13:10Yeah.
13:10And I mean, the other, there's two other notes that I'd make at the beginning before I'm sure we get
13:14a bit further into it.
13:15So one is that it's always interesting at these things when you watch a master at work to watch the
13:20questions they don't answer and the things they don't say.
13:23And one of the things that Olly, he wrote, so he wrote an absolutely beautiful letter to the committee in
13:30advance.
13:31He said to the committee in advance, he couldn't talk about his own dismissal.
13:35We saw, everybody saw, the person sitting behind him was the guy who runs the FDA, which is the trade
13:41union for the very senior civil servants.
13:44He looked a happy man.
13:45Yes, Dave Penman, he's called and, you know, no doubt very little work will have happened in Whitehall today.
13:51And if you're a civil servant tuning in to see how Olly Robbins is getting on, which I'm sure pretty
13:55much all of them did,
13:57seeing Dave Penman sitting right behind Olly Robbins is a fantastic advertisement to join a union.
14:02Well, yeah, I'm pretty sure the FDA will do very well out of today's business because Olly said he couldn't
14:09talk about the reasons for his dismissal.
14:11And that he received a letter yesterday, which is dismissing him from his job.
14:16But he has really no idea why he was dismissed.
14:20And it's safe to say there is some confusion question about the account of the events that led to his
14:27dismissal.
14:28And I think we've got much more to come in this space.
14:31So let's watch that one.
14:33And sorry, just to add to that, that he sort of left that beautifully as a sort of open goal
14:38for the prime minister,
14:39because any MPs who will have watched Olly Robbins testimony this morning will not be able to get rid of
14:46the idea that we've lost a very, very valuable civil servant and public servant here.
14:51And so they will want answers on like, how on earth is it that you decided to get rid of
14:56this guy?
14:57Not least because I find some of his testimony quite compelling and arguably more compelling than what you told me
15:04yesterday.
15:05I mean, it's, you know, there are legal ramifications to this, which are Olly Robbins might have to take some
15:10kind of legal action here for constructive dismissal.
15:13But also it's the ball is back in the prime minister's court to explain himself over this.
15:18Completely. And there's anything constructive about it at all, Cleo.
15:21I mean, this is a loss to all of us, as I hope is very obvious.
15:24The other just note that I'd make is that there's been some really bizarre kind of choices about what the
15:32government is relying on as the reason for why what they've done is OK.
15:37And one of those that keeps jumping out at me is that there's there's the letter that we talked about
15:44on our podcast when we first talked about it.
15:46So there's the note that goes from Simon Case to the prime minister before the appointment, which I was getting
15:50all hot under the collar about because it's so badly written.
15:53Yes. So this is in the first tranche of the Mandelson files, which is episode four for us.
15:58Cast your minds back, everybody. It's all coming back and being very relevant.
16:02It's like a throwback to a preview. It was an Easter egg from a previous season.
16:06So it's that in that note, Simon Case says that if you want to point in a political appointee, then
16:13we will get the process going for both the due diligence and then security vetting and sets out what looks
16:19like a linear process.
16:21And there's lots of people saying, well, look, the cabinet secretary told you it was a linear process.
16:26And I think the former cabinet secretary has been out there, you know, pointing out that he did point out
16:30it should be a linear process.
16:32I'm not sure that's quite the alibi it's being presented as, because if it was such an important thing that
16:38it had to be a linear process, then why wasn't that linear process followed?
16:43Especially the other thing that Oli revealed, like in the margins, was that it turns out he had been told
16:49that at the time there were people in number 10 in the cabinet office who thought the front office were
16:53being overly precious for even doing the security vetting at all.
16:56So not only is it kind of bewildering then that we now find the prime minister is telling everybody that
17:02had the security vetting, had he known what happened in the security vetting process, he would have entirely reversed out
17:09of having told the king, having announced it publicly, having got...
17:14What's that lovely word they kept all using?
17:16Agremont?
17:17Oh, yeah.
17:17Agremont?
17:18I don't think you're supposed to pronounce it with a French accent, but it's like another bit of deliciousness from
17:21this morning was this word that everyone was saying, which is when you have to say to a foreign government,
17:25you okay with this person being our ambassador?
17:27All of that had happened.
17:29And Keir Starmer is saying, well, I still at that point would have retracted.
17:33Keir Starmer's team were saying, why on earth are you doing security vetting at all?
17:38And that's quite a thing to reveal.
17:41It really does show something about the prevailing mindset.
17:44So you gave me a test of doing three bombshells, Keir, and I think I've given you about 17.
17:47I wanted to pause for a moment just to talk about the last 24 hours, which have been quite bizarre.
17:53And, you know, I don't think it's any secret to listeners of the podcast that I worked on Brexit with
18:00Theresa May and before that I worked on the Vote Leave campaign to exit the European Union.
18:04And so I'm used to speaking to Eurosceptic MPs and people like Dominic Cummings and people who I would say
18:16have felt about as in the trenches against Olly Robbins as you can possibly get during the Brexit negotiation years
18:21where he was Theresa May's chief Brexit negotiator.
18:24He was a civil servant doing his job, but yes, do go on.
18:27He was a civil servant doing his job and he got the deal, incidentally, that she wanted.
18:30I mean, he absolutely did his job and it's been a slightly through the looking class experience in the last
18:3724 hours because they're all saying, you know, I don't think they're saying we misjudged him.
18:42He was a very worthy, in their view, sort of adversary.
18:45They've all basically said, Dominic Cummings texted me this morning saying, you know, he is just sitting there calmly demolishing
18:53the government.
18:54Well, not the government writ large, but the political element of the government, the prime minister and large parts of
19:00the cabinet office.
19:02And he's not even breaking a sweat, essentially.
19:05It's kind of confusing for people thinking like, oh, maybe I actually quite like my stepdad after all or something.
19:13So there has been an error of judgment for sure.
19:16It's not been Olly Robbins' and also when we were talking about doing this podcast, one of our producers said,
19:20what I don't understand is why did they arrange this so that Keir Starmer went first and Olly Robbins went
19:27second?
19:27Which is in their gift. It's in the government's gift.
19:29That's a really good question. Why did they do this?
19:32Like there's so many kind of unforced errors, to use a sporting metaphor, that they are constantly doing.
19:39And also, why pick a fight with Olly Robbins on his home territory?
19:44Like, I don't want to start, and Olly, to be fair to him, was so much more dignified probably than
19:50I'm about to be,
19:51about not, he was very clear he's not going to criticise any other civil servant.
19:55But somebody has misunderstood and has explained badly to the prime minister the situation,
20:02and then has been perfectly happy for a civil servant to be fired over it.
20:07I mean, this is like, it's really far from okay.
20:11And the other remarkable thing, Cleo, you and I have sat in rooms with the prime minister talking about,
20:16he's desperate to fire somebody, and you have a very explicit conversation about what is the damage that this person
20:21could do.
20:22And there definitely were occasions in our time when, reluctantly, the prime minister comes to the conclusion
20:28that actually firing somebody who can say terrible things about you afterwards, much as you'd like to, you should pause
20:36for thought.
20:36And presumably, Keir Starmer was aware that Olly Robbins knew about this Matthew Doyle question,
20:45and yet they don't seem to have thought about that in advance either.
20:49Yes, there was actually a very uncomfortable moment in the Commons yesterday,
20:52when the prime minister was asked, are you aware of kind of other vetting processes taking place
20:58with other political appointments in the foreign office?
21:01I don't think that was a planted question, by the way.
21:03And he looked sort of flummoxed and confused and said he'd get back to them with an answer.
21:09He wasn't aware of all appointments being made at any time.
21:12Oh, so the process is that the prime minister isn't told.
21:15Who knew that?
21:16How weird.
21:16Boris Johnson ended up having to learn this the hard way with Dominic Cummings, you know,
21:21who he, I think, was he fired again?
21:25It's one of those questions.
21:26I think he sacked himself.
21:27It's one of those questions that hangs over November 2020.
21:31Keir Starmer's got away with it with Morgan McSweeney, who has not turned on him.
21:34So far.
21:35So far.
21:36But may it be politically expedient or indeed just personally expedient to do that eventually.
21:41Who knows?
21:42And I can see how Morgan McSweeney remains this sort of bogeyman for Labour backbencher still.
21:47His name came up a lot yesterday, implying that he'd had a strong hand in this whole business.
21:53And, you know, be very, very careful of advisers and civil servants spurned, particularly if they're pretty clever and good
22:00at their jobs,
22:01because, whoa, can they come back to bite you in the arse.
22:04And you've given them an open goal of the national interest.
22:07And that's all Ollie did today was talk repeatedly about the national interest.
22:10The only point I want to end on about Ollie's testimony is going forward, I think this will be one
22:17for the ages.
22:17If I were ever to be preparing someone for an inquiry or to appear before a parliamentary committee,
22:24I would say make some popcorn and sit down and watch two hours of this.
22:29And this is the right tone to have.
22:31This is the right kind of execution.
22:33And this is the right sort of emotional state to appear in.
22:37And he just maintained that all the way through.
22:39He did not disintegrate.
22:40He did not sweat.
22:41He's actually, you know, in actually a completely un-hammy way on the cusp of tears a couple of times,
22:46explaining, you know, what his personal situation is now and how much he's going to miss this job.
22:52It was just chef's kiss.
22:55It was.
22:55And I don't want I don't want people to come away from this thinking it's easy, actually.
22:59So I've not done quite the same thing as Ollie.
23:03But when I had to give my COVID testimony, which was the whole day of being questioned,
23:08I knew full well that was on telly.
23:09I knew full well because of, you know, what happened the day before with Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson's evidence
23:14that it was basically a lot of people were watching you.
23:18And Ollie had that this morning.
23:20And it's it's really tough.
23:22And I think we've talked a bit about there's a human being in the middle of this, but that there
23:26really is.
23:27And I'm the most amount and slightly for sympathy, protection and privacy for him, because this is not what it's
23:34not what you sign up to do as a civil servant.
23:35It's really not. And it's very, very tough.
23:38And he did it brilliantly.
23:39I also think that the precision, again, as a civil servant, a highly skilled one, the precision of the language
23:45he used will carry on unspooling and revealing more and more over the next 24, 48, who knows how many
23:53days.
23:53Because I'm sitting here still thinking and I paid close attention and I get this, you know, the worst of
23:59inside, inside baseball for me.
24:00But I just look back on my notes and found that he said really beautifully at one point that he
24:06didn't doubt the prime minister's credibility about the prime minister caring about security vetting.
24:13And that it would be nice if the record showed that.
24:16So one of the other things that we had today is a series of monumental traps being created for the
24:24prime minister when the documents are published, because eventually under the Humble Address, all of these papers will be put
24:31in public and people will be able to see with their own eyes whether the story that we're being told
24:36about what people cared about, about what mattered, about what happened really is as has been set out.
24:43Because there's all, I mean, I said to you about, you know, I think that the over-reliance on Simon
24:49Case having said there should be a linear process for security vetting and that being junked is a bit odd.
24:54The other thing I find deeply mysterious is that the prime minister stood in the house yesterday and he said
25:00that the then cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, whose name he couldn't pronounce, leaving that to one side.
25:07But he said the then cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, had looked into the process that had been followed after the
25:14sacking of Peter Mandelson and had written to the prime minister assuring him that he looked into it and the
25:20process was all followed.
25:21Now, the dates in question are pretty extraordinary.
25:24So, Peter Mandelson sat on the 11th of September, which is a Thursday, apparently, and we'll see when we see
25:30the records published, the then cabinet secretary writes to Keir Starmer to say, I've had a look at this and
25:35it all looks completely fine on the following Tuesday.
25:38So, that's two working days, two working days to do…
25:42Maybe he just went for it over the weekend.
25:43Maybe actually the civil service is much more speedy than we think.
25:46And maybe there was other…
25:48Really, that's what you're resting on, a process that looked into something that lasted two days.
25:55That's not, you know, not wise either, I would say.
25:57Yes, well, it's allegedly taken Kat Little, the permanent secretary for the cabinet office, a month to get this vetting
26:05information out of the foreign office.
26:06So, it seems unlikely that both are true, unless they're asking completely different questions.
26:12There's, as you say, unfortunately for the prime minister, there is more to come.
26:20Well, Helen, this is exciting.
26:22There's breaking news for us.
26:24So, as we've been recording, it's about 2.30 on Tuesday afternoon.
26:30We've had the news through that Keir Starmer is not going to appear in the Commons this afternoon.
26:36Keir Starmer put out a statement basically accusing him of cowardice and certainly hitting this Matthew Doyle revelation very, very
26:44hard.
26:45And instead, the prime minister is sending Darren Jones, chief secretary, to the prime minister, a.k.a. the parliamentary
26:51meat puppet, who's going to be taking the heckles of MPs this afternoon.
26:56And let me tell you, particularly with this Matthew Doyle stuff, Labour MPs are not going to be happy.
27:03Unfortunately for the prime minister, he is obliged to appear at prime minister's questions tomorrow.
27:08So, he will get his day at the dispatch box.
27:11So, what do you think?
27:12What's your take on the politics of all of this?
27:14Well, one of my crushes is obviously Professor Sir John Curtis, who made a really good point yesterday on Times
27:23Radio.
27:24Essentially, that the prime minister is so unpopular with the public, his approval rating is so low, that in some
27:31ways, he's plumbed the depths.
27:34The Mandelson stuff can't take him any lower.
27:37And, you know, in fact, one of the prime minister's own MPs, Sarah Champion, was on Radio 4 this morning.
27:44And she said that that's exactly true.
27:48On the doorstep, the Mandelson stuff is not coming up.
27:52They just don't like the prime minister personally, which is, I mean, about as damning as it gets.
27:58So, the problem for the prime minister, though, is that, you know, in the grand scheme of things, oh, this
28:04is such an inside Westminster story, everyone in the bubble is getting really overexcited.
28:09The problem for him, though, is that the constituency that he minds most about at the moment are bubble people,
28:14i.e. the Parliamentary Labour Party.
28:16So, it's a big problem for him if his own MPs are getting cross and at home on the doorstep,
28:22they're hearing that their constituents don't like the prime minister either.
28:26It's a double whammy.
28:28One of the points I really want to make, though, is that I feel like the Conservatives are running away
28:33with the idea that this whole mess is somehow good news for them.
28:39Because the prime minister is on the back foot and Labour MPs are very uncomfortable about it.
28:44And there's also a sense that they can call the prime minister a hypocrite because they've sort of pulled the
28:50receipts on everything he said as a leader of the opposition to Boris Johnson when he was prime minister about
28:56throwing civil servants under the bus.
28:58And it's one rule for him and it's one rule for everybody else and whether he has misled the House
29:04of Commons.
29:06And the problem is for the Conservatives is that I think this, I don't think it's good that people are
29:12reminded of Partygate, number one.
29:14But number two, this gives a general sense to the public of the political class and of the establishment.
29:21And the Conservatives and Labour are together in that, whether they like it or not.
29:25And it just confirms to people, I think, that they're all the same.
29:30The people it's good for are Reform and the Greens.
29:33And we're about to have a set of very important, very interesting local elections coming up in a couple of
29:40weeks time.
29:41And I think that we will see the mood of the nation reflected in some of the results coming out
29:47there.
29:47The thing that sounds so technical, but it's not really technical because it goes to the heart of everything, is
29:51has the prime minister misled parliament?
29:53And in the end, the reason that everyone gets so obsessed by that is because it is the one thing
29:59that you can genuinely do a prime minister in for.
30:03And it's been interesting, I think, in the just seeing the kind of ebb and flow of all of this
30:08this morning.
30:08And you could see that even Ed Miliband, who's a member of the cabinet on the breakfast TV this morning,
30:14was already, I would, I would, it's a slight leaning back.
30:17It was times at which politicians suddenly start to remember that they need to think about what they're saying, just
30:24in case, actually, this is now one of these times when the leadership is going to change.
30:28And that you don't want to be out there full throated defending the prime minister.
30:33And I feel like we're in the foothills of that, if not further into it.
30:36Yeah, and specifically defending the prime minister's judgment.
30:39So the question he was asked was, you know, aside from the vetting stuff, everything you knew already about Peter
30:46Mandelson, which is in the public domain, his links to Jeffrey Epstein, his links to China and Russia through his
30:52business dealings, the fact he was fired twice from the previous Labour government.
30:57Surely that's enough to tell you this guy's wrong and you shouldn't put him in the job.
31:01And Ed Miliband basically sat back in his chair and went, well, fair enough.
31:04Yeah, good point. Good point, which is, you know, if that's your guy going out to defend your judgment this
31:09morning, that's not good news.
31:11You know, there are other telltale signs.
31:12Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, has been summoned back and is apparently, well, amazed essentially by Ollie Robbins' revelation this
31:22morning about Matthew Doyle.
31:25Just a quick note on parliamentary arithmetic, which I talked about on Friday.
31:28If a vote of no confidence is called in the government, that is 50% of MPs plus one.
31:35So it's 321 MPs required.
31:38The prime minister has, on his benches, over 400 MPs.
31:41So that requires a lot of Labour MPs going against the government.
31:46This morning, I thought they will never do that.
31:49To call a confidence motion in the government at the moment will ban Labour MPs together.
31:53It would be a massive misstep from opposition parties.
31:57But I think this Matthew Doyle revelation, you know, a second person linked to a paedophile, also in the House
32:05of Lords, also offered an ambassadorial role potentially.
32:09And an appointment which the foreign secretary at the time was meant to stay in the dark over.
32:13However, it's going to raise some major questions for the prime minister.
32:17Yeah, so I think there was absolutely zero chance of them losing a vote of no confidence because that's not
32:23going to happen.
32:24The Labour Party is not so daft as to do that to itself.
32:26However, as soon as you have this as a question and you think about whether people will want to vote
32:32with the government or they might abstain or have some dental work that's necessary that day or be somewhere else.
32:38I think that's the thing that throws this into stark relief.
32:42But this is not going to get quieter and easier for the prime minister.
32:46This problem hasn't gone away.
32:48I am extremely pleased to see this morning some of the briefing coming out, particularly from the cabinet, about trying
32:54to row back on the criticism of the civil service.
32:57All credit to the cabinet secretary because I'm pretty sure she would have made her views pretty clear.
33:02She's just been appointed and this has been a very bad thing for her because I'm pretty sure that she
33:07would have advised against the sacking of Ollie Robbins.
33:11I'm really sure about that.
33:12But and yet the prime minister did it.
33:15And yesterday's briefing, to say this again, yesterday's briefing in the House and the way in which MPs were being
33:22encouraged to talk about a civil servant was really, really bad for relationships between the government and the civil service.
33:28And apart from anything else, that needs to change.
33:31This hasn't ended.
33:32We've got the debate in the House this afternoon.
33:35We have PMQs tomorrow.
33:37We've got the actual publication of the documents, which has to come soon.
33:42In the humble address.
33:43In the humble address.
33:45And so I'm afraid this story has really not ended.
33:48Stay tuned.
33:50Thank you for listening to today's show.
33:52Remember to follow the show on your podcast player and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed it.
33:56And you can keep up with all the best bits of the show on Instagram at intheroom.pod and YouTube.
34:03This podcast is part of the Independent Podcast Network and produced in association with Next Chapter Studios.
34:08The executive producers are Carrie Rose and Olivia Foster.
34:11And the producer is Sam Durham.
34:13And a special mention to our content editor, Maya Ranushka, and our video editor, Vali Raza.
34:18Thanks for listening.
34:19And we'll see you next week.
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