Keir Starmer’s decision to oust senior official may have knock-on effect for No 10’s relationship with civil service
Fury within Whitehall about the treatment of Olly Robbins remains white hot several days on from Keir Starmer’s decision to sack the senior Foreign Office civil servant.
“It’s just total self-serving, narrow, selfish, political-endgame stuff,” said one supporter of Robbins, who was dismissed for failing to tell the prime minister that the now disgraced former US ambassador Peter Mandelson had not passed UK security vetting.
There is strong support for Robbins within Whitehall, with senior civil servants said to believe he was in effect sacked for doing what No 10 wanted by swiftly passing Mandelson through vetting, and putting in place mitigations to get around the security concerns.
But on the political side, civil servants have expressed incredulity and anger at what they see as the prime minister being blindsided by another Mandelson-related bomb. Starmer has described the decision not to tell him about the failed vetting as “staggering”.
