Anger remains white hot in Whitehall over Olly Robbins sacking
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<p>Keir Starmer’s decision to oust senior official may have knock-on effect for No 10’s relationship with civil service</p><p>Fury within Whitehall about the treatment of Olly Robbins remains white hot several days on from Keir Starmer’s decision to sack the senior Foreign Office civil servant.</p><p>“It’s just total self-serving, narrow, selfish, political-endgame stuff,” said one supporter of Robbins, who was dismissed for failing to tell the prime minister that t
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Anger remains white hot in Whitehall over Olly Robbins sacking Keir Starmer’s decision to oust senior official may have knock-on effect for No 10’s relationship with civil service Fury within Whitehall about the treatment of Olly Robbins remains white hot several days on from Keir Starmer’s decision to sack the senior Foreign Office civil servant. “It’s just total self-serving, narrow, selfish, political-endgame stuff,” said one supporter of Robbins, who was dismissed for failing to tell the prime minister that the now disgraced former US ambassador Peter Mandelson had not passed UK security vetting. There is strong support for Robbins within Whitehall, with senior civil servants said to believe he was in effect sacked for doing what No 10 wanted by swiftly passing Mandelson through vetting, and putting in place mitigations to get around the security concerns. But on the political side, civil servants have expressed incredulity and anger at what they see as the prime minister being blindsided by another Mandelson-related bomb. Starmer has described the decision not to tell him about the failed vetting as “staggering”. It is a new low point for the relationship between No 10 and the civil service, after the ousting of the relatively new cabinet secretary Chris Wormald in February, and the prime minister’s accusation a year ago that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”. “The net effect is a chilling one,” said one mid-ranking official. “Why will we do anything vaguely risky that ministers want if we think they won’t have our backs if it goes wrong?” Any goodwill that existed towards a Labour administration after 14 years of the Conservatives appears to have evaporated in light of the perceived brutality of the way Robbins and Wormald have been treated. Robbins learned he was losing his job in the civil service by letter on Monday morning, several days after Starmer forced him out as permanent secretary. Giving his own sid...
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