Today’s big political moments don’t stop at the Foreign Affairs Committeepublished at 11:09 BST
11:09 BST
Chris Mason
Political editor
Greetings from a Transport for Wales train trundling from Crewe
to Cardiff – a reminder that today’s big political moments don’t end with the
testimonies to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee or the debate in the
Commons later.
Tonight, there is a 90-minute live TV debate on the BBC
involving the six leading parties contesting the elections to the Senedd, the
Welsh Parliament.
All this amounts to a nightmarish backdrop for Labour in the
Welsh elections, the Scottish elections and the English local elections.
Not because millions of people are devouring every detail of the
Lord Mandelson saga, I’m sure many are not. But because it loiters like a big,
dark, threatening cloud over everything else the party wants to focus on.
What stood out for me from Sir Philip Barton’s testimony?
He worried at the time that Lord Mandelson’s connections to
Jeffrey Epstein “could be a problem in the future.”
But he wasn’t consulted in advance – despite his vast diplomatic
experience, including in America.
In fact, he found out
very late that Lord Mandelson was being made ambassador to Washington – just
before it was announced.
His view was that it was unusual for someone to be announced
into a role before the vetting process had been complete.
He distinguished between the real pressure to get him out to
America ASAP and, he said, there being no pressure relating to the substance of
sorting his vetting.
And, perhaps unsurprisingly, his swerved some of the juicier
opportunities he was given to wade into the various political rows around all
this that are still swirling – the sacking of his successor Sir Olly Robbins
chief among them.
He did, rather helpfully for the next witness, the Prime
Minister’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, say he did not recall
McSweeney ever swearing at him to get a move on in sorting Lord Mandelson’s
vetting.