Starmer relies on fed-up but not mutinous MPs

Judgement day looks survivable for the Prime Minister

In written evidence yesterday evening, the former head of security at the Foreign Office, Ian Collard, concurred with Olly Robbins about pressure from No 10 to approve Mandelson and corroborated the rest of Robbins’s account.

Today there are two appearances before the FAC. As I write, Philip Barton, former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, is before the committee. In the first few minutes of his appearance, he revealed that it was not his decision to leave the department in January 2025 in the middle of the Mandelson vetting, but that David Lammy, then foreign secretary, had wanted someone else in the job, and so he stepped down. He also confirmed Robbins’s claim that the cabinet office did not think any vetting of Mandelson was necessary.

Later today there is also the appearance of Morgan McSweeney, which I suspect will be superficially but not substantially interesting, as the public get a full audio-visual look at a backroom adviser about whom so much was written when he was serving as No 10 chief of staff. McSweeney is expected to deny making expletive-laden demands of civil servants, despite reports, and has already said: “I find it strange reading about a character with the same name as mine sometimes.”

Meanwhile, after a heavy-duty campaign from No 10 to shore up support in the PLP, it looks like no significant number of Labour MPs will abstain or vote for the Tory push for a privileges committee inquiry later today, and Kemi Badenoch’s scheme will therefore fail.

Today may have the contrapuntal effect of, on the one hand, increasing the number of difficult questions for the PM about “pressure” from No 10 to get Mandelson to Washington, while, on the other hand, giving him a big – though not necessarily enthusiastic – show of support from Labour MPs in the Commons as they are whipped to vote down the Tory motion for a sleaze inquiry.

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[Further reading: Labour faces a local election wipeout in England]