Spads corrode trust between ministers and officials – debacles like the Mandelson one are the consequence
Sir Olly Robbins gives evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on 21 April 2026 (PA Images / Alamy)
4 min read
There are always going to be tensions in the running of government.
On the one hand, you have officeholders who are elected politicians with legitimate agendas to take forward and problems of political presentation and survival to worry about. On the other, you have permanent officials with a strong sense of propriety and process, and a caution that decisions should not have adverse consequences. At worst, this can lead to bureaucratic inertia and the scenes that make Yes Minister good comedy.
But Lord Heseltine said he could think of no occasion when he had been obstructed or let down by his civil servants. On the contrary, once they were confident that the minister knew what they were doing, they would give unstinting and loyal support. This was also my experience when I was attorney general, albeit with a small and highly focused department, and I can think of many colleagues who had the same experience.
In looking at the car crash in respect of Lord Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US, the collapse in the relationship between the Prime Minister and Sir Olly Robbins illustrates what happens when proper process is abandoned and corners cut.
The appointment was known to be risky and announced at speed without full developed vetting (DV) having first taken place. Sir Olly, as a new permanent secretary, is then landed with the inevitable result of the DV that there are risks to this appointment, but ones he decides can be managed. He does not report this to the then foreign secretary David Lammy as he is not allowed, for good reason, to share any detail of this highly intrusive process. He sees the publicly announced appointment as irreversible without great reputational damage to the government. The Prime Minister – who must be the first PM to have undergone DV when he was appointed director of public prosecutions (DPP) – is now outraged that he was not told about the outcome of the DV, and sacks him.
In an ideal world, I might have hoped that Sir Olly could have spoken informally to the foreign secretary as the appointing minister, to the effect that the DV reinforced the concerns that had been raised and ignored when Lord Mandelson’s appointment was first announced by No 10. That he did not, suggests to me that trust levels were not high. We should not be surprised about this.
Starmer seems oblivious to the risks from the dirtier end of politics
The evidence is now overwhelming that the growth in the role and influence of special advisers has driven a wedge in the traditional relationship between ministers and their civil servants – and it is getting worse.
I think it is highly relevant that when the PM’s office was told of the ‘failed’ outcome of the DV, as part of the process of responding to the Humble Address, this information was almost immediately leaked, clearly as part of some ‘spin’ management. And this isn’t a one-off. Both this government and its predecessors come across as dysfunctional ‘government by leak’. I saw it for myself recently, when a confidential draft report of a working group I was chairing for the government on anti-Muslim hatred was partially leaked within hours of its being provided, again for what looked like shallow presentational purposes.
For these reasons, the issue is not about who is lying – it is about how government is properly and efficiently conducted in the public interest. As DPP, the PM had a reputation for living up to the high standards of that non-political office. But this may be, ironically, why he is now failing. He seems oblivious to the risks from the dirtier end of politics, and appears to be outsourcing the handling of those issues to advisers who are plainly unfit to do it.
Putting this right needs an urgent look at the role of special advisers and how trust within government – particularly between ministers and civil servants – can be reinforced and restored, not peremptorily sacking permanent secretaries trying to navigate shark ponds created by politicians.
Dominic Grieve is the former Conservative attorney general
