Voters are at maximum Mandelson, but it's next Friday that could cook the PM’s goose

Nigel Nelson
Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:59:49 +0000
Membership

If there were a time machine to turn back the clock, breakfast would be a strange affair. Fried eggs would uncook themselves and pop back into their shells, and a cup of coffee would get hotter, not cooler.

But as every child who studies physics at school knows, that is not possible because the second law of thermodynamics says heat always goes from hot to cold.

There is also a law in politics, brilliantly articulated by Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, that a scandal only becomes a major problem if it holds the public’s attention for more than two weeks.

Sacked US ambassador Peter Mandelson must wish he had a time machine to undo his previous mistakes. And this sorry saga has lasted a lot longer than 14 days. It seems to go on and on without end.

Former Foreign Office permanent secretary Sir Philip Barton was first up for a grilling by Emily Thornberry’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

We didn’t learn a lot more than we knew before. “I can’t answer your question,” was his frequent answer to a question.

Where his successor, Sir Olly Robbins, described No10’s attitude to Mandelson’s vetting as “dismissive”, Sir Philip preferred the word “uninterested”.

Both add up to “complacency”.And ex-No10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney could not have used the F-word at Sir Philip to get on with approving the appointment because they did not speak.

Mr McSweeney spoke next.“I made a serious mistake,” he confessed. He could say that again. And he did. Several times.

“The Prime Minister relied on my advice, and I got it wrong.”

And if the US ambassador hadn’t been Peter Mandelson, it would have been former Tory Chancellor George Osborne. But that depended on who became the US president.

And when Donald Trump did, Mandelson was thought to be the best Trump whisperer. The entire mess could have been avoided had No10 followed American advice and kept the ambassador Karen Pierce in Washington.

Revelations of the depth of Peter Mandelson’s friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein did for him. “It was like a knife through my soul,” said Mr McSweeney.

There was then a lot of chat about “box notes”, which are briefings from civil servants which end up in boxes. But it was all very complicated, and even Mr McSweeney admitted he was learning about how the vetting process works for the first time.

The Partygate scandal, which marked the beginning of the end of Boris Johnson, was much easier to get our heads around.

We could be rightly outraged that No10 staff were whooping it up and breaking rules they had laid down for the rest of us to follow.

In those dark days of Covid, we risked having our collars felt for sitting too close to a lover on a park bench. And under the ridiculous tier regulations, a single street could be divided between those who could move about and those who couldn’t.

Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out was great if you had become bored with home cooking and fancied a bit of restaurant nosh at a discount.

Great, too, for catching a dose of Covid as a result, as the ensuing spiralling number of cases showed. If ever we needed proof of the Government’s ability to cock things up, then the Covid pandemic was it.

We know appointing Peter Mandelson to Washington was a cock up. And heaven knows, Keir Starmer recognises that, too.

He’s apologised for it enough times. But given that error of judgement has been acknowledged, does it matter hugely who saw what and who told whom about Mandelson’s less than glowing references from the vetting bods?

If you think the PM should quit because of it, the deliberations of the Foreign Affairs Committee are not going to change your mind. Same if you think he should stay put.

Mr Starmer has far bigger problems heading towards his breakfast plate. He’s got to get through this afternoon’s vote about being sent to the Privileges Committee, which is the last place he wants to end up.

And he should give his MPs a free vote because most of them will back him anyway. But it is the results of the elections next Friday which will concern him most. Nine in 10 Labour members say they are likely to be a bad egg, which can’t be uncooked.

And that could really cook the PM’s goose.