Olly Robbins has just nuked the premiership of Sir Keir Starmer

[ProudAmberTurtle]

What are the implications of Olly Robbins’s testimony for Starmer?

There was so much in his testimony that was damaging but surely the worst was that:

• He was instructed by No. 10 to find an ambassador's job for Starmer's then director of communications, Matthew Doyle
• He was told not to tell the foreign secretary about this
• Robbins considered leaving his role because this request was so unusual and inappropriate
• Doyle was then suspended from the Labour Party due to his links with a convicted paedophile (not Epstein).

And on Mandelson, he said there was "constant pressure" for him to fast-track the appointment, there was no interest in the vetting from the PM, concerns about the vetting were dismissed by No. 10 and Mandelson had already been given IT access that should only have been granted after the vetting process.

What can Starmer do now? Say Robbins was lying?

You clearly didn’t watch the news today.

Of course he's throwing people under the bus. Didn't you watch his statement yesterday and the Foreign Select Committee this morning? The civil servants seem to have been the only ones doing the right thing.

What unsound advice was he given by civil servants?

It's very likely that he either was given unsound advice by his own political advisers who he appointed, or allowed them to run his government - but that's entirely Starmer's fault.

Can you say specifically what that unsound advice was?

I think Starmer chucked out Dame Karen and laid out red carpet for the odious Mandleson precisely because Mandy is a two faced backstabbing weasel of a political player. Cut from the same cloth as the serial fraudsters, manipulators and criminals currently inhabiting senior presidential positions and wealthy elites. Mandelson would have been perfectly content to swim in the same cesspool and bring compromising information back to number 10 to line his own pockets. Vetting likely did show Mandy was a highly risky choice because like most of this boys club, he’ll do anything for cash, power and position. Starmer won’t want to be caught ‘knowing’ this by actually seeing any of the risks laid out, because it didn’t matter one jot to the appointment. Plus Starmer can now perform righteous indignation that he wasn’t told.

According to Starmer he wasn’t told anything at all so maybe PP knows more than Starmer himself. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Well, given the King's brother Andrew also had dodgy connections with China and Epstein, all covered up repeatedly, it might be tad awkward for Charles too.

But I think Olly Robbins was reluctant to actually name Keir Starmer, wasn't he, and that's very interesting.

Emily Thornberry is herself a lying, evasive piece of work IMO.

One of the journalists involved is out for Starmer's blood simply for the kudos of a big scalp (personal knowledge).

Anyone watching the committee today will know Billy Robbins didn’t give ‘unsound advice’. No one did.

The opposite in fact.

I’m not sure where the pp is getting that version from.

Olly..

This is the key question.

"How on earth was Mandelson worth all this?"

It could be argued the Mandelson debacle is making some Labour supporters reconsider their position.

Yeah I agree with this. Mandy swam in the same murk as Trump - yes a reason not to select him and also to select him at the same
time.

it was a gamble, it didn’t pay off and now the right wing press is having a field day.

this is not a reason to change PMs when there is the threat of nuclear war on the table.

you absolute numpties - I do hope you are being paid for this drivel.

The Guardian led with the story. The ‘right wing press’ keeps getting used as an excuse but it’s a poor one.

Starmer won’t lead Labour into the next general election because everyone, including him, knows he has become a political liability.

He won’t go any time soon, though. As everyone who knows their Labour history is very well aware, the party may be disputatious & factional, but they are nowhere near as brutal or ruthless as the Tories. That’s why they lose so many elections & opposition is their comfort zone. They are far too spineless to knife their own leader in the back.

My expectation is that he will resign 12-18 months before the next election. We’ll see.

So we get rid of another PM and who's going to replace him?

The conservatives fell into this trap and what you end up is a country where nothing actually gets done.

We have the biggest crisis since the second world war. We are literally on the cusp of world war 3 and people think now is the time for a change. If things carry on then I expect Turkey to attack Israel and there is a huge risk that China could take action.

Turkey and China are close to being dragged into the Iran conflict and we have a man in the white house who seems determined to support regimes that risk our security.

A lot of what is going off is completely out of our control, so while changing our PM would have very little impact on world events, but what it risks is making our democracy even more vulnerable to outside influences.

If China or Turkey get dragged into this then it will go nuclear....I say that with 100% certainty. If Israel are attacked they will respond with nuclear weapons.

Just you

I fully support Kier Starmer because the alternative is far worse

The odds on Boris losing his job as PM in 2022 (in April 2022): 8/11 (about a 58% chance)

The odds on Starmer losing his job as PM in 2026 (in April 2026): 1/3 (about a 75% chance)

Labour aren’t the Tories.

At those odds, the smart money would be on Starmer still being PM at the end of the year.

Johnson hung on for a few more months after that. Starmer probably will too.

I don't think Starmer will go yet...I think the party want Rayner and Burnham free to run....but I do think he will go before the next election. Not because of this Mandelson idiocy but because (as demonstrated by aforementioned idiocy) he has no political instincts, no spine, no authority in his own party, no credible plans to make anything better ...and currently any alternative is (far) worse. I am absolutely no fan of Starmer or Labour, and I think hyperbole around nuclear war is dangerous, but this isn't the time to change PM AGAIN, however dire I think this government are!

A bit OT but what does ‘by No 10’ mean? As in ‘told by No 10 to do xyz’… who’s doing the telling?

An unnamed person in Starmer's office

Do the instructions come from the PM? But he wants to hide behind ‘No 10 says…’ And a spokesperson issues the actual instruction?

It’s clear that Olly Robins was in a no win situation. It is also very alarming is that the UK vetting office is going around leaking things.