Archiv: Downing Street Chief of Staff


21.04.2026 - 22:18 [ Spectator.com ]

When Mandelson could bring down Starmer

(March 14, 2026)

As my big piece on Starmer last month revealed, even after Mandelson was appointed, Starmer never quizzed him about how to deal with Trump. All this exposes a Prime Minister with Olympic levels of detachment. It has been known for a while that he has little interest in politics but those who have worked with him have been genuinely surprised at his lack of interest in the detail of governing.

(…)

The book also reveals that the decision to sack Mandelson was taken by McSweeney, not Starmer. On the day the PM defended Mandelson in the Commons, McSweeney was in a secure basement conference room without his phone when two of Starmer’s closest aides – Paul Ovenden and Stuart Ingham – came to find him. Ingham told him: ‘We just can’t answer these questions.’

McSweeney’s response – ‘It’s unsustainable’ – was the moment the decision was effectively made.

21.04.2026 - 21:53 [ theNational.scot ]

No 10 bid for SECOND paedo-linked Labour ally to get ambassador role

He was later pushed on who had ordered him to look into getting Doyle a position, and who had ordered him not to tell the foreign secretary (which at the time was David Lammy).

Robbins said: “I don‘t know what the origin of the suggestion was, and I don‘t know who exactly was behind it or how serious it was.

“It was serious enough for the No 10 private office to ring up the head of the diplomatic service and ask for a forward look of available head of mission jobs, and that‘s the point at which I thought that I needed to lay down some markers.”

21.04.2026 - 21:30 [ theGuardian.com ]

Olly Robbins: I was asked to find job for Starmer aide and not tell David Lammy

Testifying to MPs at parliament’s foreign affairs select committee on Tuesday, Olly Robbins said he had several conversations with No 10 about finding a role for Matthew Doyle, who was later suspended as a Labour peer after it emerged he had campaigned for a friend charged with possessing indecent images of children.

Robbins said he had been asked not to mention the idea to David Lammy, who was foreign secretary at the time.

Robbins described the conversations as part of more general pressure from people at the top of the government to place senior political figures in senior diplomatic posts.

21.04.2026 - 15:35 [ Independent.co.uk ]

Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson: Who are Starmer’s new joint chiefs of staff?

(February 8, 2026)

With Morgan McSweeney’s enforced departure over the Mandelson scandal, his former deputies Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson have both been promoted to replace him as joints chiefs of staff