𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

What do you call a boss who blames his staff whenever things go wrong? If you work at Westminster, you call him Prime Minister. Because Sir Keir has a habit of shifting the blame for all of his disasters onto underlings, and the Peter Mandelson scandal is just the latest example.

But it won’t work. The buck stops with him – as voters, and even his own MPs, know full well. The latest victim is Sir Olly Robbins, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs until last week. He was sacked after it emerged that Mandelson was not granted a special security clearance status, Developed Vetting (DV), during the process to appoint him ambassador to the US.

It meant that statements Sir Keir made to the House of Commons, when he said all the usual procedures had been followed, were not true.

Sir Olly, the Foreign Office’s top civil servant, was then sacked after the Government blamed him for not telling Sir Keir about the vetting failure.

But the reality is that Sir Keir knew people had doubts about Lord Mandelson – and it was no secret that Mandelson remained friends with Jeffrey Epstein even after Epstein was convicted of sex offences. If the Prime Minister really wasn’t aware about the security concerns, you have to suspect it’s because he didn’t want to find out.

And we may well find, when Sir Olly gives evidence to MPs this week, that this is exactly what happened. According to reports, the decision to appoint Mandelson had already been made – by Number 10 – and the Foreign Office pretty much had to go along with it.

Even so, Sir Olly took the blame and it’s not the first time something like this has happened.

There’s also Sir Chris Wormald, the former head of the civil service, who was forced out in February as part of Sir Keir’s efforts to rebuild his government following the Mandelson scandal. Sir Chris took the fall not so much for Mandelson, but for the general poor performance of the Government.

Then there was Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir’s chief of staff, who also left in February. He was offered as a sacrificial lamb to Labour MPs who were furious about the Mandelson appointment. And to be fair, Mr McSweeney had been pushing for Mandelson to get the job – but the final decision lay with the Prime Minister, not him.

And who can forget Sue Gray, another chief of staff, who left her post October 2024. She got the blame for this Labour government’s disastrous start, when it became clear Sir Keir had no plan for what to do after becoming Prime Minister.

Eventually, Sir Keir is going to run out of people to blame. He can’t hide behind his underlings forever.

Appointing Mandelson was a huge mistake. Refusing to accept responsibility is another one.