FIRE STARMER

“What is completely inconceivable is that the prime minister or foreign secretary didn't at that stage four months ago say, okay, let's go through this with a fine-tooth comb and work out exactly what happened. We need to know all the information. What did happen? We're saying he passed the vetting. Did he pass the vetting? Was it overruled? What was the process? That must have happened. If that didn't happen, and of course, if it did happen, Keir Starmer is a liar, but if Keir Starmer is not a liar, he is the most incompetent prime minister I've ever heard of in my life over the year.”

“Well, this is also why that famous American, The Buck Stops Here, matters. Because I think a prime minister or a minister feeling in the end, they have the responsibility that they don't get to say, oh, it's my civil servant's fault. It's my underlings fault. I've been let down. If you feel that, you get a grip. The two things are connected.”

“Also, we now have this pattern of he's been let down. He was let down by Peter Mandelson. Peter Mandelson lied to me. He was let down by the system and now he's been let down by Ollie Robbins. Not for nothing was one of the post-its that was on my wall in Downing Street the whole time is get a grip.”

“The normal permanent secretary approach would have been to come to say, Prime Minister, look, it's a little awkward. He's failed to develop vetting process, but I do have the power as a permanent secretary to decide that he only narrowly failed it. For reasons one, two, and three, we can proceed with the appointment. I just want to let you know that's what I'm doing. Now, that's what every permanent secretary I've ever worked with would have done.”

“As it pertains to Peter Mandelson, it seems that the Cabinet Office vetting process decided he should not be cleared for developed vetting, which is top secret information. This was not taken into such account by the Foreign Office that they basically said, well, that means he can't do the job. On the contrary, the Foreign Office decided that he could do the job, and it seems or it is claimed that nobody in Downing Street and no ministers were told about this key fact that Peter Mandelson's vetting process had thrown up something which had led them to suggest he should not be appointed.”

“I mean, that's what I remember feeling very strongly, having been a civil servant, gone through this very advanced vetting process, having been trained again and again on how to handle documents, what the different classifications were. When I was the cabinet minister and sitting on the National Security Council, so with the head of MI6 and the Prime Minister of the United States, there was none of that stuff at all. Somehow we jumped the whole process.”

“I kept getting phone calls from people saying, I just had this really weird guy turned up at the house, wanted to ask whether you ever had a three-year-old bed romp with somebody, or whether you took drugs at university, or why you kept going to Russia as a tourist in your youth, and all this sort of stuff. So it was very, it was serious. And eventually you got a sort of message. I think it might have been Robin Butler who said to me, oh, by the way, your DV stuff went through fine, or whatever.”

“I have never, ever, ever named the person who was actually responsible for the so-called dodgy dossier, which has now been morphed into the main one in September 2003, which it wasn't. It was a different document. The reason for that isn't because I didn't think the guy completely screwed up, nor is it that I didn't give him an absolute bollocking for doing it. But what I didn't want is for everybody else who worked for the communications department to think that every time you make a mistake, you are going to get thrown under a bus. What it feels to me is that Olly Robbins has been thrown under a bus.”