Keir Starmer was in full lawyer mode at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions as the embattled PM endured yet another grilling on what he did and did not know about the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal.
The problem with that is that, in doing so, he looked increasingly less like a prime minister and more like a man in the courtroom of public opinion battling to defend a threadbare case.
His tactic was to cherry-pick the parts of the bombshell evidence Sir Olly Robbins’ gave yesterday on the top civil servant’s decision to override security advice to allow Lord Mandelson to take up the US ambassador role, which supported his case in the way only a professional lawyer can do.
So the prime minister went big on Sir Olly’s admission that he did not tell him or ministers about the issues that arose during the vetting process.
He also leaned heavily on Sir Olly comments that, despite the “constant pressure” that Downing Street put the Foreign Office under about the appointment, it had nothing to do with his decision to override security concerns about Lord Mandelson.
But he was less keen to talk about No 10’s attempts to pressure the Foreign Office into giving his old pal and former director of communications Matthew Doyle a plum ambassadorial job – and claims Sir Olly was told to hide the moves from then-foreign secretary, David Lammy.
He also did not want to talk about what Labour’s chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Dame Emily Thornberry, has already condemned as “bullying” by Number 10 – claims No 10 has denied.
But he did at least admit that a possible diplomatic job was explored on behalf of Lord Doyle, while trying to quickly move on from the topic, insisting “nothing came of it”.
The uncomfortable thing is that Lord Doyle was at the time being sacked for not being very good at his job. And he was later caught in his own scandal, not too dissimilar to the one that saw Mandelson eventually sacked as the top man in Washington – being friends with a paedophile, something that saw him suspended from the Labour party.
It was also hard for Sir Keir to get around the revelations by the now-sacked chief Foreign Office mandarin that exposed how Downing Street was piling on the pressure to push through Lord Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US quickly.
Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch saved her fireworks for the last of six questions, doggedly pursuing the PM with precise questions on the scandal.
She clearly decided not to go for the kill this week, but to take a more forensic approach to the whole issue.
She may be playing a longer game, but a wounded PM is looking like he is going to struggle to survive much more of this.
While Ms Badenoch, who yet again called for him to go, got the loudest cheer, it also managed to bring the sullen Labour backbenchers back to life to remember to cheer their under-fire leader.
A few toady questions from Labour MPs followed, but there was little enthusiasm to support him.
His loudest cheer was an ironic one from Tory MPs as he entered the chamber.
While Sir Keir has got through another confrontation and survived without a killer blow, he continues to look seriously wounded politically.
