← The Rest Is Politics
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- [00:00]
Alistair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the rest is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com this episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
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Alistair Campbell
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- [01:55]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to the Restless Polities with me, Alistair Campbell and me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory and I were hoping to have a nice quiet day today and we're going to have nice quiet day because we got. Well, no, we've got other things on, but I think we have to say something about what's been going on overnight regarding the seemingly never ending saga of Keir Starmer's appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States. So Peter Mandelson was appointed, then had to resign over his links with Jeffrey Epstein, which k about which Keir Starmer claimed not to know the full detail. Then the launch of a process to look at the process by which he was appointed. And in that investigation of that process it has emerged that Peter Manelson was failed in part of the vetting process that's run by the Cabinet Office, but that the Foreign Office decided he should be appointed anyway. So what has happened is that it has emerged that The Cabinet Office vetting process through which I went through. I don't think you probably did, Rory, because you were a minister, but I certainly went through it.
- [02:59]
Rory Stewart
I went through it as a civil servant, of course.
- [03:01]
Alistair Campbell
Before that. Yeah. As it pertains. As it pertains to Peter Mandelson, it seems that the Cabin Office vetting process decided he should not be cleared for developed vetting, which is top secret information. This was not taken into such account by the Foreign Office that they basically said, well, that means he can't do the job. On the contrary, the Foreign Office decided that he could do the job. And it seems, or it is claimed that nobody in Downing street and no ministers were told about this key fact that Peter Man Lawson's vetting process had thrown up something which had led them to suggest he should not be appointed. Have I given a reasonably clear explanation? And now that Ollie Robbins, the head of the Foreign Office Civil Service Permanent Secretary, he has been fired unceremoniously, just in the manner as Peter Mandelson was fired by Ollie Robbins after Peter Mandelson's, the depth of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein became clear. Now, Rory, we're not going to do a full, you know, 45 minute, hour long episode on this. Doubtless we'll talk about it again next week because Keir Starmer is going to have to make a statement on Monday. But I think it is important enough for us to have to say something. So what's your. What's your thoughts?
- [04:18]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, well, so just to explain for people right to the beginning, what is the develop vetting process? It's about the Security Service in particular going through all your background and all the evidence on whether or not you can be trusted to keep secret information safe. So traditionally, people will remember it was about whether somebody could leverage you, whether you were particularly indiscreet, whether you were subject to blackmail if you fail to develop vetting process and you're a normal person. So, you know, I went through it as a civil servant, you don't get the job. It is theoretically possible for the Foreign Office, in this case the Permanent Secretary, to take the advice and to overrule it. And so the claim is that Ollie Robbins, who was the Sir Humphrey figure at the top of the Foreign Office, received this advice saying Peter Mandelson had not passed the develop vetting, but decided that, taking other things into consideration, he was still going to use his prerogative to appoint him as Ambassador to Washington. Now, questions number one, why would Ollie Robbins do this without informing Morgan McSweeney? The Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary? I think that's extremely unlikely. No Permanent Secretary I would have worked with would ever have done that. The normal Permanent Secretary approach would have been to come to say, prime Minister. Look, it's a little awkward. He's failed the developed vetting process. But I do have the power as Permanent Secretary, to decide that he only narrowly failed it. And for reasons 1, 2 and 3, we can proceed with the appointment. I just wanted to let you know that's what I'm doing now. That's what every Permanent Secretary I've ever worked with would have done. It's possible, for some reason, Ollie Robbins didn't do that. Why? Well, maybe he was too much in the number 10 system. He'd been a private secretary in number 10. He was trying to protect his bosses, so he thought that this was something they didn't need to know. A little bit like Henry II's assassins going out to kill Beckett and it not being quite clear whether the Kings told them to do it. What is inconceivable is that after Mandelson was fired and Starmer was being asked to answer questions in the House of Commons, what is completely inconceivable is that the Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary, didn't, at that stage four months ago, say, okay, let's go through this with a fine tooth comb and work out exactly what happened. I need to know all the information. What did happen? We're saying he passed the betting. Did he pass the vetting? Was it overruled? What was the process that must have happened if that didn't happen? And of course, if it did happen, Keir Starmer's a liar. But if Keir Starmer's not a liar, he is the most incompetent Prime Minister I've ever heard of in my life. Over to you.
- [06:58]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I think in this area of personnel, if you go through it. So since the election, less than two years, he's lost the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner. He's gone through two chiefs of staff, sue gray and Morgan McSweeney. I think he's lost three directors of communications. Two Cabinet secretaries have gone. Now, the first one was maybe you and I both thought he should go. Simon Case, who'd been so much part of the Johnson government, but then Chris Wormold, and now he's gone. And they've now lost also the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office. So at the very, very least, it shows a disinterest in key issues of personnel. These are really important jobs where you have to be absolutely sure you're getting the right person. And look, I would like to think there is no lying going on here, but I find it like you almost unfathom. Even though the process, the process in developed vetting is such that ministers should be kept separate from it because as you say, it's being carried out by the security services, they're digging deep, they're finding out all sorts of stuff which isn't necessarily known by the minister and frankly doesn't necessarily have to be known. But what then gets made is a judgment, as you say, a judgment in the round. Now, the thing about Peter Mandelson is that a lot was known already. There had been two very high profile resignations and listeners and viewers may be thinking, well, wasn't he vetted for that? The crazy thing about our system is unlike in America, where they go through hearings and all that stuff, our MPs and ministers are not vetted in the same way. It's reserved for civil servants.
- [08:40]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. Just to interrupt for a second. I mean, that's what I remember feeling very strongly, having been a civil servant, gone through this very advanced vetting process, having been trained again and again on how to handle documents, what the different classes classifications were when I was a cabinet minister and sitting on the National Security Council. So with the head of MI6 and the Prime Minister, there was none of that stuff at all. Somehow we jumped the whole process.
- [09:02]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. So there may have been an assumption, oh well, Peter Mandelson's been through, been in government, he's been effectively Deputy Prime Minister. You know, everything that is to be known about him is probably known about him by now. And of course what we don't know is what it is within the center, the Cabinet Office vetting, that led somebody to say he is not suitable for developed vetting. And it is a very, very intrusive process. Remember when I was being vetted and of course I'd already started the job, we won the election, we get into number 10 and then there's a list of us, me, Jonathan Powell, a few others who had to go through the developed vetting process. You're already seeing stuff, you know, so had I been a Russian agent, okay, and I've been got into Downey Street, I'm already seeing some very, very useful stuff. But then the vetting process starts and it takes quite a long time. I kept getting phone calls from people saying, I just had this really weird guy turned up at the house, wanted to ask whether, you know, you ever had a three in a bed romp with somebody or, you know, whether you took drugs at university or why you kept going to Russia as a tourist in your youth and all this sort of stuff. So it was very. It was. It was serious and eventually you got a sort of message. I think it might have been Robin Butler who said to me, oh, by the way, your DV stuff went through fine. But what he wouldn't have done, I don't think, had the vetting process shown up, something that might have been a cause for concern. I'm not sure he would have gone to Tony Blair. And there is, if you look at the process that they're following, this is the process that Darren Jones, who works with the Prime Minister in the Prime Minister's office now, is saying that they think needs to change. Is there is something that says you should separate it.
- [10:38]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. Can I question this, though?
- [10:39]
Alistair Campbell
Because I'm not saying it's sensible by that. I'm not saying it's sensible, I'm just saying that is the process.
- [10:45]
Rory Stewart
But if Robin Butler was looking at somebody who was already very controversial, who'd already had to resign twice, who. There were already a lot of questions around where the Epstein stuff was already out there in the public and that person failed to develop vetting and they decided to overrule the vetting, that would be all true. You don't think they would have wanted to have a quiet word with somebody senior to say, just to let you know, I've done this, because it's a massive ticking bomb.
- [11:13]
Alistair Campbell
Well, I wonder, and I don't know, I have actually been speaking to some of the people involved in this whole thing in the last 24 hours. I wonder. They're all denying any knowledge, but I wonder if we're talking here possibly about verbal conversations rather than anything that's written down, or whether we're talking, you know, conversations that say things like, you know, would it make that much difference if, rather than this has emerged during the vetting? And of course, what's, you know, people, probably most of our listeners and viewers probably don't care whether it's fair or unfair at the moment to Peter Mandelson because he's, you know, being being investigated by the police over misconduct or the Epstein stuff and what have you. But of course, none of us know what it is that led them to say, listen, we don't think it might have been his business dealings with Russia or China, it might be in his private life, we just don't know. But the point about this is that this was an appointment, that one was Very important because of Trump back as president. That's why it mattered who they put there when it happened. When the appointment was made, you and I discussed the pros and the cons and the pluses and the minuses. And my minuses were mainly in the risk category, partly because of what we already knew. And I, as, you know, as you outed me a private conversation that you outed on a previous episode, I was kind of fairly gently, and then less gently suggesting that maybe David Miliband might be a better choice because there was less risk, I would argue. And so that's the process. And I wonder whether what's happened inside the Foreign Office. And remember, Oli Robbins had just. He'd only just started in the job. He'd been having a very lucrative life in the private sector after the whole Brexit, because he was so much part of the Brexit debate with Theresa May, whether he just thinks, well, I kind of know what the number 10 want and I need to sort of, you know. So he's having the conversations that lead it in a certain direction. Now, I hope I'm not being unfair to him, because I think he's a. I feel really sad for Rory Robbins today. I think he's a really good guy, very good civil servant, and it's tragic in a way to what's happened to him. But I. I can only imagine that. That when they talk about the process, actually it was a lack of process here that has caused the problem.
- [13:32]
Rory Stewart
Okay, so then the second thing, let's say you're right about all of that. What I cannot believe is that once Mandelson resigned and once people started demanding to know what was happening with the vetting, that at that stage, and it's been four months, somebody didn't go and say, okay, Ollie, what was the details here? What happened? What kind of vetting we did? I mean, let's imagine you were director of communications at number 10.
- [13:55]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [13:56]
Rory Stewart
Right. So that's what. And. But Stan is claiming he knew nothing till yesterday. That can't be true. It can't possibly be true that you lose your ambassador in Washington effectively over the issue of whether he was vetted properly or not, and that nobody at a ministerial level has been informed at any stage that actually he failed the vetting and this was overruled.
- [14:18]
Alistair Campbell
He lost the ambassador over the exposure of the full nature or a fuller nature of the relationship between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, and then announced the process by which every single piece of email and WhatsApp and any communication to do with the appointment would now be examined. So what they're saying is this, this is part of that process. Where I agree with you, it's taken a bloody long time. Where I also agree with you, I just can't understand how somebody, and I'm trying to work out who it would have been in our system, it would definitely have been me, if nobody else was doing it, who said, okay, if we're going to go out and defend this on the basis of a process that we're prepared to defend, we have to be absolutely 100% convinced. And I cannot believe nobody asked the question because it said in Peter's contract of appointment, it said that you have been cleared by the vetting process. It said that. So I cannot believe that nobody said during the process, before he was appointed. Now, listen, Peter's a big, colourful, controversial figure. He's never been vetted before because he's been a politician, not a civil servant. In the vetting process, has anything come up, A, that we don't already know or B, that gives you cause for concern? I cannot believe that question was not asked.
- [15:39]
Rory Stewart
Well, the obvious way that it happens is the scandal breaks, Mandelson resigns. You're aware, as the Director of Communications, that Starmer is having to go out in the House of Commons in January saying, I don't know anything about it. First thing you do is you call in Ollie Robbins and you sit him down and you, very carefully, for as long as it takes, say, I'm gonna go through every single stage of this process. Help me understand exactly what happened here. Who did the vetting? Where did the recommendation come from? Did he fully pass it? Was it overruled? How did it get through? And Ollie Robbins would be completely honest if you did that with him, there's no way he would lie to you in that situation. So why did nobody do that?
- [16:18]
Alistair Campbell
What's happened overnight? Given, as I said earlier, that the process is that the Cabinet Office does the. They oversee the vetting and then the Foreign Office Permanent Secretary can make a judgment, as you say in the round, why, if that is the case, wasn't the defence that Keir starmer and number 10 made yesterday, we were not involved in that process for reasons which are well established now, that would still have. You'd still have faced a political outcry and people would have thought, what the hell? Is that really how this thing works? So he'd still be in a bad place. But I think you get into a worse place if essentially, because you said at this time either he's not telling the truth or he's incompetent. What happens if it's a mixture of both? Look, I've said this to people in number 10 before and I remember early in the early days, there was a senior official being appointed number 10, and I heard who it was and I thought, this is a really bad move. And as you know, I don't agitate much. I really don't. I know you think I spend my whole time sort of, you know, trying to run number 10. I really don't. But I just. I said, this is not a good idea and I wasn't getting through. So in the end, I did say to Keir Starmer, I said, listen, you need to take an interest in this. This is a really important appointment and there's probably about, you know, the Prime Minister can't know everything happening inside the government, but he has to have a system where he depends and trusts people who will make sure that when he does need to know something, he knows it before anybody else. And so I would say it reflects badly on him. It reflects badly on the system. It reflects badly again on Morgan Matsuini, who was the one, we all know this pushing hardest for Peter Mendelssohn to get through. Clearly in the way it's being presented today, it reflects badly on Ollie Robbins. But I think when Ollie Robbins presumably will have to testify before, presumably the Foreign Affairs Select Committee or some such body, I suspect he will at least be able to say, I actually was following the process, but maybe I should have been a bit clearer that things had emerged which should have worried them, I guess that is. But I, I. And this could not be happening at a worse time either, for the, you know, you've got the local elections coming up. I was speaking to a couple of MPs this morning who said that they felt Keir Starmer's handling of the Iran war and, you know, the health service feels like it's getting a bit better, and felt that things were politically at least not quite as bad as they had been. This is going to be really grim. And, of course, Monday is a big, big day because he's going to have to stand up in Parliament on Monday. You've got every single party leader at the moment calling for him to resign. As you know, I don't think calling for resignation is very sensible unless you think, you know, it's likely to happen. But he's going to face massive pressure in Parliament and there will be Labour MPs over the weekend thinking, you know, what do we do?
- [19:13]
Rory Stewart
And presumably if Ollie Robbins appears and says, actually he did inform someone, and I still find it impossible to believe that Ollie Robbins didn't inform someone, at least after Mandelson's resignation, maybe not in the precious point, but after resignation, then Starmer's got to go, right, because he's been so clear in claiming repeatedly that he had no idea.
- [19:32]
Alistair Campbell
And also we've now this pattern of his being. He's been let down. He was let down by Peter Manelsen. Peter Mandelson lied to me, he was let down by the system, now he's been let down by. By Ollie Robbins. You know, not for nothing was my. One of the posters that was on my wall in Downing street the whole time is get a grip. You have to have a grip of process. Because if you have a media like ours that isn't that interested in policy, loves scandal, loves personality, loves process, don't let, don't give them, don't feed them the stuff that's going to allow them to gorge on it in the way they're going to gorge on this.
- [20:08]
Rory Stewart
Well, this is also why they've. That, that famous American. The buck stops here matters because I think a Prime Minister or Minister feeling in the end they have the responsibility that they don't get to say, oh, it's my civil servant's fault, it's my underlings fault, I've been let down. If you feel that you get a grip, the two things are connected, it
- [20:29]
Alistair Campbell
also breeds loyalty amongst the people who work for you. I have never, ever, ever named the person who was actually responsible for the, the so called dodgy dossier, which has now been morphed into the one, the, the main one in September 2003, which it wasn't, it was a different document. And, and the reason for that isn't because I didn't think the guy completely screwed up and nor is it. I didn't give him an absolute bollocking for doing it. Yeah. But what I didn't want is for everybody else who worked for the communications department to think that every time you make a mistake you are going to get thrown under a bus. And what it feels to me is that Ollie Robbins has been thrown under
- [21:10]
Rory Stewart
a bus and the Civil Service will feel it right the way through. I mean, they will feel this is a number 10 that is not sticking up for the civil servants, that's making them carry the can, blaming them for everything that goes wrong.
- [21:21]
Alistair Campbell
And ultimately, though, we say it was the Foreign Office appointment because it was a senior ambassador that appointment was made by the Prime Minister and that's exactly as it should be. A really senior diplomatic position like that. You've got to be happy that the Prime Minister has confidence and trust in this person to do it. And I think the other thing here is that everything I heard at the time is that Keir Starmer wasn't that keen on Peter Mandelsen. He was seeing the risk at the time, but the whole, you know, Morgan McSweeney in particular, I think, was pushing him. He's got to get a grip of his own appointment, of big personnel issues inside the government.