On Tuesday I was lunching with a former colleague of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer‘s ex-adviser. The conversation turned, inevitably, to the saga of his ‘stolen’ work phone. ‘His personal phone’s gone as well,’ they told me casually. ‘Sorry?’ I replied. ‘Yeah. His personal mobile. He’s turned it off.’
They showed me the number, with some old messages dating from his time as Starmer’s chief of staff. Then phoned it. It was no longer recognised. WhatsApp groups it had been linked to dated its departure to the start of this year.
I spoke to another former colleague of McSweeney. They showed me the number for a third mobile he was using during his time in government. This one, apparently, is still in service.
So I contacted Downing Street. Of the numerous mobile phones McSweeney appears to have been using – the lost government mobile, the deactivated personal mobile, the currently active personal mobile – how many had they secured messages from, I asked.
‘We are committed to complying with the Humble Address in full,’ they said, referring to the parliamentary procedure that was used to compel the Government to release documents relating to Peter Mandelson‘s appointment as our ambassador to Washington.
‘All Government departments, ministers and relevant individuals are in the process of being asked to provide information they hold in the scope of the Humble Address.’ So in other words, none.
When the history of the Starmer Government is written, this past week will be officially recorded as the moment its attempted cover-up of the Mandelson/Epstein scandal imploded.
Taken in isolation, the reported theft of McSweeney’s handset may have been dismissed as an unfortunate – if highly convenient – one-off.
Morgan McSweeney’s phone was reported as stolen, but police were told the wrong address
Peter Mandelson and the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff were close Labour Party allies
But as we are about to see, it was not an isolated incident. Instead it fell in the middle of what has become a planned, co-ordinated and concerted attempt to defy the House of Commons and hide the truth surrounding Mandelson’s appointment from the British people.
In the days ahead we will be told the following. First, that it has not been possible to obtain the vast bulk of messages held on personal mobile phones from the various participants in this scandal.
Numerous excuses will be proffered. Old phones will have been lost or discarded. Sim cards will have mysteriously been wiped. Back-ups, required under government rules, will not have been kept. An apologetic junior minister will appear in the House of Commons to explain how the use of personal devices for sensitive government business will be urgently reviewed.
Then we will learn that the bulk of official emails have also been lost. At which point a new excuse will be made. Parliament will be told about a 90-day auto-delete function that applies to all government communications. And how this, again, has meant much of the communications relating to Mandelson has been erased.
What Parliament will not be told is that despite this function, all emails are still retained deep down on the No 10 web server. But when this is raised by the Tories and other opposition parties, another junior minister will be despatched to explain their recovery is impossible on the grounds of technical difficulty and cost.
Finally, we will learn about the private emails circulating between the saga’s dramatis personae. Or rather, we won’t, because we will be told the Cabinet Office holds few records of them. Again, Kemi Badenoch and her MPs will angrily point to government regulations requiring an official record be kept of all private emails relating to government business.
They will also point back to the precedent of the time when Matt Hancock shared all his Covid messages with the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, and the Propriety and Ethics Team angrily chastised him because it had determined those messages were technically the property of HM Government.
And once again, a sheepish minister will traipse into the Commons chamber and explain how the whole affair has highlighted gaps in the way government communications are managed. Then sombrely pledge that lessons have been learned and new rules will be put in place to ensure best practice is followed in future.
When Partygate was at its height, those attempting to deflect from its significance dismissed the blatant abuse of the Covid regulations by Boris Johnson and members of his inner circle as ‘just a row about a piece of cake’.
A similar effort was made on Thursday by defence minister Al Carns, who contemptuously declared: ‘I think this is the worst of politics. We’ve got two wars on, one in the Middle East, one in Ukraine, and we’re talking about someone’s phone.’
The fact that thanks to No 10’s staggeringly insouciant response to the alleged theft, one of the most sensitive mobiles in the Government could currently be in possession of either of the hostile states currently engaged in those wars seems to have escaped him. But as with Partygate, the issue is not a single purloined mobile.
Parliament ordered Starmer to release all documentation relating to Peter Mandelson and the period preceding and following his appointment.
The reason they did so is because those documents can provide evidence of the most significant domestic and international political scandal for a generation. One that includes rape, serial abuse and the alleged sale of government secrets. And it’s now clear Parliament – and the public – are only going to see a fraction of those documents. Because the evidence of the Mandelson/Epstein scandal is disappearing – and being ‘disappeared’ – on an industrial scale.
We are currently in the midst of a cover-up to rival Watergate. But fortunately, as in the case of Watergate, it is doomed to fail.
For the simple reason that every man, woman, child, dog, cat and pot plant from Land’s End to John o’Groats can see precisely what’s happening. And they’re not going to put up with it.
As Starmer is about to find to his cost. On Thursday he sat down for an interview with Sky’s Beth Rigby and attempted to emote his way out of the scandal.
‘I beat myself up… there’s no criticism anybody else can level at me that will be as harsh as the criticism I dished out for myself,’ he opined.
‘I can see that,’ Rigby replied.
But no one else could. What they could see, with unerring clarity, was a self-serving, self-indulgent, self-pitying attempt by Sir Keir to wriggle out of another self-inflicted political crisis.
And they’re not falling for it any more. Because sadly for the Prime Minister, the British electorate does not come with an auto-delete function.
He can usher as many messages as he likes into the electronic ether. It’s the cover-up that always gets you. And as we discovered last week, this cover-up is one of the biggest of them all.
