Sir Simon McDonald said No 10 ‘wanted a scalp’ but removal of Robbins from Foreign Office felt ‘wrong’
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Five unanswered questions
After agreeing that Sir Olly Robbins was “thrown under the bus” after revelations about Peter Mandelson’s vetting process, Lord Simon McDonald also claimed that saying the process “failed” wasn’t correct as “it is a very black and white word”.
Speaking on the Today programme on Saturday, Lord McDonald said:
These things tend to be a bit murkier than that. I mean security vetting will have incomplete information, they will be unhappy about one or two details, they’ll want mitigations to be put in place.
And all of that happens quite regularly. It means there are hesitations, there are imperfections, but it doesn’t amount to failure.
Yes. This story broke on Thursday morning in a piece in The Guardian – within the news cycle Olly Robbins had been required to resign.
This shows to me that Number 10 wanted a scalp and they wanted it quickly and I cannot see that there was any process, any fairness, any giving him the chance to set out his case, and that feels to me wrong. Continue reading…
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