Prime Ministerial Statement: Security Vetting

We conclude from the Prime Minister’s statement (and replies) in the Commons this afternoon that either Sir Keir really is not very clever, or that he over-rode the written advice of his Cabinet Secretary to undertake security vetting before announcing the appointment of Lord Mandelson because he took a political and fatally flawed judgement to appoint a man to the role of Ambassador to Washington despite the appointee’s publicly-acknowledged and serious history of dishonesty. Stupidity or blunder?

As a self-declared “process” guy, however, the Prime Minister’s failure to adopt the procedural advice proffered in order to insulate the Prime Minister from accusations of significant miscalculation was a catastrophic process error, compounding a character misjudgement and a tone-deaf deferral to the politics of judgement-impaired advisors. The mood of the Labour Party now seems stoically accepting that the Government must stumble towards 7th May’s local elections with a leader who holes their campaign beneath the water line. Labour has no route to a replacement even after those elections who can offer hope of improvement. It’s a death march.

Best Question

Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister has twice rebuffed first the Leader of the Opposition and then the Leader of the Liberal Democrats when they said that the then Cabinet Secretary’s advice to the Prime Minister was to get the clearance before the announcement. So I am going to read him one sentence from a document entitled “Options for HMA Washington” from the Cabinet Secretary of the day to him, him personally. It says: “If this is the route you wish to take, you should give us the name of the person you would like to appoint and we will develop a plan for them to acquire the necessary security clearances and do due diligence on any potential conflicts of interest or other issues of which you should be aware before confirming your choice.” The House does not want to hear about what Mr Wormald said a year later. That was the advice then. Why didn’t he follow it?

Totally missing the point

Mr Speaker, he reads out the passage from Mr Case’s advice. The process that was followed was what I understood to be the usual process. In other words, the appointment was subject to the security vetting. It is why, when Sir Chris Wormald looked at it in September, he addressed the question by reference back to Simon Case’s letter, because I wanted to know the process that had been followed was the right process and that is what Sir Chris Wormald looked at. He looked at it expressly by reference to the Simon Case letter that has just been read out and assured me that the right process was followed when he reviewed it.

Sir David Davies’s question and the Prime Minister’s reply:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/e82f2c25-9b31-4868-b7fe-85284338d639?in=16:21:07

SO WHY DID YOU NOT FOLLOW YOUR CABINET SECRETARY’S PROCESS ADVICE?
NO-ONE KNOWS.

Honourable Mention

Check us out on insta @theworldofukpolitics