James Delingpole

James Delingpole

James Mark Court Delingpole (born 6 August 1965) is an English writer, journalist, and columnist who has written for a number of publications, including the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He is a former executive editor for Breitbart London, and has published several novels and four political books. He describes himself as a libertarian conservative. He has frequently published articles promoting climate change denial and expressing opposition to wind power.

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James Delingpole

22, April

Alex Wickham: The key point of process that determines…

The key point of process that determines if you believe Keir Starmer or Olly Robbins is right is still unclear this morning. The Cabinet Office - led by Antonia Romeo and Cat Little - say they discovered a UKSV document that clearly recommends against giving Mandelson clearance, with a tick in a red box for ‘clearance denied’. Bloomberg reported on Friday how Cabinet Office officials found this bombshell document on a secure portal while complying with the humble address and everything then developed from there. That document is the basis for Starmer’s claim that Mandelson failed his vetting and that he should have been told about this recommendation by Robbins. On the face of it, it does seem absolutely extraordinary that officials would keep this apparently clear written recommendation on such a high-profile appointment from the PM and cabinet secretary. That is why Robbins was sacked. But Robbins testified yesterday that he never saw this document. Instead he said he only had a verbal briefing with the Foreign Office security team that, in his words, only ‘leaned’ against recommending clearance be granted. He says they were then able to mitigate the concerns and approve Mandelson’s clearance. The Cabinet Office version of events and the document they’ve found, and Robbins’ version, appear to be inconsistent. Robbins’ contention is essentially that this is all a huge misunderstanding, that Mandelson did not fail his vetting, that the problems raised by UKSV were resolvable by him and he resolved them, and that he shouldn’t have been sacked. Robbins says any pressure from No10 did not impact the decision-making of him and his officials. Sources say the missing person in the story is Dr Ian Collard, a former senior FCDO security official. He is the person who had the verbal briefing with Robbins where they agreed they could mitigate the UKSV concerns, they say. Collard has since left the government. It seems Collard might be able to clear up whether UKSV did firmly recommend against Mandelson or only lean that way, and therefore whether Robbins was right to try to fix the problem himself with mitigations, or if he should have rejected Mandelson’s DV on the advice of UKSV and told No10 what had happened. If the UKSV concerns weren’t that grave and were possible to mitigate, Robbins has a good argument that he was right to do that and clear Mandelson’s DV without raising it up the chain, and therefore that he was unfairly sacked for trying to do what the PM wanted. If the UKSV concerns were more clear cut, as the UKSV document produced by the Cabinet Office implies, it’s harder for Robbins to argue he did the right thing. You’d have thought Collard and senior Cabinet Office officials will be called by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee to try to clear this up in the coming days…