{"id":30771,"date":"2026-04-18T00:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T00:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/30771\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T00:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T00:41:18","slug":"keir-starmer-threw-olly-robbins-under-the-bus-in-wake-of-mandelson-vetting-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/30771\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer \u2018threw Olly Robbins under the bus\u2019 in wake of Mandelson vetting row"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former deputy cabinet secretary has said the prime minister<\/a> threw Olly Robbins<\/a> \u201cunder the bus\u201d in the wake of the Lord Peter Mandelson<\/a>\u2019s vetting revelations.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir Starmer<\/a> fired the Foreign Office<\/a>\u2019s most senior civil servant after it was revealed that the department overruled security vetting for Lord Mandelson<\/a>‘s appointment as UK ambassador to the US.<\/p>\n

Downing Street<\/a> is attempting to claim that Sir Keir <\/a>was only made aware of the issue this week when documents detailing his appointment came to light.<\/p>\n

The prime minister has said it was \u201cstaggering\u201d and \u201cunforgivable\u201d that he had not been told earlier, adding he was “furious”.<\/p>\n

However, the Independent revealed on 11 September last year<\/a> that MI6 had failed to clear the then-Labour<\/a> peer, largely because of concerns over his business links to China.<\/p>\n

\"Sir<\/p>\n

Sir Olly Robbins has been sacked as the Foreign Office\u2019s top civil servant (PA Wire)<\/p>\n

Those concerns were put to No10, but the then-director of communications, Tim Allan, insisted: \u201cVetting done by FCDO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] in normal way\u201d.<\/p>\n

The former top civil servant has been formally asked to give evidence on the vetting of Lord Mandelson next week.<\/p>\n

He previously told a Commons committee it was \u201cclear that the prime minister wanted to make this appointment himself\u201d. In the grilling in November, Sir Olly said he said he understood that Sir Keir \u201ctook advice and formed a view himself, and we then acted on that view\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Former Deputy Cabinet Secretary, Helen MacNamara, and former Deputy Chief of Staff to Boris Johnson, Cleo Watson, speak about the PM\u2019s decision to sack the Foreign Office\u2019s most senior civil servant ((In The Room\/Sarah Brick\/PA))<\/p>\n

Helen MacNamara, a former deputy cabinet secretary and co-host of The Independent\u2019s politics podcast In The Room, <\/a>spoke about the topic in an exclusive clip <\/a>and said that Sir Olly was \u201cfollowing [the PM\u2019s] judgement\u201d.<\/p>\n

Helen and Cleo have already examined the PM\u2019s obsession with \u2018process\u2019 in relation to Mr Mandelson<\/a> and spent an episode painfully combing through the first Mandelson tranche<\/a> in previous episodes.<\/p>\n

On Robbins, MacNamara said: \u201cSome of the time, what you are doing as a very senior civil servant is deciding to take the risk onto yourself rather than pass everything up the chain. Sometimes you’re saying that the right thing to do here is, I will not say this to the prime minister in all of the detail. I will take responsibility for holding some of this information myself because that is the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this can happen to Ollie Robbins with all of his skills, all of his ability, all of the things that he actually offers to the country day in, day out, and yet still, he’s somehow being fired for the prime minister’s misjudgment, then what signal does that send to everybody else?<\/p>\n

She criticised the prime minister for axing Sir Olly, calling it a \u201creactive\u201d and a \u201cthrowing under the bus\u201d.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cLet Olly explain in public actually what he’s done and what he’s not done. And then you can make a judgment.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing exactly what the prime minister wanted him to do last January on the basis of information that the prime minister was aware of, because even by the standards, if that’s the case, that’s totally unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch Helen and Cleo\u2019s full reaction here<\/a><\/p>\n

Former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara and ex-No 10 special advisor Cleo Watson are the co-hosts of The Independent\u2019s politics podcast, In the Room<\/a>. New episodes drop every Friday. Listen on Apple Podcasts<\/a> and Spotify<\/a>, or watch on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former deputy cabinet secretary has said the prime minister threw Olly Robbins \u201cunder the bus\u201d in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[126],"tags":[20950,20951,20953,6103,20954,264,20949,6102,381,20952,4766],"class_list":["post-30771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-keir-starmer","tag-cabinet-secretary","tag-civil-servant","tag-cleo-watson","tag-foreign-office","tag-helen-macnamara","tag-keir-starmer","tag-olly-robbins","tag-peter-mandelson","tag-prime-minister","tag-senior-civil-servant","tag-sir-keir"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116422933686830659","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}