Starmer faces TWO judgment days to save his job: Prime Minister will face MPs over Mandelson scandal on Monday before sacked Foreign Office boss sticks the knife in on Tuesday

As Sir Keir Starmer faces not one but two judgment days next week as he fights to save his job, the ‘furious’ sacked Foreign Office boss is also preparing to take the stab at it as he launches his own staunch defence.

The Prime Minister will appear before MPs on Monday before Sir Olly Robbins joins parliament the following day and explain his department’s role in Lord Mandelson’s botched security investigation.

The Prime Minister blamed Sir Olly for failing to inform Number 10 that Mandelson had failed his vetting. His rivals say it’s incredible that, given his peer’s known connection to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he didn’t know or made it his business to know.

Meanwhile, the hostile war of words between Number 10 and the Foreign Office over who did what when about the disgraced former US ambassador and why he is still assigned to his Washington post has continued to escalate.

Sir Olly’s predecessor at the Foreign Office today publicly backed him after he was sacked on Thursday, saying he ‘followed the rules’ and accused the Prime Minister of ‘throwing him under the bus’.

Criticizing the Prime Minister as ‘wrong’, Lord Simon McDonald accused No 10 of ‘wanting a scalp as quickly as possible in the news cycle’ and not giving even Sir Olly, who he said was following due process, a chance to tell his side of the story.

He also suggested that the decision to appoint Mandelson had already been made, that the Prime Minister ‘wanted his man’ in Washington and that this was ‘an interpretation’ that the Foreign Office was effectively left to carry it out.

He also warned in stark terms that the State Department was facing its “biggest crisis” in more than four decades and needed a new head “as quickly as possible.”

Starmer blamed Sir Olly Robbins (pictured) for failing to inform No 10 that Mandelson had failed his vetting

‘This story broke on Thursday morning and within the news cycle Olly Robbins had to resign, which showed me that No 10 wanted the scalp and they wanted it as soon as possible.

He told the BBC: “I can’t see there being any process, any justice, any process that gives him a chance to put his case forward and that seems wrong to me.”

His comments came as it emerged Sir Olly had been told by friends that he was ‘very angry’ and would appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday to defend himself, although he has not yet formally accepted the invitation.

That means the Prime Minister could face a new showdown on Tuesday, even if he survives a possible blow to the House of Representatives on Monday when he tries to explain his apparent ignorance of Mandelson’s botched vetting.

Lord McDonald, who joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1982 and served between 2015 and 2020, insisted that vetting was a ‘secret process’ and that unless failure was a ‘black and white issue’ it would adhere to the legal rules set out in the CRAG (Constitutional Reform and Governance) Act in 2010.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today program whether he ‘buys’ the government’s position, he replied: ‘No, I don’t. This position misunderstands and misrepresents the system. Security review is an important part of the system. This is a confidential process.

‘There is a report and generally the details of that report are followed very closely and are never shared with No 10 or the Prime Minister and generally when things are complicated and sensitive it becomes a matter of judgment and mitigation and it seems to me that we are in that gray area rather than the very black and white world that No 10 wants.’

Asked whether an official should report details of a vetting failure to the Prime Minister or Number 10, he said: ‘Those things tend to be a bit murkier. The security review will have incomplete information. They might not be happy with a detail or two and there might be things that need to be eased, and all of that happens pretty regularly, but that doesn’t mean failure.

PM will have to explain to MPs his apparent ignorance of Peter Mandelson’s (pictured) botched vetting

‘If there had been a failure then this fact would have to be conveyed to the political level but the fact that this has not happened suggests to me that the picture is more complex than No 10 wants to present.’

Lord McDonald said it was this requirement of confidentiality for those responsible for the investigation process that meant Sir Olly “maintained his confidence” when Emily Thornberry appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee last year.

‘He did not go into detail as this was a confidential process. The final result is shared, but all the work behind it remains secret.’

When asked about the reason for this secrecy, which may come as a surprise to the public, he said: ‘The process was determined by law and the senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was monitoring the process in accordance with the law, and this is a secret process, just like medical records are secret.

‘Some things have details that are never shared, and this is in that category. What I do know is that in that kind of sensitive environment things tend to be complicated and judgment is involved and so as far as I could see he was following the rules and applying his own judgement.’

The former senior mandarin, who is a Life Peer in the House of Lords and is also a Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge, suggested the Foreign Office had been met with a fait accompli over Mandelson’s appointment.