Sir Oliver Robbins’ testimony to the Foreign Affairs Committee was expected to be a dramatic second act in the Mandelson saga. Robbins revealed that No. 10 was dismissive of the vetting process and just wanted Mandelson appointed ASAP. He delivered this to the ‘purring’ Emily Thornberry, ‘more in sorrow than anger’, reports Madeline Grant for the Spectator. Indeed, much of the drama was absorbed and stifled by Robbins’ professional demeanour.
Some believe that the Starmer-Robbins quarrel is a symbol of No. 10’s dysfunction. Tim Shipman has quoted a number of anonymous sources from the civil service to point out Starmer’s ineptitude as Prime Minister: ‘it is worse than it was, even under the worst of Boris’, for example. Shipman says it was McSweeney who insisted on Mandelson – Starmer wanted George Osborne. ‘Just fucking approve him’ McSweeney demanded of Robbins’s predecessor, Philip Barton, though he denies this. Barton quit and was paid off (£260,000): Robbins stepped in and pushed the envelope. Have we learnt anything new? Much of it is nourishment for gossip within Westminster, yet we have known since the end of 2024 that there were problems between No.10 and the Civil Service.
This is all distracting from the actual actions of Starmer’s government. On Tuesday Rachel Reeves insisted that Britain ‘belongs’ in the EU. As we have seen for months, the flux of international politics is used as a justification for alignment which, Reeves says, ‘should be the default position unless there are reasons not to.’ There are plenty. But Reeves’ ‘reasons’ merely ratify Remainer vengeance. The Guardian provides its reasons in terms of electoral necessity – the Labour party must reverse Brexit in order that it claws back left-wing votes from the Greens and Lib Dems. The Telegraph claims that these are Reeves’ ‘most candid admission’ of wanting to reverse Brexit yet. Readers of BfB will know that this Labour government have been boiling this frog since they assumed office.
To be sure, Philip Rycroft, former Permanent Secretary at the Dept. for Exiting the EU (2017-2019, a contemporary of Robbins and other officials opposed to Brexit but charged with executing it), believes that Britain ought to rejoin the EU. His remarks are laden with the unargued dogma of all Remainers that ‘most economic analysis suggests that we have taken a significant hit to GDP as a result of leaving the single market.’ Like the Guardian (above) he sees the ‘political advantage’ for the Labour party. And like Reeves, he cites foreign affairs as cause for ‘looking to solidarity with our friends and neighbours in Europe to secure our defences.’ He is dismissive of Britain having its ‘unalloyed sovereignty’: ‘cold comfort in an uncertain and more hostile world.’ Oh, to live in servitude again! sounds the Remainer battle-cry. And their troops are rallying.
Blog
Weak UK productivity growth is not due to Brexit
A popular narrative is that recent weak UK growth performance is the result of a Brexit-induced slowdown in productivity growth. But the evidence does not support this. The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 began the productivity slowdown and soaring energy prices likely worsened it over the last few years. Despite these factors, recent slow UK productivity growth has still been stronger than that in the major EU economies.
Another Great British Defence Lie by Julian Lindley-French
Despite the government’s repeated claims, Britain’s armed forces are not war ready and the government is not in real terms spending more on defence than any other government for a generation. As Lord (George) Robertson has trenchantly stated, “We are under-insured. We are under-prepared. We are under attack”.
Do we live in a democracy? by Robert Tombs
Do we really live in a democracy? Our rulers seem to be scrambling to revert to a pre-democratic age. Our institutions, and government itself, are to be insulated from ‘populism’, which the philosopher John Gray has aptly defined as ‘a term liberals use to describe the political blow back against the social disruption that their policies have created.’ Plans to realign with the EU treat democracy with open disdain.
Media
Voters get the politicians they deserve – so get ready for PM Polanski by Rod Liddle for the Spectator
The Civil Service has many problems, but the worst is rudderless politicians by Charles Moore for the Daily Telegraph
The Mandelson-Starmer-Robbins Sideshow by James Alexander for the Daily Sceptic
Key Points
Mandelson-Starmer-Robbins
What is the meaning of the Mandelson saga? Starmer has awful judgement? Yawn. The Civil Service has abjured Cabinet Ministers of their responsibility? That’s been a standard bit in Dominic Cummings’s stand-up act for years. Mandelson was a high-risk appointment? What, he who was sacked from Blair’s government twice over for plainly abusing a position of authority?
The Mandelson saga has told us nothing new at all. It has, instead, reinforced a vague but strongly held impression that politicians are corrupt and act contrary to the national interest. See, for example, the Attorney General who is accused of pursuing British soldiers in a witch-hunt, on behalf of Iraqi claimants from 2008 to 2013. And political scientists and other sages wonder why they see ‘populism’ everywhere…
To adopt Shakespeare, the Robbins-Starmer media frenzy is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. It merely confirms what so many voters know instinctively to be true.
Reversing Brexit: the emergence of a political situation
At the highest level, politics is about situations. ‘Politicians’, the historian Maurice Cowling wrote, ‘understand as much as they need to of the situations in which they work.’ The situation Starmer finds himself in is one in which reversing Brexit has become plausible. How has this come to be?
The answer to this is both simple and complicated. Simple, because so many officials and Labour cabinet ministers were opposed to Brexit in the first place and see before them, amidst the sound and fury, something substantive at which to aim. Complicated, because the reasons for wanting to do so operate on different levels and have been contorted by circumstance and contingency.
Instinctively this Labour government was Remainer. But in Morgan McSweeney there was a barrier against realising this in policy: he took the electoral situation as it is, in terms of the referendum result, the existence of the Red Wall and the synthesis of both in the 2019 general election. McSweeney in some ways resembled Mandelson as a mover-and-shaker, caring little for Sir Humphrey and his procedures. He lasted from May 2024 to February 2026.
During that period, America bluntly stated its strategy of ‘Promoting European Greatness’ which involved turning its back on Europe to force it to ‘stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense.’ (National Security Strategy, Nov 2025, pp. 26, 27.)
With this in mind, the erosion of Starmer’s relations with Trump has taken shape. Starmer was clearly awkward around Trump because he was part of a Labour party that trained its dogs to attack him (eg, the old tweets of Lammy et al.). Trump, out of ancestral sentiment and a reverence for royalty, saw no reason to harm Britain or Starmer over petty tweets which are part and parcel of political life: c’est la vie politique. He even thought he was doing Starmer a favour by supporting Chagos. But where Trump wanted loyalty Starmer showed reluctance, and the kindly sentiments that clouded a blunt policy have evaporated.
Add to this the perception that the economy has been sluggish – consider the Strait of Hormuz, commitments to Ukraine, Covid debt, the welfare state and so on. But all such elements are subordinate to the First Cause of the Remainer creed: Brexit.
Despite being rigorously debunked, it is apparently unarguable that present economic damage is ultimately caused by Brexit. This would not matter if the Chancellor was not so receptive to such rhetoric. But, as we have seen, she has been gradually unveiling EU alignment as the centrepiece of her economic strategy. This week it has been stated more explicitly than before, but it was always there. To be sure, rejoining presents itself as salvation.
At a lower level, in by-elections and forthcoming local elections, it has been clear for a while that Starmer’s Labour party is running into the sand. Reform is painting the Red Wall teal, the Greens are taking the urban youth and anti-Israel votes, and the Lib Dems are maintaining those of the respectable progressive suburbs. (Not to mention the Welsh and Scottish nationalists.) The Guardian, in its wisdom, believes that pursuing a rejoin policy offers the party a way out of electoral oblivion.
All of these factors come together in Philip Rycroft’s case for rejoining. He regards Brexit as an experiment in living, which is also what pollsters are insinuating when they ask if ‘Brexit has been a ‘success’’. Brexit was always superficial to him, having meaning only in terms of material prosperity. It has no significance on any deeper level. (Thus you get a ‘non-Brexit Brexit’ as Lord Frost says.)
Sovereignty can be smugly dismissed as a ‘cold comfort’, rather than anything like the freedom to shape one’s destiny and face the world as it wishes. Rycroft does not believe in such a notion and sneers accordingly. Such an attitude impinges strongly on this government too.
What happens next? Would this government go behind the back of parliament and make agreements with Europe, presenting members with a fait accompli, like Heath in 1973, in spite of the electorate and its representatives?
The circumstances and the reasons for rejoining have become increasingly attractive and convincing. Rejoining promises salvation electorally and economically, as well as refuge in foreign affairs, for the Labour party and this administration.
And so, the situation now understood by the main actors is one in which the reversal of Brexit has become increasingly real and politically necessary.
Related