Sir Olly Robbins today presented the other side of the story told by Sir Keir Starmer yesterday. The former top civil servant in the Foreign Office portrayed his decision to grant Peter Mandelson security clearance for the role of ambassador to the United States as a marginal one, in a “borderline” case, under “pressure” from the prime minister’s office.
In essence, though, he and the prime minister were in agreement on the facts: Sir Olly did not tell the prime minister, or any minister, that the vetting service had been “leaning towards recommending that clearance be denied”.
Sir Keir claims to be “absolutely furious” that this information was withheld from him; Sir Olly explained in dignified and measured language that he was trying to preserve the confidentiality of a critical aspect of national security procedure.
On this narrow question, Sir Keir has the better argument. Most citizens find it odd, to put it gently, that the doubts expressed by the security vetting service were not passed on to the politicians. But this is to miss the context in which Sir Olly and the head of the Foreign Office’s security directorate decided that those concerns could be “managed”.
They were left in no doubt as to what the prime minister wanted. The King had already approved Lord Mandelson’s appointment; it had been announced; the US administration had accepted it; the Cabinet Office was questioning whether Lord Mandelson needed security vetting at all; and Sir Olly’s office was receiving almost daily calls from 10 Downing Street telling him and his colleagues, with expletives, to “get on with it”.
Sir Keir’s reason for sacking Sir Olly is, essentially: “You should have stopped me from bullying you into doing exactly what I wanted.”
This is no way to run a government. The prime minister said he takes responsibility for the Mandelson decision, and he has apologised to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, “who were clearly failed by my decision”. And yet, by sacking Sir Olly, he implies that he was not solely responsible for the decision after all.
The departure of Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir’s former chief of staff, who was an advocate of Lord Mandelson’s cause – and possibly that of Sir Chris Wormald, the former cabinet secretary, who also did not know about the doubts of the vetters – also seems to fit this pattern.
Sir Olly “made an error of judgement”, Sir Keir told his cabinet this morning. But yesterday, he told the House of Commons that the “judgement I made” in appointing Lord Mandelson “was wrong”. So why should Sir Olly lose his job while Sir Keir keeps his?
Not only was it wrong in principle to sack Sir Olly, a fine public servant who negotiated a Brexit deal that would have been much better for Britain than the one Boris Johnson ended up with; it was unwise.
Sir Keir seemed to realise the danger of alienating the entire top echelon of the civil service when he paid tribute to Sir Olly at this morning’s cabinet, calling him “a man of integrity and professionalism”. Too late for that now.
The threat to the prime minister is not just that Sir Olly will take his revenge – as he started to do in his evidence to MPs this morning, revealing that the prime minister had tried to make Matthew Doyle, then his director of communications, an ambassador while insisting that David Lammy, then the foreign secretary, should not be told.
The greater threat is that senior civil servants will not trust the prime minister, and will show no urgency in pursuing his objectives.
Beyond that, there is the political threat to Sir Keir’s position. His mistake in appointing Lord Mandelson has emboldened his critics in his own party. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has conveniently remembered that he advised against the appointment, just as Mr Lammy has. Yvette Cooper, the current foreign secretary, has been liberated to say that Mr Doyle – now Lord Doyle – “would not have been an appropriate appointment”.
Sir Olly’s exit could be one of those in which the sacker suffers more than the sackee in the end. It has drawn attention to the prime minister’s weaknesses, and it adds to the distraction of all those at the heart of government from the pressing problems of people’s cost of living at home caused by war abroad.
Sir Keir has admitted that Lord Mandelson’s appointment was “wrong”, and that it disrespected Epstein’s victims. Arguing about the process surrounding the appointment has only made that original sin look worse. The prime minister needs to take responsibility for it – and mean it.
