Olly Robbins - the foreign office top civil servant fired by Keir Starmer on Thursday - gave his version of events today. He described an atmosphere of immense pressure over the Peter Mandelson appointment and suggested Downing Street weren’t that interested in the vetting process at all.

Was he bullied into giving Mandelson the job? Was Starmer right to sack Robbins? And why was he hunting for another ambassadorial role for another friend of another paedophile? It’s all getting silly.

We talk to the chair of the committee Emily Thornberry about what she just heard.

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Keir Starmer is still pleading his case before MPs. Should he have been told about the failed Mandelson vetting by Olly Robbins? Should he have asked? Who’s fault was it really that he didn’t find out until last Tuesday. And why, critically, did he ignore a letter of advice from then cabinet secretary Simon Case explicitly telling him to vet Mandelson BEFORE appointing him. We still have no clear answer…

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That's the charge from Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who has called on the Prime Minister to resign today.

The Guardian reported last night that Starmer appointed Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington even though he had failed government security vetting. The PM has said today he is "absolutely furious" he was not told about this - and has sacked Olly Robbins, the top civil servant at the Foreign Office.

Starmer had previously insisted that “full due process” was followed in the appointment, and that Mandelson had cleared the vetting. Could it really be the case that Starmer was never alerted to the vetting issues? And if he was never told - should it have been his job to know? Why does he keep coming across as a passenger, rather than the driver, of government?

And does the latest revelation in the Mandelson affair put the PM in fresh peril - just as it looked like the leadership speculation was beginning to dim?

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