Staggering, incredible, unforgivable, furious. Kirstarmer hasn't held back in his verdict of who made mistakes in the process of appointing Peter Mandelson as the UK's ambassador to the US, but has a tumultuous week of blame gaming

ended the row. I'm Hannah White and this is Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government.

Now, it is Wednesday afternoon as we're recording and the seventh day running that Westminster

is gripped by the continuing fallout of the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal.

The Prime Minister has had his say, Olly Robbins, the man the PM fired as Foreign Office permanent secretary,

has told his side of the story too. So what happens next? The pressure is on Kirstama. A lot of Labour

MPs are unhappy, and that's before what is expected to be a set of bruising elections in May.

A huge number of civil servants are also deeply demoralised, with low levels of trust between

ministers and officials taking yet another blow. And the Foreign Office is without a permanent

secretary at a time when quite a lot is going on in the world, a far from ideal situation.

So can the PM get things back on track and move on from a scandal that just will not seem to go away?

That's what we'll be exploring on today's podcast.

And we also have a rather well-timed new IFG report out this week,

a paper setting out how civil servants can best handle major crises.

We'll speak to its author. With me for the whole of the pod, it is going to be IFG executive

director Alex Thomas, who was away for his birthday. Happy birthday, Alex. When this story unfolded

over the weekend, please tell me you did not spend your time focusing on it. Well, maybe just a little bit, but I suspect I had a more enjoyable birthday than one Sir Oliver Robbins, who pointed out to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that it was also his birthday on Monday, so he and I share our special day. And we have senior fellow Kath Hadden back. You've also been on leave. Yeah, and I was switched off entirely.

I was just looking back on my WhatsApp. I think the first that I knew about it was a friend saying,

is Olly Robbins in trouble? And then sending me the story. So I didn't know anything about it until

I got a WhatsApp, but have been very much immersed in it since I've been back in the office.

And I'm delighted that we are joined today by someone who really knows how the Foreign

Office and the Civil Service work. And that's Lord Ricketts, former Foreign Office

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