Olly robbins

Yesterday

Charles Moore

Burnham’s bogus toughness

The horrible murder of Ann Widdecombe is being used both by Reform and its critics as a means of fighting about everything they want to fight about. One example is discussion of the security of MPs, despite the fact that Miss Widdecombe left parliament 16 years ago. Is it impossible to wait until charge and trial, as used to be the rule? I suppose the simple answer is ‘Yes’. So much the worse for our country. A virtue-signalling Labour government worried by its own unpopularity also deploys something else, a toughness-signalling intended to placate the insurgent right. Take the case of the 73-year-old Shabir Ahmed, the Rochdale grooming gang leader, recently released from prison. Ministers loudly demand his deportation.

Wednesday

Tim Shipman

‘It’s worse than during the worst of Boris’: how the civil service turned against Starmer

Somewhere in the vast array of documents the Cabinet Office has gathered on the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador in Washington, there is a text message which Keir Starmer sent the night before he made the announcement. ‘You’ll be brilliant in challenging circumstances,’ he told Mandelson. ‘And after many years of our discussions, we get to work together side by side. I really look forward to that.’ The message was leaked after one of Starmer’s most difficult weeks in charge, a week which senior civil servants believe proves, once and for all, that the Prime Minister himself will never be brilliant in challenging circumstances.

Charles Moore

No one seems sure why Olly Robbins had to go

This session of parliament is due to end between 29 April and 6 May. Now the government is desperate for an Order in Council to kill it off by 9 a.m. on the 29th to avoid another painful Prime Minister’s Questions. The parliament that reassembles for the King’s Speech on 13 May could hardly, in theory, look more like what Sir Keir Starmer wants. His party has the largest overall majority since 2001. He will have jettisoned all hereditary peers.

Friday

Tim Shipman

Mandelson latest: can we trust Starmer’s ignorance?

20 min listen

The Peter Mandelson scandal just got more scandalous. Last night the story broke that Mandeslon actually failed his enhanced vetting before being made US Ambassador. Number 10 are pleading ignorance. Their defence sits on the suggestion that the Foreign Office’s most senior official unilaterally decided to ignore the findings and – what’s more – that he told no one. It’s a stretch and, as Tim Shipman says MPs' 'fury is overwhelming'. There are a number of outstanding questions, including: what could possibly be in it for the FCDO to withhold this key information? Now Sir Olly Robbins has been sacked, will he go public? Did Starmer knowingly mislead parliament when he said that the vetting process was followed?

Mandelson latest: can we trust Starmer's ignorance?

Thursday

Steerpike

Truss’s Oxford Europhilia revealed

Throughout the leadership contest, Liz Truss has been all too keen to paint herself as a Brexit queen, keen to slay the dragons of Brussels. Yet Mr S has been doing some digging into the Foreign Secretary’s past and it transpires she was rather more of a Europhile than previously revealed. Truss even headed up a pro-EU group that backed the Maastricht Treaty while a student at Oxford University doing PPE. Despite being a late convert to the Brexit cause, the PM-in-waiting was once an active Liberal Democrat and pro-European. As a blue stocking girl in the mid-1990s she was a key player in the federalist Oxford Reform Club, even being snapped alongside Theresa May's controversial EU negotiator Olly Robbins when the pair were students.