{"id":18923,"date":"2026-04-21T17:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/18923\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:30:10","slug":"7-takeaways-from-olly-robbins-evidence-on-the-peter-mandelson-vetting-saga-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/18923\/","title":{"rendered":"7 takeaways from Olly Robbins\u2019 evidence on the Peter Mandelson vetting saga \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is particularly wounding for Starmer because Doyle, like Mandelson, has since been embroiled in a scandal over his past association with a pedophile. (Mandelson resigned over the depth of his friendship with the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in September, while Doyle campaigned in 2017 for a friend who had been charged with child sex offenses, and was later convicted.)<\/p>\n<p>It was in March 2025, when Robbins was making large numbers of career civil servants redundant in a restructure. He told MPs he was \u201cunder strict instruction\u201d from No. 10\u2019s private office not to discuss the offer with then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy. \u201cI felt quite uncomfortable about it and I kept giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the office, and was hard for me personally to defend,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know what the origin of the suggestion was, and I don\u2019t know who exactly was behind it or how serious it was,\u201d he went on. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2271325217-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8309345\"  \/>David Lammy speaks to reporters before a \u201cMeeting in Defence of Democracy,\u201d a gathering of leftist leaders seeking to rally against the threat to democracy from the far right in Barcelona on April 18, 2026. | Oscar Del Pozo\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Doyle said after Robbins\u2019 testimony that he had been unaware of any such discussion. \u201cI have never sought any Head of Mission, Ambassador or any equivalent leadership-type posting,\u201d he said in a statement Tuesday. \u201cI was never aware of anyone speaking to the FCDO about such a role for me. My desire after leaving No10 was to stay in UK politics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Robbins aimed several other jibes at the PM, albeit in diplomatic language. He sought to correct Starmer\u2019s insistence that Mandelson \u201cfailed\u201d vetting, saying it was not that binary. \u201cApologies, chair, but others have [said it],\u201d said Robbins pointedly.<\/p>\n<p>He appeared to insinuate that someone in No. 10 leaked the vetting row to a newspaper. \u201cThe first I heard of this deep concern and briefing of it to the prime minister was only really hours before it appeared in The Guardian,\u201d he said, with pursed lips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is particularly wounding for Starmer because Doyle, like Mandelson, has since been embroiled in a scandal over&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8360,4804,255,7334,8680,640,361,8681,597,8682,94,186,8683,2739,185,5035,7388,460,593,8361,2468,5,6,461,4806],"class_list":{"0":"post-18923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-antonia-romeo","9":"tag-career","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-communications","12":"tag-david-lammy","13":"tag-department","14":"tag-donald-trump","15":"tag-emily-thornberry","16":"tag-intelligence","17":"tag-intelligence-services","18":"tag-keir-starmer","19":"tag-kemi-badenoch","20":"tag-lobbying","21":"tag-missions","22":"tag-parliament","23":"tag-peter-mandelson","24":"tag-produce","25":"tag-security","26":"tag-services","27":"tag-simon-case","28":"tag-skills","29":"tag-uk","30":"tag-united-kingdom","31":"tag-united-states","32":"tag-water"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116443887896384721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}