𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The public will never know how the Government makes some of its biggest decisions – because the evidence is being deleted. How exactly did Keir Starmer’s government come to decide that Peter Mandelson, a man forced to resign in disgrace from the Government, twice, should become the UK’s ambassador to Washington? Why did they think appointing a Labour politician was a good idea, when most of our ambassadors are experienced diplomats?

And how concerned were they about the fact – which was no secret – that Mandelson remained friends with Jeffrey Epstein even after Epstein was convicted of sex offences involving girls as young as 14? Documents forced out of the Government give us some answers to these questions. Conservatives used a Parliamentary procedure known as a Humble Address to force Ministers to publish some of the paperwork. But we only have partial answers. That’s because a lot of Government business is conducted via phone messaging service WhatsApp – and Ministers delete their WhatsApp messages.

Sir Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, previously the Foreign Secretary, all use the “disappearing messages” feature.

This can delete chats after 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days, depending on how you set it. There are methods that the person at the other end can use to save messages, if they really want to. For example, they can take screenshots. But it’s not practical to do this every time a new message arrives. In practice, using disappearing messages means that key conversations simply vanish.

It matters, because Governments operate though a mixture of formal meetings and messages, such as discussions at Cabinet or official e-mails, and informal talks.

We saw this in some of the messages that have been released. Poor old Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has found himself in hot water after he complained to Lord Mandelson that Labour colleagues just wanted to know “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”.

This was, in a sense, a chat between old mates. But it was a highly-experienced and senior Labour politician, Peter Mandelson, giving advice to a colleague in the Government. Conservatives say Mr McFadden has revealed the truth about how the Government works. Of course, he thought at the time that he was having a private conversation.

But let’s be fair. We know about his WhatsApp messages because he didn’t delete them. Who knows what embarrassing comments might have been made by Sir Keir or Ms Reeves? For all we know, they were even worse. The difference is that they ensured we will never see them.

Government by WhatsApp also raises the unfortunate prospect of messages going missing when phones are stolen. Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet minister overseeing the UK’s “reset” with the EU, reported his phone stolen on October 15 last year, a month after Lord Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador. He may have exchanged messages with Mandelson about the EU but the details have been lost. It is possible to store WhatsApp messages remotely, but appears that in this case the phone was not backed up.

And he’s not the only one. Five days later, on October 20 last year, Sir Keir’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney reported that his own phone had been stolen. Perhaps Ministers and Number 10 officials should be barred from deleting their messages – and taught how to back up their phones.