With the best will in the world, it cannot be ideal that a prime minister has to go to the House of Commons and plead, in effect, that he has not lied to MPs for the not-entirely satisfactory reason that he didn’t know what was going on in his own government.
Early in his statement, which was being listened to in stunned silence, when Sir Keir Starmer declared that the events he carefully chronicled were “incredible”, laughter broke out. Maybe that was because, in the old saying, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.
Without using the term, Sir Keir made his case that he was the victim of a “cover-up”, orchestrated by officials in the Foreign Office, and in particular the former head of the diplomatic service, Sir Olly Robbins. Yet Sir Olly may say he was trying to be helpful to ministers and was sticking to the law as he understood it. Soon, he too will have his say.
For now, though, that victimhood is, in essence, Sir Keir’s broad defence for not disclosing to parliament that Peter Mandelson had not, in layman’s terms, passed his developed vetting for the most sensitive job in the diplomatic service, ambassador to Washington. “Nobody told me” is his argument, and apparently, knowledge was denied to him even when he asked. So much for absolute prime ministerial power.
Unless and until that defence is disproven by firm evidence to the contrary, it has to be accepted, even if it beggars belief. It should not be possible to dismiss a prime minister because, as he himself says, he suffered from a “staggering” failure of the administrative state. Nor should any minister or official lose their job for inadvertently misleading the Commons and the public, which the prime minister concedes has happened.
It is technically possible that a significant number of civil servants knew all or part of the vetting story at various times, and that the prime minister, who is also minister for the civil service, as it happens, hadn’t an inkling. He says that happened even when the former cabinet secretary, Sir Chris Wormald, conducted a review into the matter last September. Not everything percolates to the top; sometimes truth is stranger than fiction; more often, cock-up trumps conspiracy.
In any case, it is difficult to prove that Sir Keir would ever have set out to deliberately lie to parliament. For all the compromises, U-turns and creative language he has had to deploy in office, it is also difficult to believe he would have wanted potentially to expose himself to a charge which he knows full well could end his political career. After all, he had played a powerful role when he was leader of the opposition in dispatching Boris Johnson for just such an offence a few years ago.
Nonetheless, questions remain not entirely answered, even after “Angry Starmer” made his appearance at the despatch box.
The public still deserve to know more about why nothing was said to them about security clearance and vetting, even after MI6 concerns had been raised by The Independent on 11 September last year, the day Lord Mandelson was forced to resign. The then No 10 director of communications, Tim Allan, merely responded: “Vetting done by FCDO in normal way.”
That is the familiar formulation used almost exclusively by the prime minister and his colleagues, allied to the claim that no ministers (as opposed to officials) knew about the vetting failure until about a week ago. Technically, it is correct, and not a lie – though, arguably, as it turns out, the process was anything but “normal”. At this juncture, it feels like a suspiciously tightly drawn form of words, as if those using it wished to obscure the precise nature of the vetting, which Sir Keir, pointedly, rarely referred to.
The other point is whether Mr Allan, Sir Olly, Sir Chris, his successor Dame Antonia Romeo and others ever told Sir Keir about the vetting issue. Sir Keir says not – but why not? This is especially pertinent given that Downing Street now says there was no legal impediment to any of them doing so immediately.
As a highly distinguished lawyer, Sir Keir will have been in countless courtrooms when the words “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” have been uttered. That is what needs to be disclosed in this sorry affair, and that includes fully candid testimony from Sir Olly, Mr Allan and other officials. Maybe then the public can properly judge if their prime minister is worthy of their trust.
This crisis will pass, and the prime minister will most likely survive at least until the May elections and beyond – but his troubles and the weaknesses of the government remain. This feels too much like an administration not in control of events, with no defining mission and stumbling from one crisis to the next.
Sir Keir has rightly won considerable respect for his sober judgement in international relations and the Iran war, in stark contrast to domestic affairs. By no means can his still-young government be blamed for his inheritance. However, he does need to get a grip – and be seen to do so. No one wants a passenger for a PM.
