Last month, as the tide of sleaze surrounding Peter Mandelson‘s appointment as US ambassador began to surge up Downing Street, I made the mistake of comparing Keir Starmer to the late Richard Nixon.
‘The Mandelson scandal is slowly but surely morphing into Keir Starmer’s Watergate,’ I wrote. ‘High crimes and misdemeanours. Pay-offs. Document suppression. Safe-cracking. Peremptory sackings. The belated resignation of senior aides. Spurious allusions to national security and foreign relations.’
But my comparison with the former occupant of the White House, and architect of the greatest cover-up in the history of Western democracy, was misplaced. Whatever you think of him, Tricky Dicky was an adroit, seasoned, strategically minded politician.
And as the sewage from the Mandelson saga continues to drip into the body politic, it’s become abundantly clear Britain’s Prime Minister is none of those things.
Indeed, thanks to the latest revelations that have emerged over the weekend, we now know the country is not being governed by the new Richard Nixon. It’s being governed by the new Rebekah Vardy.
Four years ago, at the height of the infamous ‘Wagatha Christie‘ libel trial, the High Court was shocked to learn a key piece of evidence had mysteriously been misplaced.
The mobile phone owned by Vardy’s agent, reportedly possessing a number of key exchanges relating to her feud with fellow WAG Coleen Rooney, had inadvertently been dropped into the North Sea. A ‘most unfortunate’ occurrence, as Rooney’s lawyers observed.
Then on Sunday it emerged a similarly unfortunate fate had befallen Keir Starmer over the Mandelson affair. The mobile phone owned by his former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, and which had been used to communicate with Mandelson at the time of his appointment, had been stolen from him several months ago.
Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney (right),used a phone to communicate with Peter Mandelson (left) at the time of his appointment, which has allegedly been stolen
The loss of McSweeney’s phone is so significant because the Prime Minister tasked him with interrogating Mandelson over red flags raised in the vetting process, writes Dan Hodges
As a result, a number of key messages between McSweeney and the disgraced peer had reportedly been lost. Though there was absolutely nothing suspicious or untoward about this, the Government’s Steve Reed claimed. ‘His phone was stolen and he reported it at the time,’ he insisted.
Which from No 10’s perspective is highly convenient. And, also, highly instructive.
Firstly, it underlines what has been apparent since the first tranche of partially selected and censored Mandelson emails were released a fortnight ago. Which is that Keir Starmer has directly lied to Parliament and the country about the Mandelson appointment.
The reason why the loss of McSweeney’s phone is so significant is that it was McSweeney who the Prime Minister tasked with interrogating Mandelson over issues arising from the initial Civil Service vetting process that raised a number of red flags about his appointment.
This was after an offer from the head of the No 10 propriety and ethics team to conduct the interview was rejected by Starmer. And despite the fact Starmer knew Mandelson and McSweeney were close personal friends.
What the Mystery Of The Misplaced McSweeney Mobile also highlights is how the vetting process for one of the most senior and sensitive positions in the UK diplomatic service was conducted largely on WhatsApp. And what’s more, a private WhatsApp account, of which no automatic central government record is kept.
Downing Street’s off-the-record response to these revelations has been to claim that ‘some’ relevant messages have been retained. Which clearly implies some have not.
Yet the rules on this sort of communication are crystal clear. Last week Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds confirmed in a parliamentary answer relating to McSweeney’s use of private communications for government business that ‘where official information is created or received on non-corporate communication devices, it must be handled in accordance with records management requirements, including being transferred to an appropriate official system where it forms part of the official record’.
It’s clear from the information so far released – and not released – and from sources responding to queries about the phone theft, that this rule has not been properly followed. Which at best is a clear breach of government procedure. And at worse, prima facie evidence of a cover-up.
Either way, it leaves Sir Keir bang to rights. Because on September 10 he told the Commons: ‘Full due process was followed during this [the Mandelson] appointment, as it is with all ambassadors.’
Which, as I say, was a clear and obvious lie. Due process does not involve British ambassadors being vetted by their close friends via WhatsApp, only for elements of that vetting to be excised from the public record when it transpires the mobile phone containing them has been nicked.
But there is another element of this sorry and sordid attempt to hide the truth of the Mandelson affair that has been revealed by the loss of McSweeney’s mobile.
One of the key arguments deployed by Starmer and Downing Street is that they cannot release the information they would like to Parliament, for fear of prejudicing the ongoing police investigation into Mandelson. Indeed, that has been the specific excuse deployed for not releasing communication between him and McSweeney.
This mobile phone farrago demonstrates once and for all the cynicism and contempt Keir Starmer has for Britain’s Parliament and its people, writes Dan Hodges
So yesterday I contacted the Met about the stolen mobile. Given it’s significance to the case, were they making efforts to locate it, or its messages, or had they made any effort to secure the messages from central government records? The response was: ‘We can’t respond to enquiries where an individual has been named. We need a date, location and description of the alleged incident.’
When I explained the named individual was the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff, and the alleged incident was one of the biggest scandals in modern political history, they simply gave the same response. Which indicates that either they’re in hock to No 10, or McSweeney’s communications with Mandelson aren’t quite as central to the ongoing investigation as Downing Street has tried to make out.
But perhaps the most significant thing about the mobile phone farrago is this. It demonstrates once and for all the cynicism and contempt Keir Starmer has for Britain’s Parliament and its people.
He genuinely thinks we’re all idiots. ‘Sorry, we’ve lost the mobile.’ Seriously? That’s the best they’ve got?
Starmer is such an incompetent political dilettante he cannot even conduct a whitewash efficiently. Or if he hasn’t been conducting a whitewash, he can’t behave without it looking to all and sundry as if that’s precisely what he’s been trying to do.
This is not hard. Either Downing Street has the McSweeney messages, or it doesn’t. If it does, it should release them without further delay. And if it doesn’t, it should hold its hands up and admit it, and then admit that when the Prime Minister told the country proper due process had been followed, he was lying through his teeth.
The spectacle of Keir Starmer using the Rebekah Vardy excuse to pull the wool over the eyes of the British people is a national embarrassment. One that is as much an insult to his intelligence as it is to ours.
