Guardian columnist

Not here, not now, not this month – but sometime soon the tumbrel will come for Keir Starmer. What saves him is the dismal fact that Labour has no obvious contender that MPs would rally round. Waiting for Andy Burnham is a reason for delay – but that might prompt Wes Streeting or Angela Rayner to seize the moment before the mayor of Greater Manchester can ride back to Westminster. Starmer’s manipulation of Labour’s national executive committee to bar Burnham from standing at the Gorton and Denton byelection (that he probably would have won) was low, petty politics that turned many against him: this non-politician was supposed to rise above such grubbiness.

The prime minister’s troubles will continue: MPs have now called for Morgan McSweeney to appear before the committee. But Starmer already admits that appointing Mandelson was a serious error – though remember that despite the known Epstein link, Kemi Badenoch did not protest aganst the decision, Nigel Farage praised it and Labour’s massed ranks did not rise up.

It might have seemed a touch of brilliance to send an avaricious man without moral or political scruple to charm a president with even less – security be damned. But Labour people will have been doubly appalled by the revelation from Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s biographer, of a close runner-up for that Washington post: George Osborne! Austerity’s destroyer of public services is a cursed name that has Labour reaching for the garlic and stake. That exposed a prime minister with a spinning political compass. He has begun to find due north with his bold refusal to join Trump’s war – but it’s far too late. For now he has a stay of execution – but only until his cabinet decides differently.

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Let’s not forget the root cause of this: Starmer’s Trump strategy has utterly backfired

Ed Davey

Leader of the Liberal Democrats

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This is a blow to the civil service – and its relationship with No 10

Alex Thomas

Executive director for impact and influence at the Institute for Government

The fallout from the Peter Mandelson scandal will cast a long shadow over relationships between ministers and the civil service. Olly Robbins’s sacking is another knock to trust at the centre of government. It follows the prime minister’s “tepid bath” criticism of officials, his dismissal of two cabinet secretaries and political frustration that the official machine has not been able to plug gaps in the government’s vision for the country. As the prime minister’s authority wanes, and his relationship with colleagues degrades, officials will look to survive a period of drift – or to prepare for leadership changes and turbulence ahead.

It is also a blow to Robbins’s reform programme at the Foreign Office – losing a leader midway through a set of fundamental structural changes will further destabilise the department at a time of geopolitical peril.

Confidence and trust between colleagues are essential qualities in the intense cauldron of No 10. The nature of Robbins’s exit will encourage too many in the civil service to conclude that back-covering and risk aversion are the correct responses. That in turn will further damage relationships. The prime minister and his civil service colleagues should remember that building trust, not laying audit trails, is the best response to the government’s recent troubles.

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The PM protests his ignorance, but who believes him?

Diane Abbott

MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

These frenzied political media events are most often anticlimactic – but I have learned some interesting detail in the past two days. Yet there was nothing surprising or out of character. Olly Robbins came across as the consummate Whitehall mandarin; but he did have an easier brief than the prime minister. All he had to do was tell the truth. Keir Starmer, on the other hand, had a bigger challenge. He had to convince the House of Commons that he had absolutely no idea that there were any concerns thrown up by Peter Mandelson’s security vetting. This was clearly improbable. You only have to go on Google to see what those concerns might be. Accordingly, parliament could not stop laughing at the PM’s protestations of ignorance.

The government will survive the recent excitements, partly because nobody in the Labour party has an interest in a leadership contest and partly because there is no agreement on a successor. However, things may look different after the May elections. One of the main lessons for politicians from recent events is that unwritten rules in government are there for a reason. For Starmer to sack a whole series of officials who have done nothing but try to execute what he wanted is outrageous. Hopefully it will not happen again, at least on such a scale. But maybe the rules should be made explicit that politicians cannot sack senior civil servants without due process, in a completely arbitrary way. Anything else seriously undermines the democratic process.

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I can tell you who will judge right and wrong – the voters

John McTernan

Former political secretary to Tony Blair

It was No 10 wot dun it. All roads in Olly Robbins’s testimony to the foreign affairs select committee lead back to Downing Street. 

No 10 made the announcement of the appointment of Peter Mandelson with no qualification, no caveat that this was dependent on developed vetting (DV). There was “pressure” to get this done at speed – No 10 wanted it over the line before the inauguration of Donald Trump. 

In Robbins’s account, Downing Street saw the Foreign Office as an operational offshoot – speedily delivering what it wanted in the US, searching in another instance for a diplomatic post for a staffer about to be moved on – and (via the Cabinet Office) asking questions about whether DV was actually necessary for the post of US ambassador. And in a bombshell, Robbins seemed to suggest that No 10 and the Cabinet Office leaked the story about Mandelson failing his vetting to the Guardian, which he also called a “grievous breach of national security”.

Robbins took full responsibility for the vetting process and its conclusion. But with his “union rep” – Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA – sitting behind him, Robbins was indicating that he will not take the sacking lying down. 

Politics is full of fascinating processology, but where is the responsibility? It was not the vetting that mattered; it was the sheer immorality of the appointment in the first place. Keir Starmer has taken personal responsibility for that – without, so far, any personal consequences. Those will come in two waves. First, from voters, who will humiliate the whole Labour party in May. Second, from the parliamentary Labour party, who will put Starmer out of his misery later this year.