Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, to be questioned by MPs

Morgan McSweeney is facing a showdown with MPs who will grill him on whether he placed extreme pressure on the Foreign Office to approve Peter Mandelson as ambassador.The prime minister’s former chief of staff will be questioned next Tuesday by the foreign affairs select committee over allegations made by the former Foreign Office permanent secretary Olly Robbins, who said No 10 had questioned why Mandelson should be subject to any vetting.Robbins, who was sacked by Keir Starmer after the Guardian revealed formal vetting concerns were overruled, said there had been a “dismissive” attitude from Downing Street towards security vetting.McSweeney will be asked by MPs to also respond to allegations by Robbins that another ambassadorial post was sought for Starmer’s outgoing communications chief Matthew Doyle, who was later made a peer.McSweeney, who left No 10 in February, has been adamant he did not know that Mandelson had failed his security vetting, which was then overridden by the Foreign Office

Do Olly Robbins’ actions stand up to scrutiny? | Letters

While watching Olly Robbins give evidence at the Commons foreign affairs committee (Olly Robbins’ account of Mandelson vetting piles pressure on Keir Starmer, 21 April), what I heard was that Robbins – who boasted of his quarter century as a civil servant and who had been appointed to one of the highest positions in government – felt unable to resist the pressure of an unspecified source he called “Downing Street” regarding perhaps the most important and far-reaching foreign post of all.Robbins showed little will to discover the detail of Peter Mandelson’s failure to gain clearance and, incredibly and most unlike a civil servant, he decided not to keep a record of what he described as a “crucial” meeting. He also appeared to not distinguish between reporting the fact that there had been an issue with Mandelson’s clearance and explaining the details of the issue, which he correctly said should have remained confidential. But he then broke that principle by disclosing a specific element in the vetting, that the reservations about Mandelson did not involve links with Jeffrey Epstein.“I was new to the job” and it would have been “very difficult” to deny Mandelson clearance do not wash – he’s paid to do this kind of thing

UK politics: Labour MP calls for Starmer’s resignation to end ‘psychodrama’ – as it happened

The Labour MP Jonathan Brash, who was elected in 2024 for Hartlepool (Peter Mandelson’s old seat), has told GB News that he thinks Keir Starmer should resign.He claimed that Starmer’s resignation was now inevitable, and that the distraction provided by the Mandelson scandal was making it hard for the government to do its job.He said:double quotation markI’ve got to be clear, I am completely fed up to the back teeth of this psychodrama in Westminster, the own goals that are coming from the heart of this government.Meanwhile, we’ve got fantastic Labour councillors, canvassers, activists up and down the country, working hard and delivering for their constituencies, like mine in Hartlepool, facing local elections in the shadow of this absolute mess. They just need to get a grip

No one can look Starmer in the eye … and the Mandy saga is not going away | John Crace

This is the end, beautiful friend. It is the tragedy of almost all prime ministers that they are the last person to realise the game is up. Their race is run. The backbenchers are the first to know. They spend time in their constituencies

Britain’s military dependence on US ‘no longer tenable’, says former Nato chief

Britain’s high military dependence on the US is “no longer tenable” and the UK has to become increasingly independent of the special relationship with Washington, a former Nato chief has said.George Robertson, who last week accused British leaders of a “corrosive complacency” towards defence, said on Wednesday that the traditional allies were diverging over values – and that even after Donald Trump leaves the White House, the separation was likely to continue.Lord Robertson, a former Labour defence minister and Nato secretary general, highlighted Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran, his decision to levy tariffs on traditional allies and, “most jarringly”, he said, the threat to wrest Greenland from Denmark.“All of these illustrate a growing divergence between Westminster and Washington,” Robertson said at a seminar at the Chatham House thinktank.He said the diplomatic tone from the White House had “reached a historic low point” with Trump’s repeated public criticisms of the UK

How Olly Robbins’ knightly charm glossed over burning questions on Mandelson vetting

The verdict on Sir Olly Robbins’ parliamentary testimony, among fellow knights of the civil service realm at least, was unanimous. Mark Sedwill, a former cabinet secretary, called on the prime minister to “retract his accusations against Olly Robbins and reinstate him”.Sir Simon McDonald, who once held Robbins’ job as top civil servant in the Foreign Office, said if Keir Starmer had only waited to hear his evidence to the foreign affairs select committee he would never have sacked him.Even heavyweights in the media class seemed satisfied with Robbins’ decision to grant Peter Mandelson developed vetting clearance, and not tell Starmer he had done so against the advice of the official vetting agency. The former BBC journalist Jon Sopel declared while watching the evidence: “I am seeing the very best of the civil service