The emperor’s old advisor

The biggest shock in Morgan McSweeney’s appearance before Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee came near the start. The boyish former Number 10 chief of staff, familiar from pictures showing him walking up Downing Street on his first day at Big School, revealed that in 2021 he had been 44 years old. Which meant that — we put down our pens to count our fingers — he is now 49. We looked back at his lustrous ginger hair and his unlined face. If the Laboratoires Garnier aren’t trying to milk his glands for the secret of youth, they’re missing a trick.

The news that McSweeney is pushing 50 created a further mystery. The aide’s defence for this mess is that he had believed Mandelson’s denial of a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. When we thought that McSweeney was a wet-behind-the-ears thirtysomething just off the boat from Cork, that seemed merely naïve. Now we know that he’s spent a quarter of a century inside Labour politics, there really is no excuse for being surprised that Peter Mandelson turned out to be rather Mandelsony.

Now we know that he’s spent a quarter of a century inside Labour politics, there really is no excuse for being surprised that Peter Mandelson turned out to be rather Mandelsony

Elsewhere in the building, Kemi Badenoch was launching a bid to have Keir Starmer investigated for lying to Parliament. The Conservatives have persuaded themselves that the objectively awful facts aren’t terrible enough, and that there needs to be a deep state conspiracy. Alex Burghart, Tory tinfoiler-in-chief, was furiously tweeting about his discovery that no one had written down the moment that Starmer decided to appoint Mandelson. “Massive cover-up”, he speculated, although it’s not exactly clear of what. The prime minister has yet to claim that the appointment didn’t happen.

Due to some ancient constitutional convention, everyone giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee has to reveal a previously unknown attempt to make a terrible ambassadorial appointment. Last week we learned about the hunt for a gig for Matthew Doyle. This week the revelation was that the figure offered next to Mandelson was none other than George Osborne.

You might remember Osborne from previous triumphs, such as “the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union”, “the bid to save the London Evening Standard” and “the plot to make George Osborne prime minister”. And yet he fails ever upwards. He is currently running the British Museum, which we can expect to hear any day has been swallowed by a sinkhole. The press looked at each other with wild surmise. If a nakedly partisan former Tory chancellor was a Labour government’s second choice for a plum job, who was third on the list? Couldn’t anyone find a number for Russell Brand?

The best explanation of the inclusion of Osborne’s name was as part of an effort to force Starmer to pick Mandelson by offering an obviously unacceptable alternative. McSweeney denied this, claiming instead that a former Tory chancellor would have been a natural fit with a Republican president, as though the heir of the Osborne & Little wallpaper firm would have enjoy discussing interior décor with the man who designed Trump Tower.

It was a long session, but a sparky one, partly because committee chair Emily Thornberry clearly blames McSweeney for the fact that she didn’t make it into the Cabinet. She made caustic remarks about “jobs for the boys” when McSweeney squirmed over his efforts to find Doyle a role. “Sue Gray is now in the House of Lords,” he replied limply, as though having found a job for a girl made it all better.

We also heard from Sir Philip Barton, who preceded Sir Olly Robbins at the top of the Foreign Office. He revealed that it wasn’t just Brits who’d raised eyebrows at the Mandelson appointment. Donald Trump’s team had also been unhappy about it. That only emphasised the deep mystery at the heart of all this. Not the one MPs think they’re investigating, about Who Knew What and When, but a much simpler one: why did anyone think any of this was a good idea?

McSweeney denied it was payback for a mentor. “This was not some hero I was trying to get a job for,” he said. “I thought he had the skills to do it. I made the wrong judgement.” Who had raised the idea? “I think the first person who put Mandelson’s name forward was Mandelson.” That at least rang true.

The Dark Lord had represented his relationship with Epstein as “a passing acquaintance”.McSweeney had written to him to check this, and Mandelson had assured him it was so, and what else could anyone do? When the first wave of news came out that things might have been a bit closer than that, “it was like a knife to my soul”.

It was a lovely turn of phrase, but honestly, there’d been little in those revelations that would have been a surprise to anyone who had read as far as the second page of the Cabinet Office’s pre-appointment advice to Starmer. Perhaps I’m being harsh. Which of us hasn’t stayed in a paedophile’s house while he’s in prison?

Which of us hasn’t stayed in a paedophile’s house while he’s in prison?

“The prime minister has his own mind,” McSweeney insisted. “He reaches his own decisions.” Does he? Trying to understand Starmer’s Downing Street is like taking apart a Russian doll: you keep thinking you’ll get to the heart of things, only to uncover another mystery. There’s a prime minister who doesn’t seem to know why he’s there, and then a chief of staff who doesn’t have the wit to see that “friend of Epstein” is a danger sign, even when someone spells it out for him. If we keep going, will we ever find anything, or just a great vacuum?