Kmflett's Blog

Olly Robbins, the senior civil servant, sacked by Starmer, has been giving evidence to a Commons Committee on the vetting of Peter Mandelson while he was being appointed US Ambassador at the back end of 2024. Keir Starmer announced the appointment before the vetting process was complete (it appears) and Robbins has noted that there was pressure to get Mandelson into the role.

Conspiracy stories abound here and there might even have been a genuine conspiracy of sorts involving the ex Downing St Head of Staff Morgan McSweeney who recently quit the job but not before losing his work mobile phone to theft.

We are in the area of a pre-history of the present here but in this instance conspiracies don’t make good material history.

While the existing US Ambassador had good relations with Trump, who was starting his second term as President in early 2025, it can perhaps be seen why Starmer thought Mandelson would fit the role. He was after all just as dodgy as Trump and that could clearly have been helpful.

However the wider background is the role of Labour Together which John McDonnell raised in the Commons on 20th April.

Morgan McSweeney was a key figure in Labour Together, essentially an organisation of the Labour right. It was a motor in winning Starmer the Labour leadership, although its as well to remember that this took place via a membership ballot. A suggestion is that Starmer owed a debt to McSweeney and to another key figure in the organisation Mandelson.

Given that Starmer had and has no great base in the Labour Party, they were people he relied on and would no doubt have wanted around.

The issue is what Labour Together actually represented and how it was funded and by who, and for what purpose.

John McDonnell

Many on the Labour Benches, at least, will appreciate my right hon. and learned Friend’s apology today, but many of us remain bewildered about why the appointment took place, despite the warnings that many of us gave him. Is not the reality this? When he sought to realise his ambition to become leader of the Labour party, with very little base within the party, he became dependent on McSweeney, Mandelson and Labour Together to organise and fund his election. When he became the Prime Minister, the reward for McSweeney was control of No. 10, and the reward for Mandelson was the highest diplomatic office. The unspoken message to civil servants was, “What Mandelson wants, Mandelson gets.”

This has damaged the party that I have been a member of for 50 years. I urge the Prime Minister to take steps to clear this toxic culture out of our party, and to take the first step by having an independent inquiry into Labour Together.

House of Commons 20th April 2026