17 hours ago
10
You could smell the fear among senior ministers on Wednesday night. No one wanted to be “that person”. The mug who would be sent out on the Thursday morning media round to answer the inevitable barrage of questions about Peter Mandelson. The equivalent to a two-hour-long walk of shame, and one entirely of the prime minister’s making.
The Cabinet Office minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, thought he had all bases covered. He had skipped off early down to his south Wales constituency of Torfaen. Surely that should put him out of harm’s way. No such luck. Just after 10pm, Nick got the summons from No 10. “I’m afraid you’re it.” Nick tried to bluster. There was no way he could get to London to do the interviews, and the wifi was really terrible at home. No dice. Downing Street would send over a technician to set him up with a makeshift studio. All systems go.
“Er … Thank you,” said Nick, reluctantly. He now had some idea of what it was like to be a victim of a drive-by shooting.
So it was that a downbeat, borderline depressed Thomas-Symonds found himself doing a phone interview with Emma Barnett for the Today programme. Barnett was in no mood to take prisoners. The UK’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, had said the vetting procedure had been “weirdly rushed” and “unusual”. What the hell had been going on?
Nick looked down at his notes. Such as they were. All he had written was: “Say the prime minister has apologised. Then say it again.” Um … “The prime minister has taken full responsibility, has said it was a mistake to appoint Mandelson and he has apologised to the victims.” Would that do? He didn’t have anything else to say, because he hadn’t been involved in the process, so he was as clueless as everyone else about why the prime minister had screwed up quite so badly.
No. It wouldn’t do. We need an explanation, said Barnett. So Thomas-Symonds started winging it, making up excuses as he went along. This had been a very unusual appointment, he said. Something of an understatement. Choosing a US ambassador who had been mates with a known child sex offender and had already been sacked twice by previous Labour prime ministers for being untrustworthy was, indeed, unusual. Even allowing for an unreliable, mentally unwell narcissist in the White House. And yes, it was totally normal for someone to be given access to classified information before the vetting had been complete. That was just one for pedants.
“There are questions that needed to be answered,” Nick ad-libbed. “Which is why the government is now looking at all the facts.” Right now, he could have done with a cuddle. Someone to tell him it was going to be all right in the end. This was almost embarrassing, hearing a senior minister unravel. Of course there were questions that needed to be answered. The point is that Starmer had had all the information he needed at the time to put a large cross through Mandy’s CV – but had given him the job anyway.
Barnett went in for the kill, and it began to unravel even further for Nick. First he tried to suggest that Starmer had taken very seriously the vetting assessment that Mandelson’s appointment represented a severe reputational risk to the government. That’s why, he added, Keir had asked Mandelson three killer supplementary questions. Ones that unfortunately we wouldn’t see for a year or so, due to the ongoing police investigation. But you can only wonder at the brilliance of Mandy’s replies that made Starmer think: “OK, so Peter was mates with Epstein – but he will still be a great ambo.” Perhaps Mandelson said he had never stayed in the master bedroom at Epstein’s flat and that he had brought his own sheets. That should have swung it.
Unbelievably, it got even worse. Thomas-Symonds tried to play the “Keir has always been a campaigner against violence against women and girls” card. As if Starmer should be given some leeway for ignoring Epstein’s victims in appointing Mandy because he had such a good reputation previously. It had just been an easy mistake to make. You can’t keep your eye on the ball the whole time. Some victims were bound to fall through the net.
We ended on a classic. “Look,” said Nick. Keir may have made the wrong call on Mandelson but he had played a blinder on Iran. Far better to have a prime minister who shows poor judgment on its ambassadorial appointments to the US than someone like Kemi or Nigel who would take us into a war only to try to extricate us a week later once they had realised their mistake. One out of two ain’t bad. Apparently.
Over on BBC Breakfast, Thomas-Symonds was asked about the £75,000 severance payoff. “I am morally outraged,” he said. As opposed to what? Recreationally outraged? Try to see it this way. It was the minimum the government might have had to shell out if Mandy had taken it to an employment tribunal. Good to know you can get such a decent payout after being sacked over a relationship with Epstein. We live and learn. With that, Nick crawled back to bed and hid under the duvet for the rest of the morning.
Around lunchtime, Starmer himself turned up at a mother-and-baby community centre in Belfast. He wanted to talk about what was really bothering him. The most urgent issue of the day. You’d have thought that what had been really keeping him awake the previous night was how he could survive the Mandelson crisis.
Whichever way you tried to cut it, Keir looked hopelessly compromised for having ignored so much information about Mandy’s relationship with Epstein that was in the public domain. Never mind that Kemi and Nige had appeared to approve of the appointment at the time. Along with dozens of political pundits. Michael Gove had thought it “inspired”. Fast forward 18 months and the buck stopped with Starmer.
But Keir didn’t want to talk about any of this. Instead he wanted to talk about the cost of living. It has to be said that none of the mothers (or the babies) appeared at all interested. They couldn’t wait for him to stop speaking. They had their lives to get on with. Curiously, after three questions from mothers who had been press-ganged into asking about the cost of living, Starmer decided that would do. No one could possibly be interested in him taking questions from the media about Mandelson. Why spoil the chill-out vibe?
