'When, not if' – who will move against Starmer?
4/22/202612 min
It will come as no surprise that Keir Starmer appears to have heard a very different evidence session from Sir Olly Robbins to the one everyone else thought the ex Foreign Office mandarin gave yesterday. The Prime Minister arrived in the Commons for questions today convinced that Robbins had in fact largely backed him up, give or take a few quibbles over whether there was a ‘dismissive’ attitude in Downing Street towards Peter Mandelson’s vetting. What planet is the PM on?
Eyes were fixed on his front bench, with journalists looking for any chinks in the armour after a couple of very unconvincing media rounds from usually loyal hummers Ed Miliband and Pat McFadden, but will anyone actually move against Starmer?
Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
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First 90 secondsOscar Edmondson· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Oscar Edmondson, and I'm joined today by Isabel Hardman and James Heilath. We've just had PMQs, and this was, of course, Kemi Badenoch's first chance to go on the attack after Olly Robbins' devastating testimony in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday. Isabel, I'll start with you. What lessons, if any, has Keir Starmer learnt from Olly Robbins' defense yesterday?
Isabel Hardman· Guest0:29
I mean, amazingly, Olly Robbins, according to Keir Starmer, backed up Keir Starmer, which- Surprise ... was not-- I mean, yesterday feels like a long time ago, but not so long that my creaking memory has forgotten what Olly Robbins said. And, and everyone else in the chamber looked baffled too that, that Keir Starmer genuinely said in his first answer to Kemi Badenoch who'd asked him, did he stand, um, by the claim he made on the tenth of September last year that full due process was followed in the appointment of Peter Mandelson. Starmer pops up and says, "Yes, I do," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yesterday, Sir Olly Robbins was asked if he shared that decision with me, Number Ten or any other ministers. He gave a clear answer, no. That puts to bed all the allegations leveled at me by those opposite in relation to dishonesty. And then he later claims in another answer that Robbins, um, had said that there was no pressure put on him, which Robbins did say, but that is not the sum total of how Robbins characterized even the attitude towards the vetting process from Downing Street,