𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Talk about a knockout blow! Olly Robbins, the Foreign Office boss who Keir Starmer scapegoated and sacked over the Mandelson affair, dealt our weasel PM a suckerpunch this week from which he might never recover. And now he’s the nation’s hero. “Robbins for PM,” they’re shouting. Well, actually they’re not. That’s just me, but I want it to be true as Robbins seems to be that rarity in politics – a decent bloke with morals and principles.

At a Commons hearing this week, he made it crystal clear that, from the minute he took the job at the Foreign Office, he and his team were under relentless daily pressure to get Mandelson appointed because it was already a done-deal.

Some might say that Robbins’ gripping testimony was him sticking the knife into the man who’d just done for him. But it didn’t feel like what he was saying was being done out of malice or spite. He sounded like a decent bloke who is understandably hacked off that both he and his “brilliant staff” at the Foreign Office had been royally shafted by Starmer and his bully-boy mob in Number 10 over the Mandelson appointment.

What we saw from him was a masterclass in loyalty and leadership that Starmer might do well to learn from – the lesson being don’t drop your colleagues in it to save your own sorry backside because it WILL come back and bite that backside. And so, it has. As one commentator put it: “Olly Robbins got back on the bus he was thrown under by Starmer and reversed it over him.” But again, it didn’t feel like that. Robbins didn’t sound vengeful. He sounded like someone who was doing what he had to do more in sorrow than in anger.

But what he did make clear was that Starmer’s plan – to stick it to the Foreign Office and walk away unscathed – was never going to be allowed to happen. So he took Starmer down in a way that was polite, charming but deadly. He delivered his truth bombs not angrily but politely – leaving us in no doubt that Starmer is a spiteful man.

The details of Robbins’ evidence is complicated but the upshot is that, having just started in Foreign Office, he felt pressured into waving through Mandelson’s appointment as Washington Ambassador and he said it was made clear to him that No 10 wanted him approved at any cost. “There was a very very strong expectation that Mandelson needed to be in post as soon as possible,” he recalled.

All of which beggars belief considering Mandelson’s well documented links with Russia and China and the fact he’d been targeted by Soviet Intelligence officers as far back as the 80’s; also the fact he’s been photographed on the yachts of Russian oligarchs and he was on the board of a Russian conglomerate called, Sistema (not the Kiwi lunchbox makers), which has strong ties to the Russian state.

But, frankly, you’d have to have been living down a manhole for the past 25 years – vetting or no vetting – not to know Mandelson was a bad ‘un and would have been a huge risk to national security. Which is why Stramer’s cries of “I didn’t know anything” ring hollow. Robbins suggested that Downing Street didn’t think Mandelson needed vetting which shows how stupid (or conniving and devious) they are because if any man needed vetting from top to bottom it’s the Prince of Darkness. Which is kinda what UK Security Vetting said – but was ignored.

All this is going to bring a whole heap of fresh trouble to the useless Starmer’s door. And so it should. Because as Kemi Badenoch says, with all these “pressures” and no 10’s “dismissive attitude”, it’s now clear that the due process he kept insisting was followed was not. “And so, Keir Starmer HAS misled the house,” she said.

And on top of all that, it turns out he also pressured Robbins into finding a cushy ambassador’s job for his mate Matthew Doyle – yet another friend of a paedo. Doyle was his very average press secretary who was going to be rewarded for his averageness by his mate Keir with a nice flashy ambassador’s post.

Robbins was particularly hacked off about this because he said at the time he was sacking decent ambassadors because of lack of money – yet was being forced to give a job to a mate of the PM. Even worse, he was told it must be kept secret. Remember how Starmer used to rage against the Tories about cronyism – well this is it in its purest form,

So, what happens now? Well, it looks like Starmer’s Cabinet and his backbenchers are turning on him. The Cabinet is angry at the shoddy way Robbins was treated and because Starmer has now poisoned relations between the Civil Service and government. And his backbenchers are angry that their PM has reduced the government and the Labour Party to a laughing stock. Yvette Cooper is publicly having a go at Starmer for not telling Dávid Lammy, the then Foreign Secretary, about the ambassador’s job for Doyle.

Ed Miliband is now publicly saying he too warned at the time that the Mandelson appointment would “blow up” in Starmer’s face. He’s also said on TV this week that Starmer made a huge mistake in appointing Mandelson. And Work and Pensions boss Pat McFadden refused to endorse Starmer’s sacking of Robbins.

In the Commons this week when Starmer was doing his Three Monkeys routine –- “Heard No Evil, Saw No Evil, Spoke No evil” – his own backbenchers, as well as the rest of the House, were openly laughing. And who knew we’d all be clapping Dianne Abbot and Emily Thornberry who made it quite clear they didn’t believe a word their leader was saying.

Reform’s Lee Anderson was even thrown out of the House for saying: “That man couldn’t lie straight in bed.” It’s like a bad pantomime.

And what was this Mandelson appointment that Starmer so desperately wanted to happen all about? Like everything he does, it was nothing to do with the national interest and everything to do with his own interests. He wanted Mandelson in Washington to build bridges between him and Trump – who he knew thought him to be a fool. Starmer thought Mandelson could persuade Trump otherwise and so help him to hang onto his job AND the ‘Special Relationship’.

So now we have a Prime Minister who is hated by voters, hated by his party and whose cabinet are on the verge of mutiny. So how long can he stay? How many more human sacrifices will he make to help save himself before he finally realises he’s unsavable.

He’s probably got until after the local elections where, if he gets the drubbing we expect him to get, the vultures waiting in the wings for his job will move on him – and it will be bloody. But think about this – while Starmer is THE most useless Prime Minister this country has ever had, just think about the person tipped to replace him – Angela Rayner (who’d have Ed Miliband as her chancellor).

She will very quickly show us that in terms of incompetence, Starmer is a rank amateur. The woman is as thick as mince and has all the diplomatic skills of a raging bull. Poor Britain – to have been ruined by such immorality and such mediocrity…