Starmer’s going to need a bigger bus – politicalbetting.com
Starmer’s going to need a bigger bus – politicalbetting.com
There is a pattern here. Both Chris Wormald and Olly Robbins appointed by this Government. Both sacked by press release when Starmer under pressure. Robbins may have approved Mandelson but it’s not credible that he acted alone w/o instruction from No10.https://t.co/rEyWmIJpCW
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This is now a clear pattern of behaviour, going back to the Jimmy Savile scandal when he was DPP.
His excuse today reminds me of Gordon Brown’s “I accept full responsibility, and the person responsible has been fired”, except that Starmer never accepts responsibility for anything.
1. Kemy Badenock is never going to be PM.
2. SKS is crap. Not a patch on Macron or Carney
Anyway, it simply confirms he is not up to the job of PM
Its uncrossed desks all the way down
A new leader by conference, then two and a half years to turn things round, and do some good for the country while they are at it.
Said record indicating they did not consult any political leader would be very useful for the PM right now. If they just made the call through email as the record that's very careless.
If al that is true, well we have a massive problem with the civil service.
He doesn’t need one.
Or, Keir is a lying toerag.
One or t'other
Of course, that's a whole other mess as someone did and you'd really think on such a politically vital subject Olly and Keir would both insist on getting every detail confirmed before saying anything.
How this will all pan out, it's too early to say. At least my betting strategy of laying Farage, Lowe and Johnson for next PM looks like paying off.
"So Olly Robbins, a Civil Servant at the heart of government and head of the FO, a Civil Servant who probably has almost daily contact with Starmer, knew that Mandelson had failed his vetting but didn't think to mention this until this week? When the PM is answering questions about this week after week in Parliament? Are we supposed to believe this?"
Difficult to know what to believe, David.
Why would one of our top Civil Servants resign if he had merely been doing what the PM wanted? I'm not inclined to believe that such senior officials readily sacrifice their careers for their political masters.
So far all we can say with certainty is that it appears it was Robbins that lied, not the PM. The question as to why he lied is important, and fascinating.
The news that it was refused, despite the individual presumably receiving such clearances previously in his career, would in any organisation have gone straight to the person making the appointment, not some junior in his office or the vetting office.
You can understand that it was a very political appointment, but you’d also think that the PM should have been asked to review his rather large MI5 file personally, alongside their recommendation to refuse him clearance. They may or may not have also known, or asked for, what the Americans had on him. What finally got Mandy in trouble came from an American release of information.
So. to take an example, if I was subject to DV they might highlight some of my dafter posts on here but it would be the person who was making the appointment who would decide what weight to give to that.
Webb incredulous that the details in someone's security vetting wouldn't be shared across govt.
The question remains 'Why?'
Nobody seems to be addressing this properly. We need more facts. Vapid speculation won't do.
However, we are now so far down the path of doing nothing giving rise to bad outcomes, that this is being tested.
There’s also the process and the membership to think about. Are the members more moderate now the Greens are increasing in popularity, or are those who obsess about Israel and gender still actually Labour members?
I appreciate that the resignation/sacking of Robbins must have come as a terrible disappointment to all the Starmer haters who thought they had their man, but until we know why Robbins lied it seems the PM's neck is out of the noose, for the moment.
But he has ties to Mandy too.
So then it’s hard to see beyond Our Ange - but HMRC still haunts her.
.. its for that reason we have to take the prospect of PM Ed Miliband seriously.
https://madeingreatbritain.uk/made-in-great-britain/british-business-directory-2/british-made-tools/
Someone in a large house in Downing St is giving the toolmakers a bad name.
While we complain about how the Tory party can remove a PM, at least the Tory Party have a mechanism that can do so...
Wouldn’t conspiracy to conceal information from Parliament reach the standard of Misconduct in a Public Office?
Most failures of SC/DV clearance are financially related.
My own thinking is given the (money related) reasons why Lord Mandelson had to resign from the cabinet made him a risk.
That’s the key one for me. If for instance someone like Richard Burgeon got the nominations and challenged Starmer after May, does the party have the time for other challengers to emerge/seek nominations.
If so it’s much easier to see someone going for it: “I didn’t want to challenge the PM but regretfully my duty requires me to stand” etc etc.
We are, after all, talking about the appointment of our most senior Ambassador who is going to have to deal with a lunatic and his coterie of slavering hounds, someone who is going to have to represent the government's political position when there is all the tension between America First and Europe. This is not something trivial. And the government has, exceptionally gone out of the ranks of the professionals for the appointment. Which, as we have all learned, is a political risk. And there are concerns. And the PM is not told? I just don't believe it I am afraid.
It's possible that she realises the game she is playing- not to be PM but to keep the party alive until after 2029. But it's not the manner of a PM in waiting.
Rules: https://labourlist.org/2025/11/labour-leadership-election-rules-keir-starmer-challenger/
The problem with Labour's constant blame shitfing and deflections is they give the impression they do not own the problem. They are the government and behaving like they are still in opposition just undermines. their credibility
They need to grasp the nettle and behave like a governing party.
In which case it's on you when the shit hits the fan. HR exists to protect the employer - specifically senior management. Something the anti-Woke peddlers don't get about the modern workplace.
Anyhow Starmer didn't use the only defence available to him, for presumably obvious reasons, and has to go.
He is PM playing the role of Leader of the Opposition, and he has been pretty much ever since he took office, at least on the domestic front.
And how many people really want to tell the person who can sack them that they are an idiot especially when that person already has a reputation for sacking people for speaking the truth
Good morning, everybody.
- Civil servants don't include politicians in the loop when they think telling politicians will lead to accusations of Officiously Informing Seniors Of Things They Don't Want To Know
- The politicians lied
- The politicians flunkies did it. Then got their phones stolen.
- That when political appointments fail vetting they are appointed anyway. As The Process.
More than 1 of these may be true.
The first leads to some interesting questions - if a civil servant finds out that the Americans are conducting Offensive (or Highly Rude) operations against Iran (say)... do they tell the PM? Or just NFA it?
Since first arriving in the UK, around half of all adults (53%) have visited Ukraine; the most reported reasons were to visit friends or family (75%) or to receive medical or dental treatment (64%).
So, Sandpit, should we revoke the refugee stats of 53% of the Ukrainians in the UK for visiting Ukraine? Or can we accept that it is possible to be in danger in your home country, but for it still to be worth the risk of visiting?
There are more details in the full report. The exec summary reads:
Around 9 in 10 (88%) adults who responded plan to apply for the Ukraine Permission Extension Scheme, extending their permission to stay in the UK, when their current visa expires.
When asked to think about a future in which they feel it is safe to return to Ukraine, around 7 in 10 (68%) adults said they wanted to remain living in the UK.
Over half (60%) of those who want to remain living in the UK said this is because there are more work opportunities in the UK.
Of those who have experienced difficulties finding work in the UK, half (50%) said this was because their English language skills did not meet job requirements.
Since first arriving in the UK, around half of all adults (53%) have visited Ukraine; the most reported reasons were to visit friends or family (75%) or to receive medical or dental treatment (64%).
She also pointed to the careful language in a letter she received from Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on the vetting process, which noted that: “The vetting process was undertaken by UK Security Vetting on behalf of the FCDO and concluded with DV clearance being granted by the FCDO.”
Seems a bit opaque given what we know now .
It gives off the strong vibes that someone, somewhere, has made it clear that the appointment will happen one way or the other, so nobody is to be troubled with anything to do with it. That is in many ways even worse.
The scandal is that they now think that the decision to appoint him was wrong for a number of reasons. And the question now is, who made the bad call?
Also, Starmer knew about this on Tuesday night. First question to him is, when was he planning on telling us?
I'd also suggest that there is a case for saying to Ukranians - actually, we are helping with the war, which your country appears to be at the worst not losing, and hopefully slowly gaining the upper hand. Time to think about going back.
Even if the security vetting advised they failed.
That is the implication of Darren Jones' today interview, the FO had an override button as part of their vetting process that predated Mandelson.
If it had been used before then Patel is an obvious candidate.
I’m not aware of anyone requesting or being granted asylum from Ukraine.
They’re temporary refugees, almost all women and children, allowed into the UK under a special arrangement because, you know, there’s a war going on in Ukraine right now.
What, exactly, is the point you’re trying to make?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/16/officials-debate-withholding-mandelson-vetting-documents-from-parliament
It's hard to imagine the justification for resistance, is it not? Possibly if we have a spy in a senior position in the American administration?? Otherwise, civil servants have no excuse for disobeying a direct order from Parliament.
Starmer however is clearly far less warm and charismatic than Boris but much more ruthless, throwing the likes of Mandelson and McSweeney and Robbins under the bus to save his skin even when he may have been partly to blame himself.
The only person who comes out of this reasonably well is Darren Jones, who has again proved himself one of the more competent members of the Cabinet immediately suspending the right of departments to overrule security vetting recommendations
They haven't claimed asylum - at least in general.
Nope, so Starmer lives on.
So the question becomes how easily can the rules be changed, if the NEC wants to change them?
The rules for the election that Corbyn won were only introduced the year before and both the Tory and Labour parties have in recent years tweaked (not significantly overhauled) the rules immediately prior to a contest too, eg changing pre-determined thresholds rules.
The last 5 Tory leadership elections in a row have all had the rules changed immediately prior to the election itself (mainly regarding nomination and round thresholds).
If Starmer resigns and hundreds of Labour MPs declare "we need Burnham" for example, could the NEC abolish the rule of needing a candidate to be an MP in time for the election?
Another day (it would seem) of the anti-Starmer lynch mob huffing and puffing that he should go but, as I said last evening, we still need to see the "smoking gun", that single piece of irrefutable evidence Starmer knew Mandelson had failed vetting and deliberately misled Parliament.
IF that exists, let's see it and I'll pick up a pitchfork but until then it's "he said, she said" and the actual sequence of who knew what and when and who took the decision to overrule to security vetting on Mandelson and the basis on which that decision was taken remains far from clear.
Is it politically "damaging" - well, I suppose, but does that matter in the way it once did? I suspect not.
The report on the dreadful Southport murders in the summer of 2024 is a litany of opportunities missed and failure and nothing it says or recommends can do anything more than try to ensure something like this never happens again. As someone who worked for a spell in the public sector, I understand the conclusions reached by Sir Adrian Fulford. I wouldn't use them per se as an indictment of all forms of public sector governance and I'd argue in other authorities there is a much more joined up approach than was clearly the case in Lancashire and that includes both departments within the council and effective co-working with other agencies such as the NHS and Police.
I hope and expect every authority will read the Fulford recommendations and if they aren't already following them, to implement them with haste.
“There was then… security vetting carried out independently by the security services, which is an intensive exercise … that gave [Mandelson] clearance for the role.”
A day earlier, Badenoch asked him in the Commons if “the security vetting he received mention[ed] Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein“. Starmer said it did.
https://order-order.com/2026/04/17/flashback-starmer-claims-mandelson-passed-security-vetting/
Shrodingers Security Vetting....
Bigger picture, Starmer’s team have done a great job of throwing up lots of chaff about forms and processes when really the flaw is simply his judgement. That’s been apparent from the start and I’m not sure this latest revelation adds much.
Basically the ultimate microcosm of what Malmesbury gets so worked up about.
We're now into the Chris Pincher era of the government where:
A) You are sending out allies to do a media round, knowing it will be grisly.
C) No actual governing gets done.
The military needs focus if it's going to be more effective and that means dispensing with nonsense like Chagos. The Americans can do their own deal with Mauritius if they want the base.