Has the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer been undermined by former top official? — BBC Newscast

[0:00] chris i've come to westminster to wish you happy birthday in person oh thank you welcome and i've [0:04] brought welcome back okay oh this is terrific so not only are we in this episode back in the [0:11] back in the original home of newscast and indeed brexit cast cake returns cake returns [0:18] where's catcher and laura central plank of the pod in its in its uh in its early years [0:23] can i cut a slice please do um it's chocolate and pistachio that's so very very fashionable [0:29] flavor is that right it's pistachios so in right now in fact i think it's maybe post in i think [0:34] it's a bit too ubiquitous now how is it can i recommend though you don't you don't eat any now [0:39] okay wait till we've done the podcast then you can eat some fair enough this is a test of willpower for [0:43] the next half an hour some people react quite badly to hearing other people eating well there is that [0:48] i'm just staring at quite a thick layer of pistachio also because i've been sitting here for a couple [0:53] of minutes waiting for you to arrive no i'm not criticizing obviously um and the smell of the [0:58] icing was just like so it's going to be quite hard for you to oh yeah yeah to concentrate and [1:04] there's a lot to concentrate on in this episode of newscast because we're going to talk about ollie [1:07] robbins sir ollie robbins appearing in front of parliament to talk about lord mandelson's vetting [1:12] when he was made ambassador to washington hello it's adam in the newscast studio at westminster [1:18] are they breadcrumbs on the top of this cake no they're crushed up bits of pistachio have you [1:21] never seen a pistachio so what's the layered bit in the middle pistachio cream i think oh i see right [1:26] okay i assumed i assumed the top stuff was something else i mean detail's been a bit of a theme today [1:30] isn't it um insufficiently curious so goes the allegation in various directions probably mine [1:37] as well uh it's chris at westminster uh so we're going to be talking about the big event that [1:42] happened at westminster on tuesday morning which was sir ollie robbins former permanent secretary of [1:46] the foreign commonwealth and development office appearing at the foreign affairs select committee [1:50] chaired by dame emily thornbury who were quizzing him on what he knew about the vetting process [1:56] when peter mandelston was getting ready to go to washington um before we dive into the details [2:01] of the hearing which was really gripping to watch it was one of those ones that will kind of go down [2:06] in history as a as a dramatic select committee to watch let's remind people who ollie robbins is [2:11] yeah so he was the most senior civil servant in the foreign office he'd been doing the job since [2:18] january of last year and that's important in the timeline as we'll as we'll get to and we've [2:23] reflected on in uh recent episodes uh he used to be the most senior civil servant in dex eu the [2:31] department for leaving the uh european union which you might remember from the brexit cast uh era [2:37] and had previously rattled around in other civil service jobs i think he was second permanent secretary [2:41] at the home office he'd been deputy national security advisor yeah so he has been in and around [2:46] government in the civil service sort of on and off principally on uh for years and years [2:52] and years and was doing until a matter of days ago one of the most senior jobs in the british civil [2:58] service right let's dive into this hearing which lasted for was it about two hours more than that [3:03] about two and a half yeah yeah well i mean it flew by though because it was it was like watching a film [3:07] unfold um and actually there was a debate afterwards in the house of commons where a conservative [3:11] backbencher compared it to a few good men oh right that um film with tom cruise anyway we'll come on [3:17] to that later um yeah so the start of this hearing very much was ollie robbins leaning into what had [3:22] been happening in the build-up to both his arrival at the foreign office and the process of peter [3:28] mandelson's appointment and we'll play a big chunk of what he explained about the context that he walked [3:33] into his office too when i walked into post as permanent under secretary on the 20th of january [3:40] last year i wasn't walking into a vacuum um i arrived to a situation in which um due diligence report [3:49] had been undertaken into mandelson uh by the cabinet office uh assessing the reputational risks and his [3:56] fitness for office um the prime minister had then presumably taken advice on his fitness for office [4:02] uh the name had been submitted to the king as minister's uh recommendation the prime minister [4:08] had made an announcement uh that uh mandelson was his nominee without caveats uh the british government [4:15] had sought agreement the formal diplomatic process for a host government accepting a nominee from the u.s [4:21] government and that had been obtained before i arrived in post he'd been given access to the [4:28] building he'd been given access to low classification i.t and from time to time for case specific issues [4:37] he was being given access to higher classification briefing so i'm afraid i walked into a situation in [4:44] which um there was already a very very strong expectation and you would have seen the papers [4:50] released already under the humble address uh that coming from number 10 that he needed to be in post [4:57] and in america as quickly as humanly possible now none of that is new information but what was going [5:04] on there well beyond our good friend agremont that featured there which is the the sort of posh [5:09] diplomatic speak for a the country that will be hosting an arriving diplomat being accepted as that [5:16] country's um ambassador um the point there is ollie robbins saying painstakingly look by the time i [5:27] turned up because he arrived in january of 2025 lord mandelson was effectively at departures at [5:33] heathrow airport suitcase in his hand and plane ticket you know between his teeth that was the [5:40] gist of it and saying look this was done it wasn't just the will of the government although it was [5:46] it was done he was going that was that and this was before the developed vetting process which has [5:52] become so central had happened indeed so so or concluded what's going on in the background exactly [5:57] it is before it concluded that the will of the government was very clear of course it is the [6:01] role of the civil service to deliver on the will of the government and then on top of that was the [6:08] argument that we expected ollie robbins to make which was that this developed vetting process which [6:17] in his career he's been around or about a lot um the in his view the central tenet of this process [6:26] is one of confidentiality is one of respecting the fact that if you're going to ask loads of people [6:31] who come into work for the government that they're going to have this incredibly intrusive [6:35] set of interviews that's going to crawl over all sorts of aspects of their lives um that there has to be [6:42] a recognition for those who are willing to sign up to do it that the detailed information won't go [6:47] beyond the person they share it within the interview even if the conclusions of that crawl all over their [6:54] life clearly does inform the system as to whether or not they get the job and that's the crux of the [7:01] argument that he makes ollie robbins makes which is that he was right not to be sharing this process and [7:10] what he knew about it with the prime minister and which the prime minister thinks categorically he [7:14] was wrong about and i suppose the other implication of of what ollie robbins said there in that big clip [7:20] that we just played is that yeah the actual outcome of the vetting process was not central to the [7:26] appointment of lord mandelson but yet it has become central in the prime minister and downing street and [7:32] the government's case for why ollie robbins was dismissed so he was sort of in a very elegant civil [7:38] service way without actually pointing any fingers saying what you're hearing from downing street is [7:43] is is wrong well the the essence for me the standout thing in all of the testimony was ollie robbins [7:50] effectively saying these are my words not his but the essence of it was downing street might be banging [7:55] on about the importance of vetting now but they weren't then so he talked about for instance his claim [8:01] that there was a live conversation going on about whether he even needed vetting uh lord mandelson that [8:07] there was oh yes because their the cabinet office was in his telling was saying do we even really [8:12] need to get this guy vetted and the foreign office was pushing back saying well no the proper thing to [8:16] do is do the vetting darren jones the chief secretary of the prime minister has offered an alternative [8:21] uh recollection of events around all of that but yeah that was um ollie robbins's uh testimony around [8:28] that he also talked about how the you know in the foreign offices phones never stopped ringing during [8:33] this process with folk in downing street saying is it is it finished yet now the argument i've heard [8:39] from people in downing street is look it's totally normal that private offices will chase things they [8:43] need sourcing from other private offices that doesn't mean you're asking them to rush it's [8:46] just you're emphasizing that it is an important thing that needs doing pretty quickly and of course [8:51] remember the context of the timing the context of the timing is that at the tail end of january [8:57] 2025 was the inauguration of president trump into his second term the whole point of sending out [9:03] lord mandelson is that he was seen to be the perfect candidate for charming the trump administration and [9:09] of course you want him there pronto because president trump's about to start and that issue of how much [9:15] pressure was being put on the foreign office came to a head in this exchange where an mp on the committee [9:21] is asking ollie robbins about a phone call he might have received and then emily thornbury the chair of [9:27] the committee intervenes to clarify that it was quite a sweary phone call so i'm obliged to tell you [9:33] that there is some very strong language in this little bit of audio we're going to hear from today's [9:38] committee it is reported by i think sam coats that the uh morgan mcsweeney the chief of staff rang sir [9:46] philip uh and said in terms stronger than those that i can use before the watershed i think you should [9:53] well i i'll just say that it was just to prove it with a with um terms stronger than that does that [10:00] accord with your impression approve it does it accord with your impression when you took over from sir [10:07] philip well yes i mean that that gets to the crux of the argument not expressed in that language [10:18] that broadly speaking sorry robbins was making which was that the vibe at the time was not only [10:24] is this as this appointment happened sort out the paperwork and let's get this guy on on his way but [10:30] crucially so newscasters understand the subtleties here and there's a lot of subtleties sir ollie was [10:37] not saying that that pressure or that desire to get on with it had any bearing on the judgment he came to [10:45] when the security vetting process concluded and he was briefed verbally and he didn't see any [10:54] paperwork he certainly didn't see the paperwork the government has since published a kind of pro [10:58] former version of around what the security vetters had concluded well yeah let's take that apart a bit [11:04] because that was that was the next bit i wanted to get on which is the whole sort of tussle over [11:08] paperwork so at the end of last week um you were telling us about how we'd seen this this template [11:15] for the the vetting organization uk sv uses that their officers use and there's red amber and green [11:22] for whether somebody can get their security clearance or not and we were told that in this case or it's [11:28] been reported in this case that basically all the red boxes that could be ticked on a vetting form had [11:33] been ticked for lord mandelson maybe they had a cross put in them we don't know um but ollie robbins [11:38] was saying he never even saw that document that has the tick boxes in it yeah two subtleties here to [11:43] to get across one is exactly that the argument that he says he didn't he didn't see them secondly that [11:50] that tick box uh of the traffic lights coming from uk security vetting is not the verdict if you like [11:58] it is the recommendation and then the foreign office come to a decision but clearly there is a [12:05] distinction between red boxes ticked and the the guy who used to as a civil servant at least run the [12:12] foreign office saying i have never in my career seen this paperwork before and then on top of that [12:20] his view that when he'd been briefed about the conclusions of lord mandelson's developed vetting [12:27] that conclusion amounted to a leaning from the vetters towards a recommendation of rejection [12:36] rather than as the government says it that it was those ticked red boxes yes this new phrase that's [12:42] entered our lexicon which was the recommendation was borderline but leaning towards denial and i'm just [12:47] looking at that cake thinking oh whether i want that cake right now is borderline but i'm leaning towards [12:52] having it yeah whereas i'm saying which is a beautifully ambiguous way of saying did you have the cake [12:57] or not well completely whereas i'm saying i'm definitely having a a slice which is kind of [13:01] where the government's view is on what it has seen in terms of the ticking of those um of those red [13:08] boxes and it's there is a there's a contradiction there there's a how do those things how can those [13:14] things possibly align now could it be that with hindsight neither side was sufficiently curious [13:22] so was ollie robbins poorly briefed about what was really in those documents that he acknowledges [13:29] he's never seen would have been helpful for ollie robbins to not know everything that was in the [13:35] vetting files either from a point of view of his responsibilities when it comes to the law and the [13:39] secrecy of the files or if he was having to do a job that he was being encouraged to do under a lot of [13:46] pressure does the absence or his him not seeing the documents or indeed knowing that red boxes had [13:53] been ticked actually have any bearing on the conclusion he would have come to if he believes [13:58] having been briefed about the necessary mitigations that had caused those red box ticks was something [14:04] that he could work around perhaps he would have still come to that same conclusion and the impression [14:11] left from all of soroli's testimony is irrespective of how those boxes that have been ticked he would [14:17] have taken one heck of a lot of persuading and frankly didn't sound remotely persuadable that he [14:23] would have communicated the specifics of that uh to downing street he did say though as somebody who's [14:30] who'd overseen a lot of these vetting processes before that he had in the past on being presented with the [14:38] vetters recommendations rejected vetting and in others where uh perhaps there'd been a a suggestion [14:46] that it was fine that he'd come to perhaps a a more robust uh view but in this instance he felt it [14:54] you know it could be worked with and so that was what he suggested and i suppose the whole point he [14:59] was getting at in that section of the questioning was to rebut this allegation that he'd known something [15:05] and concealed it from everyone else he was saying there was there wasn't the thing to know that [15:10] could be concealed yeah so he repeatedly said that there'd been a misunderstanding of this [15:16] whole process when people had said lord mandelton had failed his vetting and there's two layers to [15:20] that from in soroli's telling of it one is the argument that says the vetters said lord mandelton's [15:27] failed well it's not really that they are recommending that clearance shouldn't be granted they are not [15:33] the judge and jury so that's point one and then secondly of course is this point that in his [15:39] understanding because of how he was briefed it wasn't it wasn't a red box he'd never even heard [15:44] of these red boxes and it was more subtle and nuanced than that although he got a bit of heat [15:48] from from emily thornberry and the chair and some of the other committee members because actually he [15:52] couldn't provide a lot of evidence for these big assertions he was making both about the pressure or the [16:00] dismissive attitude of downing street and the cabinet office towards the need for vetting in the [16:03] first place or this conversation he'd had with his security guy where they were discussing the outcome of [16:10] this vetting process he there's not a lot of receipts there's not a lot of emails there's not a lot of [16:15] minutes there's not a lot of faxes there's not a lot of text messages that back up those big things [16:20] he was saying no and not that we've seen today no and then there is an argument around whether or not that is [16:25] legitimate because you've got to be very discreet around paper trails electronic or physical around [16:30] this stuff for all the reasons that uh soroli was making in the broader in the broader round or does [16:37] that to a cynic add up to being convenience that that kind of stuff is um is not there but you know we [16:45] were left with that i think a sense as a viewer of a senior former now senior civil servant sort of [16:53] mesmerized perplexed and discombobulated by how these last few days have uh played out he even [17:00] said i'm struggling to come to terms or get to the bottom of what actually happened yes and and managed [17:05] sort of gallows humor when the umpteenth mp thanked him for his time and he said his diary was empty [17:11] you know there was there was no there was no uh pressure on his time i was intrigued though that he [17:15] he did acknowledge that later in the process of the if process is the right word the sort of [17:21] spectacular unravelling if you like of lord mandelson's time in washington and everything [17:25] we've since learned he did say he had sought from the bowels of government a greater sense [17:31] of what was what was in oh yeah he tried to get his hands on it and at that point the system said no [17:38] now on the one hand that i suppose you could say burnishes his argument that the system is very careful [17:43] around this sort of stuff but then it also suggests that at that point he realized he could be more [17:49] curious than he was willing to be earlier true my main takeaway from that though was him having a [17:55] pop at the cabinet office who owned the whole vetting system and they were the ones in his telling [18:01] saying no you need a really good national security reason to be able to see these files in other words [18:06] no you're not seeing them i also which backs up his point about how how secret these things are meant [18:11] to be even from the people making the decisions i also hear frustration from supporters of the prime [18:15] minister who uh confronted by uh the humble address this desire that loads of this stuff is published [18:22] because that's what parliament has determined uh that the whole system is grinding away really slowly [18:28] you know if you're the prime minister publishing all of this stuff is clearly awkward but your best [18:32] case scenario is you just get it all out in one go um now clearly there are reasons why it takes time [18:38] because there's a gazillion documents and the uh intelligence and security committee needs to take [18:44] a look at them to see if there's any national national security considerations in publishing [18:48] stuff etc etc but from the government's perspective and this is still the reality there's these deluges [18:53] still to come where you and i on newscasts and plenty of others are talking about lord mandelson [18:58] which they would be desperate for us to talk about almost anything else and also just in terms of [19:03] things coming out into the public domain right at the end there was i know i keep using the word [19:08] dramatic there was quite a dramatic bit where soroli robbins said oh the fact that this information [19:14] leaked to a newspaper and has now been reported he said that was a grave breach of national security and [19:19] that maybe somebody needs to be prosecuted for that information getting out there which i thought was [19:24] again a very very strong criticism implied of the cabinet office and the people that are running that [19:30] organization yes and with with the the clear view from someone steeped in this world that and again [19:38] these are my words not his but that this wasn't your typical political leak where a journalist gets a [19:45] early heads up on some policy coming out of such and such department because it might be the interest [19:50] of somebody to scupper it or whatever i mean it kind of it was that up to a point but the subject matter [19:57] being something that in his view puts on a totally different uh level and then of course you know [20:02] in in in the from downing street's perspective in attempting to defend themselves they've put out in [20:08] public all sorts of stuff but who knows whether it would have come out via the humble address it might [20:12] have done um but maybe it wouldn't and irrespective of how it's made its way into the public domain it is [20:18] there and in his view um would be better off not be i i i wonder if a skeptic might say in counter to that [20:25] that that the very nature of the instincts and mentality of someone in in his formerly in his [20:32] position would be to would be to uh not necessarily be wildly keen on all this stuff seeing the light [20:39] of day one other thing was to remember which i thought was really interesting in the context of [20:42] this because you might imagine someone in his position his former position would be super averse to [20:48] any risk and he said very strikingly i thought um look all this vetting stuff is really important [20:56] and the reason it's important is we have to attract people into public life or into working for the [21:02] government it's often not public in the in the outward sense but to working for the government who [21:07] have had interesting lives who have had business careers who've had associations with this country or [21:12] that country and also whose lives and circumstances change and you've got to accommodate that a change and [21:17] a complicated and all the rest of it because if you don't do that and again my words not his but [21:22] the sentiment very much is you end up with a very narrow gene pool in government and that is not in [21:27] the interests of the wider state right let's talk about the uh the westminster bombshell that was [21:32] detonated sort of halfway through yes um and this was in involves someone called lord doyle matthew doyle [21:40] um who used to be keir sommer's director of communications in opposition and then went into number [21:44] town with him as like the top comms guy in downing street this is how lord doyle's name came up in [21:51] the committee and it was in the context of ollie robbins being asked by another mp on the committee [21:58] has this happened with anyone else was there an idea of another political appointee to an [22:03] ambassadorship somewhere in the world i think in my tenure as permanent under secretary there was only ever [22:09] one other uh serious proposal um made and i think that was in march 2025 um sorry what role there were [22:21] several discussions initiated by number 10 with me about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity [22:29] for matthew doyle who was then the prime minister's director of communications um and the uh the i was under [22:37] strict instruction not to discuss that with the then foreign secretary which was uncomfortable [22:44] i mean there were about 10 things in that one answer that just make your eyebrows shoot up and [22:49] actually even hearing it for about the 14th time today i'm still kind of quite surprised yeah you're [22:55] speechless yeah um what yeah that was my reaction and i know this can sound very westminster very beltway [23:04] very sw one but uh yeah i could i i could not believe that um and you know it let's unpack it a bit [23:15] so a conversation is had between number 10 and the guy on the civil service side who leads the [23:21] which you know what let's let's do this like an old gcse english parsing exercise oh yeah okay there [23:26] were several discussions initiated by number 10. so several discussions it wasn't just like a chat [23:31] in the pub by oh should we hire this guy it was there was a thing going on here yeah then there's talk [23:37] and there were discussions with him so that with the with the permanent secretary with the permanent [23:40] under secretary um then they're about to do the parsing you've got the verbatim quotes in [23:46] front of you but the heads of mission that means being an ambassador yeah that means being the chief [23:52] british diplomat in a particular country yeah um not like a trade envoy who goes on a couple of trips [23:58] a year and has a nice time or not some kind of minister job in the lords that involves some foreign [24:04] travel but yeah going and being our man in and then sir ollie very gently puts it that it leaves him [24:09] uncomfortable uh which we can you know that that translates as a guy who runs a department full of [24:16] diplomats is horrified that he might have to explain to those diplomats that he's finding a job for a [24:21] comms guy getting some bauble if you like on the diplomatic chess board or not not just a bauble but [24:29] maybe a nice convenient excuse to move them out of downing street well exactly which subsequently uh [24:36] happened oh and by the way don't tell the foreign secretary at that point was david lammy which in [24:41] itself is extraordinary now let's unpack a little bit of this um because uh lord doyle has uh i've [24:47] been in touch with him he's put out a statement he said it was the first he'd heard of it today [24:53] so his phone goes bonkers um now he has worked in foreign affairs before he worked for tony blair when [25:01] tony blair was doing his middle east role he worked for david lammy and the international rescue [25:07] committee but it's still it's still you know it would still be uh quite the thing and of course [25:13] you know from labour mp's perspective it just leaves the impression of this center of government [25:17] trying to find jobs for itself and and sort of farm people out in different directions now it's not [25:23] unprecedented that people in public life switch from one specialism to another etc etc but i mean crikey it's um [25:30] it's quite the thing and the twist no go ahead and the twist here is that lord doyle who was then [25:37] the director of communications but was effectively got rid of this this it would appear was the system [25:45] aware of the fact that he was going to be got rid of trying to find an alternative birth for him i think [25:51] he made it you know he was more keen on staying within domestic politics he ended up in the house of [25:56] lords as a labour peer but not for very long because he was then suspended from the parliamentary [26:02] labour party after it emerged he'd campaigned for a friend to become a councillor who'd been charged [26:07] with child sexual abuse offenses and that friend was later convicted so um yeah i mean what a twist [26:15] and turn it's just quite incredible um you know all within the last 12 months or so all of that and so [26:21] then this was followed by a debate staged in the house of commons by the conservatives because they it [26:27] was one of those days where the opposition has control of the order paper for a couple of hours [26:30] uh i would say there was a lot of sound a lot of fury it didn't signify very much for example they [26:37] didn't manage to pull off what they did last time with the humble address which was start a process [26:41] that ended up being really damaging for the government it was much more of a a talking shop [26:46] yeah so three hours of conversation i think the conservatives are proud that they have shifted [26:50] the dial on all of this stuff i mean not least the humble address and all all of that uh which um which [26:56] they uh brought about um david cameron you know has been doing a lot of advising of kemi badenock [27:01] recently both in the context of what we saw yesterday in specifics but i also hear in terms of [27:08] prime minister's questions prep and uh and all that kind of stuff which i think is just kind of [27:12] one to watch uh you know does he does he fancy getting a bit more involved in public life i don't know [27:18] what another comeback well you know who knows but he's certainly he is an influential voice around [27:24] kemi badenock and they and they oh and also his old chief of staff ed llewellyn was the last political [27:29] appointee made as an ambassador so there you go there's the there's the symmetry and the symmetry [27:34] of today's news although everyone loved that appointment no one complains about that and he's [27:38] and he's still a still in rome and he's a former diplomat as well so that's what he did before [27:43] yes yeah anyway i saw i've diverted you so yeah there's nothing the conservatives are pretty proud [27:47] of how they've played this and it's not the end of it i mean there's pmqs on wednesday i wonder if in [27:53] this iteration of this story that began last thursday and as we record it's tuesday night might be [27:59] might be on its downward turn in terms of diminishing returns but we've still got this next [28:05] tranche dollop deluge of documents to come in the coming weeks do they come before or after the [28:11] elections let's see probably after but i don't know let's see um which means we'll go around this [28:18] block all over again and is that then it of the deluge let's see again i think at the end of today [28:26] a few things um ollie robbins sort of was insinuating that maybe he's going to take legal action against [28:33] the government i mean he didn't say that but so there's then a process there and remember when [28:38] lord mandelson was fired in the first place he then got like tens of thousands of pounds [28:43] yeah i think it's pretty likely a significant payoff is going to come his way um what are the [28:48] consequences of just this horrible atmosphere between the government and the civil service now [28:53] i think that's really interesting so yesterday you had a handful of retired or former senior civil [28:58] servants watching down from the house of commons gallery and you just got that sense of [29:02] yeah where's that you know if you're a civil servant a senior civil servants or a more junior civil [29:06] servant at the moment and you see what's happened i mean that's you know and you're turning up for [29:14] work every day to serve a government which is your duty yeah that that's tricky that is and i think it [29:19] explains why those in downing street have been going out of their way recently to heap praise [29:26] on those civil servants um including cat little in the cabinet office who have been shepherding this [29:32] process around the humble address to talk about which is how this whole thing came to the [29:37] prime minister's attention a week ago to try and emphasize that in their view that is how [29:41] the civil service should work around the sensitivities of these um of these documents [29:46] downing street you know are having a hearty crack at saying that today the ollie robbins testimony [29:51] vindicates their big picture position and to be fair to downing street there was a whole load of things [29:58] being said um uh just under a week ago now around the prime minister lying and he must have known all [30:04] along and all that kind of stuff and you know downing street's argument is not only as the prime minister [30:09] said he didn't know ollie robbins testimony vindicates that because he says no he i didn't tell him [30:16] because i shouldn't have told him the thing is from downing street's perspective i i think you know when [30:21] you reflect on those two and a half hours modestly expressed you had a guy who was gently suggesting [30:29] that the accounts that we've heard from the prime minister are not the whole reality that his reaction [30:38] reactions in sacking him were unjust and out of proportion and unfair now somebody who loses their job [30:46] perhaps would say that wouldn't they but that's not an ideal position for a prime minister to be [30:52] uh to be in at all and my last last thought on this is watching ed miliband the energy secretary [30:58] who's doing the morning round this morning chatting to all the broadcasters and he's got and he's got a [31:02] very interesting policy actually today about about energy prices which maybe we'll go into one year [31:07] um if there's stopping scandals that distract us from it um and he basically had this whole sort of like [31:13] world weary thing of all the journalists were rightfully asking him questions about who knew [31:18] what when what is this real about the government and he was just sort of at the end of every [31:21] interview just going yeah you know what but i've got nothing more to say it was a bad decision it was [31:26] bad judgment bad for the government bad for the country which has never happened you sort of realize [31:31] this whole story that the scandal cycle has got a bit scrambled in that that would be normally the full [31:38] stop to the scandal a government going we've really mucked up here we're sorry this has been [31:43] a disaster for us that's what you would do once everything had come out you've been accused of [31:48] everything under the sun unfortunately for this government from their point of view that's what they [31:51] did first yeah and then all the stuff came out after that and so it means that what do you do when [31:57] your full stop is at the start of the sentence rather than the end you've got nowhere else to go [32:00] and i thought i thought ed milliband this morning as well particularly in his interview with sky news [32:05] was willing to say because the government and the prime minister now acknowledge that this was a [32:10] spectacular catastrophic error of judgment to appoint lord manderson you know ed milliband was willing [32:15] to say uh because it's his authentic view and we've known his skepticism about lord manderson going [32:20] by 15 years to when he became the leader of the labour party um that he feared at the at the point [32:25] of appointment of lord manderson that it might go wrong um and he said and so did david lammy [32:33] which again is articulating in public some of those conversations that were going on beforehand [32:38] saying to downing street are you blooming sure and of course they were and they've been reaping [32:44] the consequences of it ever since right chris good to catch up happy birthday thank you very much have [32:49] we got some agreement that we're gonna have a slice of cake yes i think we have i think we have look at [32:54] this what was it pistachio and chocolate and it has been massively distracting me this whole look [32:58] at the integrity of that holding up this is like a really cheap version of bake-off right that's all [33:04] for newscast we'll be back with another episode very soon bye-bye great crumb structure but no soggy bottom