When the Foreign Office’s most senior civil servant gets sacked and then turns around to publicly defend his own decisions, you know something has gone properly sideways in Whitehall.
Sir Olly Robbins, the former permanent under-secretary at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has broken cover to defend his approval of Peter Mandelson’s security vetting, after being dismissed from his post. His central argument is straightforward enough: he did his job correctly, and No 10 simply didn’t like the answer he came up with.
The row centres on Mandelson’s appointment as UK Ambassador to Washington, a role that raised eyebrows from the start given his long-standing and well-documented financial ties to China. Robbins, for his part, says he carried out a thorough and proper assessment before signing off the clearance.
What stings, according to those familiar with his position, is that Downing Street is said to have treated the entire vetting process with a “dismissive attitude”, apparently more interested in pushing the appointment through than engaging seriously with the security concerns being raised at official level.
“The process was followed. The assessment was sound. The problem, it seems, was that the conclusion wasn’t what some people wanted to hear.”
That’s a remarkable thing for a recently sacked mandarin to essentially put on the record. It implies the machinery of government was being leaned on, whether directly or through atmosphere and pressure, to reach a more convenient conclusion.
Mandelson himself has consistently said his business dealings present no conflict of interest. But the optics of appointing someone with such extensive Beijing connections as the UK’s top diplomat in America were always going to be complicated, particularly given current tensions in the US-China relationship.
Robbins’ dismissal only adds another layer of intrigue. If the government was confident the vetting was handled properly, why remove the man who approved it?
Whether this becomes a full-blown parliamentary headache for Keir Starmer’s government depends largely on how much further Robbins is willing to go. He’s spoken up once. The question now is whether he stops there, or whether there’s more he feels the public deserves to know.
