In written evidence last night, former Foreign Office security chief Ian Collard agreed with Olly Robbins about pressure from No 10 to endorse Mandelson and corroborated the rest of Robbins’ account.
Today there are two appearances before the FAC. As I write, Philip Barton, former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, is before the committee. In the first minutes of his appearance, he revealed that it was not his decision to leave the department in January 2025 in the middle of Mandelson’s vetting, but that David Lammy, then foreign secretary, had been looking for someone else in the job, and so he resigned. He also confirmed Robbins’ claim that the Cabinet Office did not think any vetting of Mandelson was necessary.
Later today there’s also the appearance of Morgan McSweeney, which I suspect will be superficially but not fundamentally interesting, as audiences get a full audio-visual look at a backroom adviser about whom so much was written when he served as the No. 1 chief of staff. 10. McSweeney is expected to deny the request of the civil servants in charge, despite reports, and has already said: “I find it strange to ever read about a character with the same name as mine.”
Meanwhile, after heavy campaigning by Number 10 to drum up support in the PLP, it appears that no significant number of Labor MPs will abstain or vote for the Tory push for a privileges committee inquiry later today and Kemi Badenoch’s scheme will fail.
Today could have the counter-productive effect of, on the one hand, increasing the number of tough questions for the prime minister about “pressure” from No 10 to take Mandelson to Washington, while, on the other hand, giving him a big – though not necessarily enthusiastic – show of support from Labor MPs in the Commons as they scramble to vote against the Tory MPs’ motion.
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(Further reading: Labor faces extinction of local elections in England)
