So Keir Starmer has finally come clean and revealed to the House of Commons who was responsible for appointing Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington, despite the objections of the security services.
It was the fault of everyone… but Keir Starmer.
Peter Mandelson betrayed him. Former Foreign Office permanent secretary Olly Robbins misled him. The vetting process failed him. He simply followed administrative precedent, which cruelly let him down.
There was a general, abstract acknowledgement that Mandelson should never have been appointed in the first place. But none of the specific errors that led to one of the greatest security breaches in post-Cold War British history had been made by him.
To maintain this ludicrous conceit, the Prime Minister did what he does best. Stonewalled. Obfuscated. And flat out lied.
Just before he rose to deliver his statement, Sir Keir had been hit by a devastating new revelation: a memo sent to him by former Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, which had specifically advised him to ensure Mandelson had been subject to proper due diligence and secured all his appropriate vetting clearances before being appointed.
But Starmer had ignored Case. ‘Why?’, he was asked repeatedly.
He flannelled his response. Yes, that is what he’d been advised, but he insisted – to widespread incredulity – that he had another piece of paper that had been given to him a year later by another official that said he had done everything by the book.
Kemi Badenoch, at her focused and forensic best, asked him a series of six specific questions.
Aware that last time she had tried to pin him down on this issue, he’d ducked everything, she had wisely taken the step of providing him with the questions in advance. It made no difference. Again, he dodged and weaved. Until he came to the last question.
Yesterday morning, the Daily Mail published a story about Mandelson’s long-standing links with a company called Sistema, one of Russia’s largest defence contractors that had reportedly been ‘riddled with spies’. Was Starmer aware of that relationship? she asked.
This time, Sir Keir didn’t obfuscate. He simply flat-out refused to answer.
Today’s statement was widely perceived to be a reckoning for the Prime Minister. But it actually presented him with an opportunity.
He had, we were told last week, been furious to learn he had been misled. It was unacceptable that the truth had been withheld from him. So this was his chance to wipe the whole sordid Mandelson slate clean by telling the truth.
And he pointedly refused to take it. Time and time and time again, MPs from all sides of the House tried to pin him down with very specific questions. And on every occasion, he withdrew into lawyerly generalities.
In his failure to answer his interrogators, Sir Keir spoke volumes.
He is a man with something to hide. And he intends to deploy every trick in the book to keep the true facts of the Mandelson affair from ever seeing the light of day.
But his crude attempt at a cover-up is doomed to fail.
Indeed, it may not even survive another 24 hours.
Today, Olly Robbins – his latest fall guy – will give his own evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. And allies of the discarded civil servant have told journalists he does not intend to carry the can on the Prime Minister’s behalf.
But even if Robbins does not arrive in the House carrying a smoking gun, it’s now only a matter of time before the Mandelson scandal finally consumes the Starmer premiership.
In a couple of weeks’ time, the British people will deliver their own verdict on the affair via the ballot box.
Soon, the next tranche of emails, messages and documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment will be released to the House and the country. Then the police investigation will reach its conclusion. As will a parallel investigation being pursued by the fraud detectives of the EU.
There is no escape for the Prime Minister. He is effectively engaged in a game of parliamentary Russian roulette.
Every time he refuses to answer a question, another chamber of the gun rotates.
And sooner or later, he will find there is a question out there with his name on it.
It may already have been asked. Every evasion, half-truth and downright falsehood from Sir Keir is now cast in stone on the public record. All that is required now is for that one forgotten memo, or hastily typed WhatsApp message, to see the light of day.
And it will eventually see the light of day, for one simple reason: Keir Starmer has finally run out of other people to blame.
He has blamed and sacked his Chief of Staff, his Cabinet Secretary and his Foreign Office permanent secretary. He has blamed and sacked Peter Mandelson himself.
So there is only one person left.
Despite his desperate efforts, we are another day closer to the moment the Mandelson scandal brings Kier Starmer down.
