Hello, welcome to Coffee House. I'm James Heel.

And I'm Tim Shipman.

And today we're going to be talking about the only story that matters in Westminster.

That is Peter Manelson's vetting status, why Olli Robbins was sacked as head of the Foreign Office,

and can the Prime Minister get through the next 48 hours with his party still behind him?

We're going to ask three key questions. What does this mean for the Prime Minister's relationship with his party? What does it mean for the Prime Minister's relationship with the country? And what does it mean for the relationship between this government and the civil service? So Tim, the government is arguing that Olly Robbins had a duty to inform them about Mandelson failing vet. Robbins' allies, we expect to hear more of that tomorrow when he's up before the Foreign Affairs Committee, are countering that actually he did follow all rules at all times and he's been made a full guy. What's the truth in all of this? Well, I think the big picture truth is still the same as it was at the end of last week, which is that the Prime Minister and his chief of staff, McSweeney wanted to appoint Peter Mandelson as the ambassador of the United States. They had already

battered away a heck of a lot of doubts from ministers, from former colleagues, from Jonathan Powell,

the National Security Advisor, who worked with Mandelson before, and others saying,

bit of a risk, don't think you should do that, Prime Minister. And Stama and McSweeney basically went, we don't care. Now, to the degree to which Stama subcontracted this decision to McSweeney, as ever is an open question. This is not a guy with strong views of his own, but he adopted this view, he made it his own,

and it was very clear to the system in Whitehall that this is what he wanted. So what happens? A formal

vetting process is launched in the January. Mandelson has been appointed in the December. So this is

already after the event. Oliver Robbins only starts as the permanent secretary at the foreign office.

Two days after, two days after Mandelson has already been appointed. If you look at the security

pass that Mandelson whirl around his neck, it was dated 6th of January. Ollie Robbins only started

work on the 8th. And the vetting that we're talking about came later in the month in the 20-somethings

of January. So as far as Robbins was concerned,

this was a done deal. This was a decision made. Now, UK security vetting, who are the

independent body who performed this vetting, gave Mandelson a fail. Robbins looked at that,

and as I understand it, and from some of the reporting I've done over the weekend,

mitigations were put in place. Now, we don't formally yet know why Mandelson failed this vetting,

but my understanding strongly is that it was links with Chinese and potentially Russian companies

as well. It's nothing to do with his friendship with Geoffrey Epstein. And the mitigations that were put

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