Olly Robbins launches attack on Keir Starmer like a man with nothing to lose
The one-time top civil servant in the Foreign Office has said Downing Street put huge pressure on his staff to back Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US Ambassador.
Sir Olly Robbins was sacked last week amid revelations the ex-Labour grandee was given the all-clear to take the post despite concerns from the government’s vetting agency.
Speaking to the Foreign Affairs committee his morning, he said there was a ‘very strong expectation’ from No 10 that Mandelson should be ‘in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible.’
He made the comments as Sir Keir Starmer has faced new scrutiny over his decision to hand the former peer – a close friend of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – the top role in British diplomacy.
No 10 has blamed that situation on figures in the Foreign Office who gave Starmer’s pick the green light without mentioning the vetting issues.
Giving evidence at the Foreign Affairs Committee this morning, he told MPs: ‘I walked into a situation in which there was already a very very strong expectation […] coming from No 10 that he needed to be in America and in post as quickly as humanly possible.
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‘The very first formal communication of this to my predecessor from No 10 private office being that they wanted all this done at pace and Mandelson in post before [President Trump’s inauguration.]
‘I’m afraid what that translated into for my team in the Foreign Office, and certainly the handover briefing I was getting as I arrived at post, was what I felt was a generally dismissive attitude to his vetting clearance.
‘The focus was on getting Mandelson out to Washington quickly. Despite this atmosphere, an atmosphere of pressure, the Department completed developed vetting to the normal high standard because the vetting process is not there to determine fitness for office or reputational risk, it is there to protect national security.’
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