DAN HODGES: Evidence from the Mandelson scandal is vanishing on an industrial scale – but voters won’t fall for it

On Tuesday, I was having lunch with a former colleague of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s former adviser. The conversation inevitably turned to the ‘stolen’ work phone myth. They told me casually, ‘His personal phone is also gone.’ ‘I am sad?’ I answered. ‘Yes. His personal cell phone. “He hung up.”

They showed me the number with some old messages from Starmer’s time as chief of staff. I called later. He was no longer recognized. The WhatsApp groups he was linked to dated back to the beginning of this year.

I spoke with another former colleague of McSweeney’s. They showed me the number of the third mobile phone he used during his time in government. Apparently this is still in service.

So I contacted Downing Street. I asked how many of the many cell phones McSweeney used (lost government cell phone, deactivated personal cell phone, currently active personal cell phone) had received messages from them.

‘We are determined to fully comply with the Modest Conversation,’ they said, referring to the parliamentary procedure used to force the government to release documents relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as our ambassador to Washington.

‘All Government departments, ministers and relevant individuals are in the process of being asked to provide information they hold as part of Humble Speech.’ So in other words, none.

When the history of the Starmer Government is written, last week will officially go down as the moment when the attempted cover-up of the Mandelson/Epstein scandal broke.

Taken in isolation, McSweeney’s claim that his cell phone was stolen may have been dismissed as a one-time misadventure, albeit a perfectly convenient one.

Peter Mandelson and the Prime Minister’s former private secretary were close Labor allies

However, as we will soon see, this was not an isolated incident. Instead, he was caught in the middle of what became a planned, coordinated and concerted attempt to defy the House of Commons and hide the truth about Mandelson’s appointment from the British public.

The following will be told to us in the coming days. First, it has not been possible to obtain the vast majority of messages stored on personal mobile phones from the various participants in this scandal.

Many excuses will be given. Old phones will be lost or thrown away. Sim cards will be mysteriously deleted. Backups required by government rules will not be retained. An apologetic junior minister will appear in the House of Commons to explain how the use of personal devices for sensitive government business will be urgently reviewed.

We would later find out that most of the official emails had also disappeared. At this point a new excuse will emerge. Parliament will be informed of a 90-day automatic deletion function that applies to all government communications. And this again means that most of the Mandelson-related communications have been deleted.

Parliament will not be told that despite this function all emails are still held on web server number 10. But when the Conservatives and other opposition parties raise the issue, another junior minister will be appointed to explain that the rescue is impossible due to technical difficulty and cost.

Finally, we will learn about the private emails circulating between the dramatic characters of the saga. Or rather, we won’t, because we will be told that the Cabinet Office keeps very few records of them. Kemi Badenoch and her MPs will once again point angrily at government regulations requiring an official record be kept of all private emails relating to government business.

They will also point to the precedent of Matt Hancock sharing all his Covid messages with journalist Isabel Oakeshott, where the Rules and Ethics Team angrily reprimanded him for finding those messages were technically the property of HM Government.

And once again, a shy minister will enter the House of Commons and explain how this whole affair has exposed gaps in the way government communications are managed. Then make a serious commitment that lessons have been learned and new rules will be put in place to ensure best practice is followed in the future.

At the height of Partygate, those who sought to deflect its significance dismissed Boris Johnson and his inner circle’s blatant abuse of Covid regulations as ‘just a simple argument’.

On Thursday, defense secretary Al Carns made a similar effort, saying dismissively: ‘I think this is politics at its worst. ‘We have two wars, one in the Middle East, one in Ukraine, and we’re talking about someone’s phone.’

Thanks to No 10’s surprisingly indifferent response to the alleged theft, the reality that one of the most sensitive mobile phones in the Government could be in the hands of any of the hostile states now involved in these wars appears to have escaped him. However, as in Partygate, the problem is not the theft of a single cell phone.

Parliament ordered Starmer to publish all documents relating to Peter Mandelson and the period before and after his appointment.

They do so because these documents may provide evidence of the most significant domestic and international political scandal for a generation. A case involving rape, serial harassment, and the alleged sale of state secrets. And it is now clear that Parliament and the public will see only some of these documents. Because the evidence of the Mandelson/Epstein scandal is disappearing and ‘disappearing’ on an industrial scale.

We are now in the middle of a cover-up designed to rival Watergate. But fortunately, like the Watergate example, this too was doomed to fail.

For the simple reason that every man, woman, child, dog, cat and potted plant from Land’s End to John o’Groats can see exactly what’s going on. And they won’t stand for it.

As Starmer is about to pay the price. He sat down for an interview with Sky’s Beth Rigby on Thursday and tried to articulate his way out of the scandal.

‘I beat myself up… There is no criticism that anyone else can direct at me that can be as harsh as the criticism I direct at myself,’ he said.

“I can see that,” Rigby replied.

But no one else could do this. What they could see with unerring clarity was Sir Keir’s self-serving, self-indulgent, self-pitying attempt to wriggle his way out of yet another self-inflicted political crisis.

And they don’t fall for it anymore. Because unfortunately for the Prime Minister, British voters do not come with an automatic deletion function.

He can send as many messages as he wants into the electronic ether. It’s always the cover-up that upsets you. And as we discovered last week, this cover-up is one of the biggest.