Douglas Alexander says he thinks Starmer should stay as PM until next election, but ‘there are no certainties’
Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, was on the government voice on the airwaves this morning. Along with Pat McFadden and Darren Jones, he is one of the ultra ‘safe pair of hands’ ministers trusted to do a media round when the government is in a really tricky position.
His argument was that the appointment of Mandelson as ambassador to the US was a mistake, that Keir Starmer has already admitted this and apologised for it, but that he did not lie because he was not told about Mandelson in effect failing the security vetting. Starmer should have been told, Alexander said. He told Sky News:
I think most people watching this programme would think if there was material information, that the UK vetting agencies had come up with concerns and made a recommendation in relation to what’s a highly intrusive vetting process, that rightly and reasonably, that would be flagged to the ministers concerned.
Asked if he expected Starmer to lead Labour into the next election, Alexander said:
I expect so, yes … I think he will.
There are no certainties but of course I think he will lead and I think he should because, frankly, on the biggest call in this parliament he’s exercised the right judgment, which is to keep us out of someone else’s war.
Alexander also had an unusual way of saying that Starmer does make mistakes.
As a Scottish Presbyterian I don’t believe in papal infallibility, nor do I believe in prime ministerial infallibility.
Key events
Alexander accuses Badenoch of peddling conspiracy theory about Starmer that is ‘simply not true’
In his interview on the Today programme this morning Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, accused Kemi Badenoch of peddling a conspiracy theory about Keir Starmer and Peter Mandelson’s security vetting. Ignoring the fact that Badenoch has toned down what she is saying about Starmer from the end of last week (see 10.33am), Alexander said:
The central charge that has been run by the opposition since Kemi Badenoch appeared on this programme on Friday – and I quote her directly, she said “there is deliberate dishonesty, I know he is lying” – is that the prime minister has been deliberately dishonest. That is simply not true.
Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence disproving that charge, not least friends and allies of Olly Robbins himself, who maintained that he didn’t tell the prime minister and claim he couldn’t tell the prime minister the recommendation of the vetting agency about Peter Mandelson.
So, of course, rightly and reasonably, there will be important questions asked from all sides of the House of Commons today and the prime minister will account for the decisions he’s taken where he should at the despatch box.
But the central charge made by the opposition, that somehow he knowingly misled parliament or the public is simply untrue. And to believe that requires a conspiracy not only involving Olly Robbins and his friends, but senior officials like the cabinet secretary, and indeed the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office and every minister involved in this appointment.
Robbins has ‘integrity stitched into his DNA’, says former No 10 foreign policy adviser
Tom Fletcher, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and a former Downing Street foreign policy adviser, was on the Today programme this morning talking about the humanitarian impact of the Iran war. Asked about Olly Robbins being sacked as head of the Foreign Office for not telling Keir Starmer about the recommendation for Peter Mandelson to be refused security vetting, Fletcher defended his former civil service colleague and said they had been in touch in recent days. He said:
This is a guy who has public service and integrity stitched into his DNA in a way I haven’t seen in any other single individual. And I’ve worked with so many people inside government.
So he has had an utterly rough few days. He’s a pretty strong character. But I think he’s heartbroken.
Asked if he agreed with comments from people like Gus O’Donnell (see 9.59am) and Simon McDonald, another former head of the Foreign Office (in an interview on Saturday) that Robbins had been badly treated, Fletcher indicated that he thought O’Donnell and McDonald were raising serious points.
Badenoch renews calls for Starmer to resign – as she backs away from claim that he definitely lied about Mandelson’s vetting
On Friday Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, told the Today programme that she knew Keir Starmer had been lying about Peter Mandelson’s security vetting. She said:
It’s completely preposterous for us to believe that when the prime minister said on the floor of the house [of Commons] the full due process was followed that officials who knew that was not the case would not have told him. He knew.
It is preposterous for us to believe that on 5 February, [after] him giving press conference saying that Mandelson was cleared by the security services, nobody told him that actually that this was not the case.
It’s completely preposterious, the prime minister, the former chief prosecutor, did not ask basic questions, did not ask to look at the security vetting himself.
It’s also completely preposterous that civil servants would have cleared a political appointee who had failed security vetting. Mandelson was not a mandarin he was a Labour party grandee appointed to be our most senior diplomat and ambassador …
It doesn’t matter what story the prime minister is telling, at some point there is deliberate dishonesty – whether it’s the cover-up story or the original story – one of these is deliberate dishonesty, they can’t all be true, and that’s why I know he is lying.
But now Badenoch has revised her charge against the prime minister. She is not saying that she knows he is “lying” (a word that requires someone to not just say something untrue, but to knowingly state a falsehood). In an open letter to the PM, she says he has been “at best recklessly negligent and at worse dishonest”.
Badenoch still wants him to resign, though. She made this clear in interviews this morning, telling LBC: “I do think, certainly, in terms of his authority, he has reached the end of the road. He should resign.”
Naming Mandelson as ambassador before vetting was mistake, Alexander says
It was a mistake to announce Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US before he was security vetted for the role, Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, said in interviews this morning. Peter Walker has the story.
Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell says Olly Robbins was following rules about vetting disclosure
Downing Street is claiming that under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 Olly Robbins, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, could have told Keir Starmer that Peter Mandelson in effect failed his security vetting. (See 9.21am.) In its briefing document today, it says:
Prerogative powers emanate from the crown but are exercisable by ministers and, when (and only when) delegated or otherwise authorised by ministers or as decided by statute, are exercisable by civil servants. In the context of vetting and clearance, this means civil servants run the process and make the decisions on whether clearance should be granted. There are legal obligations in carrying out vetting processes to ensure the appropriate protection and management of sensitive personal information, in accordance with data protection law.
However, no law prevents civil servants – while continuing to protect such sensitive personal information – from sensibly flagging UK Security Vetting recommendations or high level risks and mitigations. This allows Ministers to make informed decisions, including on appointments or when accounting for government business in parliament.
But, in an article published in the Times today, Gus O’Donnell, a former cabinet secretary, has defended Robbins’ decision not to share that information with Starmer on the grounds that he (Robbins) had used his power as the ultimate decision-maker to decide that vetting approval should be granted. O’Donnell says:
For a government often accused of being overly focused on law, legalism and process, they do not seem to have convinced the many sceptics that they have a clear understanding of their own vetting laws and processes. Their explanation of how the express exclusion of ministers, set out clearly in legislation, from the process of national security vetting for officials relates to how ministers are informed has been, to put it charitably, confusing so far.
Moreover, the prime minister might feel that this exclusion of ministers didn’t serve him well in this case. But if so, he should change the system. Instead, he appears to have taken a very rapid decision to dismiss someone for applying what seems on the face of it to be an entirely standard, reasonable and perfectly obvious interpretation of the law and rules as they stand.
Douglas Alexander says he thinks Starmer should stay as PM until next election, but ‘there are no certainties’
Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, was on the government voice on the airwaves this morning. Along with Pat McFadden and Darren Jones, he is one of the ultra ‘safe pair of hands’ ministers trusted to do a media round when the government is in a really tricky position.
His argument was that the appointment of Mandelson as ambassador to the US was a mistake, that Keir Starmer has already admitted this and apologised for it, but that he did not lie because he was not told about Mandelson in effect failing the security vetting. Starmer should have been told, Alexander said. He told Sky News:
I think most people watching this programme would think if there was material information, that the UK vetting agencies had come up with concerns and made a recommendation in relation to what’s a highly intrusive vetting process, that rightly and reasonably, that would be flagged to the ministers concerned.
Asked if he expected Starmer to lead Labour into the next election, Alexander said:
I expect so, yes … I think he will.
There are no certainties but of course I think he will lead and I think he should because, frankly, on the biggest call in this parliament he’s exercised the right judgment, which is to keep us out of someone else’s war.
Alexander also had an unusual way of saying that Starmer does make mistakes.
As a Scottish Presbyterian I don’t believe in papal infallibility, nor do I believe in prime ministerial infallibility.
Starmer could have been told about Mandelson’s vetting failure, claims No 10 with release of briefing paper
Good morning. There are occasions when a prime minister wakes up knowing that how they perform in the Commons that day will decide whether or not they keep their job – but they are very, very rare. The best example in modern times is Margaret Thatcher on the day of the Westland debate, when she told staff she would still be in post that evening. Boris Johnson had multiple tricky encounters with MPs, but the most difficult – and the most important for his reputation- was the one before the privileges committee about claims that he lied about Partygate, and that came after he had resigned as PM. For James Callaghan, the confidence debate in 1979 was a terminal moment for his premiership, but that vote was not decided by what he said.
There seems to be little chance that Keir Starmer may be finished off by what happens in the Commons today. Since the revelations in the Guardian last week about Peter Mandelson in effect failing security vetting for his appointment as ambassador to the US, despite Starmer repeatedly everyone that he was cleared, Labour MPs have not been calling for his resignation. It seems unlikely that by 6pm tonight that will have changed. But many or most of them were already of the view that he is not the right person to lead them into the next general election, and the events of the past few days have firmed up that view.
Here is the story by the Guardian’s political editor, Pippa Crerar, setting up what is happening today.
In a separate analysis, Pippa writes: “[Labour MPs] know the public has been losing faith in the political system for years. Every twist and turn of the Mandelson scandal accelerates that. So when another opportunity presents itself to change leadership, they may take it.”
Last week Starmer sacked Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, for not telling him that Mandelson did in effect fail the security vetting. (But technically he “passed”, because as head of the Foreign Office Robbins had the final say, and he was able to override the recommendation from security chief.) Robbins will give evidence to MPs tomorrow, but we know from what his friends have been saying is that he believes that he was not entitled to give the PM details of what is a very secretive process. The more important point in his defence, which allies have been more reluctant to make publicly, is that given that Starmer had already announced that Mandelson had the job, despite everyone in Westminster knowing Mandelson was a scandal magnet, it was Robbins’ job to implement the wishes of the PM, not block a decision, and an assessment of risk, that had already been taken.
Last night, ahead of the PM’s statement to MPs today, Downing Street took the unusual statement of publishing a briefing paper about the rules regarding the disclosure of vetting information. It says:
The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (CRAG) does not prevent civil servants from informing ministers of UK Security Vetting recommendations. What CRAG says is that civil servants make decisions on vetting and clearance. But no law stops civil servants sensibly flagging UK security vetting recommendations, while rightly protecting detailed sensitive vetting information, to allow ministers to make judgments on appointments or on explaining matters to parliament.
We will be focusing mostly on the Mandelson scandal today, but there is still a war on that has not been fully resolved, and the most important set of elections ahead of the next general election are less than three weeks away. Here is the agenda for the day.
11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, and Zia Yusuf, his home affairs spokesperson, hold a press conference about the party’s plan to deport thousands of people already granted asylum in the UK.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
After 3.30pm: Keir Starmer makes his statement to MPs about claims that the misled the Commons, and the public, about the vetting process carried out when Peter Mandelson was appointed ambassador to the US.
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