DAT Green

The two interesting legal challenges to the Trump legal “settlement” slush fund

28th May 2026

How two cases show how a problem can be attacked in two different ways

This blog has previously covered the extraordinary legal suit brought by Donald Trump against his own government and then the extraordinary supposed “settlement” of that law suit.

That “settlement” purported to use a private agreement (not placed before a court) to establish a high-value fund to benefit political allies of the president – including the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol.

It looked as if the legal side of the case was over, and it was now a matter for politics.

But the legal side is not over.

There are (at least) two legal challenges to what has happened, from different perspectives. Both are legally interesting, as they attack the problem from different legal angles.

One challenge is from two police officers who were at the Capitol during the attempted insurrection.

You can read their challenge here.

The police Plaintiffs are applying for orders and other court relief to quash the establishment of the fund – primarily on the basis that the federal government does not have the legal authority to do what it is purporting to do.

List of the Orders and other relief applied for by the plaintiffs.

This appears to be essentially a public law action against the federal government. It is exactly the right sort of case to bring against public bodies exceeding their powers.

The other case is far more legally ambitious and imaginative, and it has been brought by a posse of retired federal judges, who are “Movants” (lovely legal word) of a motion for the court itself to re-open the case.

This is also exactly the right challenge to bring – but in respect of what appears to have been the abuse of process which led to the supposed “settlement”.

If the Movants succeed then the court will re-open the case and continue with its inquiry into whether there was a real dispute.

Some abuses of the law are straightforward, and when they occur they usually lend themselves to an obvious remedy.

But the more extraordinary the abuse, the more any remedy has to be especially fashioned.

Here the police Plaintiffs and the federal judge Movants have worked out two different ways to approach the instant situation – one by attacking the outputs (the setting up of the fund), the other attacking the inputs (the way the supposed litigation ended).

I am not an American lawyer, and so I do not know if either case has merit and/or will have traction. But both are interesting ways to get the courts to weigh back in an utter outrage that had looked as if it had escaped the courts.

The odd setting up of what appears to be a corrupt slush fund for the allies of President Trump

22nd May 2026

In which a settlement agreement is pushed far beyond any proper legal limits

Contract law is a fascinating subject: it is about how parties can create legal obligations and rights between themselves which otherwise would not exist.

Constitutional and other forms of public law are, of course also fascinating: for they set out what can and cannot be done by those charged with public power.

And when contract law and constitutional law mix, then the results are even more fascinating.

The legal suit brought by President Trump (and his son and his corporation) against his own government is extraordinary for many reasons.

In particular two things stand out.

First, there does not seem to be a dispute capable of being adjudicated by a court.

Second, there does not seem to have been a settlement in any legally recognisable form.

To adapt a famous techie saying: bizarre in, bizarre out.

In reality the whole exercise is brazen corruption. Everyone knows this, though many do not seem to care. It is the sort of thing that should (but will not) lead to Trump’s immediate impeachment and removal from office.

But, this being a law and policy blog, let us go though the motions of looking at this racket from a legal perspective. If anything, it will show what an odd thing is going on.

As this blog has already set out (as well as at this Prospect piece), the law suit was a rum affair.

That is not to say there was not an underlying legal wrong: the leaking of the president’s tax returns (even if in the public interest) was an unlawful act and indeed the leaker has been prosecuted under the criminal law.

And generally (if not universally) speaking where there is a criminal offence there is usually a civil wrong – what lawyers call a tort.

The records of Trump were leaked by a government contractor and so, in principle, there is both blame and a claim.

But on this basis, Trump and his co-plaintiffs constructed a demand for an extortionate amount – far above what would be the level of damages for such a wrong – and brought the claim at a time when Trump was in effect the head of the defendants. Trump thereby would have effective control of both sides of the case.

The plaintiffs, however, encountered a problem. The court was not convinced it could hear a claim where one person controlled both sides. And if there is not an actual dispute between parties in disagreement, then the court would not have jurisdiction to hear the claim.

At this point the judge could have simply stuck out the suit for want of jurisdiction (though that probably would have been appealed). Instead, the judge invited the parties to make submissions on the jurisdiction point – and she also appointed independent lawyers as “friends of the court” to make submissions which the parties may selfishly not wish to make.

The deadline for those submissions was last week. But the plaintiffs did not make submissions. They pulled the case instead. The claim was dropped.

Court order with highlighted text ORDER CLOSING CASE THIS MATTER is before the Court on Plaintiffs’ Notice of Voluntary Dismissal with Prejudice (“Notice”) (DE 52). In the Notice, Plaintiffs state that they are voluntarily dismissing the instant litigation with prejudice

We will never now get to know how the court would determine the issue.

And if you looked at the court record – the online docket is publicly available here – that is the end of the story.

But the story does not end there.

There is a supposed “settlement” – click here.

This is not a settlement agreement which the parties put before the court to be endorsed. It is thereby not an agreement that has been recognised by the court, still less are its terms enforceable by the court before which the relevant litigation was brought.

It is instead a private agreement between parties to, among other things, bring the litigation to an end.

Such private side agreements are possible, though the parties lose any benefit of the relevant court recognising and enforcing the terms of the agreement.

The remarkable thing about the supposed settlement agreement is not that it ends the law suit – it is what the agreement purports to do as well.

In essence: a private settlement agreement is being used as a basis for legislating for a lucrative fund for the benefit of third parties and immunity from criminal prosecution for the plaintiffs.

Contracts – including settlement agreements – can be used for many complex and imaginative things, but this goes beyond the extremes for what any contract can properly be used for.

This is instead the sort of stuff that legislation is for, passed by Congress – not a settlement agreement which has not even been placed before a court for endorsement.

The settlement agreement even purports to provide for the tax status of this fund, a fund which is intended to benefit those allies of the president who have been accused of and convicted of crimes against public officials.

We are in strange times and so nobody can say with any certainty that this slush fund will be held to be unlawful if not unconstitutional.

The scheme should, of course, be quashed on the spot.

The cynical audacity of the proposal, and the means by which it has been contrived, warrant gasps – though not of admiration.

Over at Prospect – click here – this week’s Weekly Constitutional post is about this example of sheer charlatanism.

And that post concludes by saying that if this sort of thing can be imagined by Trump and his cronies, whatever will he and his cronies try to get away with next.

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Must Prime Ministers fail? A constitutionalist perspective

16th May 2026

This was a week when we got to consider the office of Prime Minister, again.

The current occupant has somehow, through a sequence of decisions and non-decisions, made themselves a lame duck – despite a thumping majority two years ago and three years of a parliamentary terms to go. It is quite an impressive under-achievement, given the powers and privileges a Prime Minister has at their disposal.

But for a Prime Minister to be on their way out is, as this blog has stated before, not unusual. Since 1974 every single Prime Minister has come to office or left office between general elections, and recently both. The classic model of a Prime Minister coming and leaving power at a general elections has not happened in over fifty years.

What, however, is becoming distinctive is the speed with which Prime Ministers come and go. Since 2016 the churn has been quite remarkable. The long terms of Thatcher (eleven years) and Blair (ten years) now seem form another age.

Why?

Alan Beattie of the Financial Times observes:

“If you think the UK changes PMs too often, which of the last 5 departures were mistakes? Cameron shd have stayed after losing the referendum? May after deadlock with her deal? Johnson after Partygate? Truss after meltdown? And Sunak lost an election.”

He makes a good point: circumstances and events explain each of the recent changes which, taken together, appears to be rapid churn, if not turmoil.

And Beattie links to this fine article by Robert Shrimsley which avers:

“Britain is not ungovernable. It has just been very badly governed. In particular, it has endured a decade of woefully inept leadership.”

The problem thereby is not so much with the office, but with its occupants.

Over at his Substack Sam Freedman offers a view which mixes structural and personal points:

“Why do prime ministers keep failing?

“[One suggested reason] is that we’ve just had a really bad run of leaders who either lacked basic political skills, were temperamentally unsuited for the job, or were Liz Truss.

“[But] there are some deeper structural problems that are undoubtedly making it harder to be prime minister.

“[…] there are some uniquely British challenges with being prime minister that make it harder than necessary. The role has evolved in a typically haphazard way over the decades, without much thought as to its purpose.”

Freedman’s analysis is typically well-informed and insightful.

My view, which I had already put together before I saw any of the above commentators, is that there is structural gap in our constitutional arrangements where the office of the Prime Minister should be.

Indeed, until the lifetimes of people still alive, the constitutional fiction was that the office of Prime Minister had no legal existence at all.

Other than with a few express statutory powers, the powers (and privileges) of the Prime Minister are still almost entirely to be inferred from the royal prerogative and from being the head of a Commons majority. Prime Ministers can remove ministers (and civil servants) from their jobs and impose whips on backbenchers, and make certain other decisions.

But unless you have an individual of exceptional charisma and/or capacity, coupled with reliable allies in other cabinet jobs and substantial backbench support, a Prime Minister is vulnerable to political downturns.

In this way, despite what pundits sometimes say otherwise, we very much have a parliamentary and not a presidential system.

And so when one faces a sequence of difficult political challenges, as the United Kingdom has had since 2016, the tendency will be for Prime Ministers to fold.

Part of it is as Beattie and Shrimsley point out: the occupants have not been up to the challenges they have faced. But the occupants also have not had firm places to stand.

The job of Prime Minister is, for the reasons detailed by Freedman, becoming more and more difficult to do. There is no particular reason to believe any successor to the current occupant will do any better job. (It is telling that many think the only viable candidate is not one of the already elected members of parliament.)

And so, as I set out, over at Prospect, there is a prime minister-shaped hole in our constitutional arrangements.

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Changing Prime Ministers mid-term and the constitution

12th May 2026

How gaining or losing a Prime Minister between general elections in the norm and not the exception

There is perhaps a ‘classic’ view – which like many ‘classic’ views is not really true – that a Prime Minister comes in with a general election and then goes out at a General Election.

Like Disraeli and Gladstone did in Victorian days, or Attlee did between 1945 and 1951.

But since 1974 that has not happened.

Every Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 1974 has either taken office between general elections or lost office between general elections – and recently even both.

Some would say that 1974 is not a sound starting point, as Heath sought to stay on and do a deal after the February election, and we would have to go back to 1970.

Those who came in between general elections since 1974: Callaghan, Major, Brown, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak.

Those who left office between general elections since 1974: Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss.

Those who did both: May, Johnson, Truss – though at least May and Johnson fought general elections during their term as Prime Minister.

Compare and contrast that with parties losing office between elections: that rarely happens, even if we go back a long time.

In 1905 the Conservative and Liberal Unionist coalition lost office to the Liberals, months before a general election. Some of the national and wartime coalitions mid-century shifted between general elections. But straight party swaps are few.

More recently even the loss of an overall majority – in the late 1970s or the early 1990s – merely meant the minority administration staggered on.

And so we have two cycles: the party cycle and the Prime Minister cycle.

The party cycle generally accords with general elections. Invariably the party in government who lose at a general election is the party which won the one before.

The Prime Minister cycle, however, only incidentally accords with general elections. Since 1974 general elections account for only a portion of the arrivals and departures from office.

As we seem to be about to change (yet) another Prime Minister between general elections, it is useful to remind ourselves that we (still) have very much a parliamentary rather than presidential system of government.

Even those most presidential of Prime Ministers – Thatcher and Blair – left office mid-term.

Whilst they have office some Prime Ministers can be hubristic – think Johnson or Truss – but they quickly meet with Nemesis.

The body politic regurgitated and spat them out.

And with Starmer, the surprise would be if he actually did lose office with a general election. If so, he would be the first Labour Prime Minister since Wilson between 1964 and 1970 to win and lose office at general elections.

But it always seems to take us by surprise when a Prime Minister loses office between general elections, as if some norm has been subverted.

The true subversion would be if a Prime Minister who won a general election was able to continue to defeat at a general election.

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The Chagos Islands are an index of British international weakness

6th May 2026

In decision after decision, the United Kingdom simply has to accept the changing will of the United States

As there are elections over Great Britain tomorrow, this blog goes from the local to the far-away: in particular to the Chagos Islands, otherwise known as the British Indian Ocean Territory.

The Chagos Islands are an index of actual British international influence – because things keep on being decided about them without it mattering what the United Kingdom government itself wants, even though we are the nominal controlling power.

Not long ago there was a deal which suited the United States, who has a military presence on the largest island, where the islands went (back) to Mauritius. The United Kingdom had to go along with it.

And then more recently, as I set out over at Prospect, the United States changed its mind – well, President Trump did. And again, the United Kingdom had to go along with it.

The curious thing is that the islands have an immense symbolic hold on the conservative mind as a surviving remnant of British imperial power, when the reality is the repeated demonstration of just how weak British power and influence now is over its own territory.

And as the relative international power of the United Kingdom continues to decline, we will no doubt have more examples of the contest between symbolism and reality.

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The purpose of processes and policies and law in government is not to make things better, but to stop things being even worse

5th May 2026

The real reason we need rules and procedures in public administration

It is a paradox that in the weeks and days before an election people tend to become less interested in law and policy. The focus instead turns to politics and personalities, and the soap opera of who is up and who is down, and who is in and who is out.

And in the days after the elections, those who could not predict the outcome will confidently assert that the result proved them right all along.

This is not really a politics blog, and it has no party-partisan preference. Indeed, the general view of the blog is that governments tend to be illiberal, regardless of which politicians take power, and that the politicians who affect to be liberal in opposition tend not to carry that liberalism over into office.

As the eminent jurists the Bonzo Dog Band aver, it can seem that no matter who you vote for the government always gets in.

But.

We have in popular opposition not only those parading their liberalism, but the illiberalism, and so voters have a choice between the possibility of liberalism (and likely disappointment) and the certainty of illiberalism (and likely despotism).

And so it is at times like that we should take more interest in the actual workings of government and now public administration works. We should watch how public administration is conducted with anxious scrutiny.

This is why, perhaps counter-intuitively, the whole Starmer-Mandelson-Robbins affair is important.

In respect of political drama, the matter may not be of lasting import: the media caravan has moved on, and the attention-spans of the easily bored have been exhausted. The Prime Minister is still in office and if he is to be deposed, then it will because of a further political drama and not the one which has just passed.

The importance of what happened is otherwise than of immediate political effect. It was instead in the rare insight we had into how ministers and officials actually do make decisions (or don’t make decisions). The sort of thing which is usually hidden from public view.

An excellent balanced and informed account of the matter has now been posted at the Substack of the estimable former civil servant Martin Stanley. That post is required reading for anybody with an interest in our government in action (or inaction).

What I can add from the perspective of a former central government lawyer is that the informal-formal inexact process and lack of process is not unusual in Whitehall. The only difference here is that a stone has been lifted and we get to see what was teeming underneath.

(Public administration is more about teems than teams.)

Sometimes one can fall into the error of thinking government and administration is about the neat, almost-Euclidean geometry of decision trees and straight lines on a grand plane of an organogram. No, it is often a mess, both at the time and when there has to be an account of it afterwards.

This is why one the purpose of processes and policies and public law is not so much to make things go well, but to help stop things being worse. For example, the law of public procurement is not really there to help public authorities to make good purchasing decisions, but to stop public authorities making worse purchasing decisions than they otherwise would do.

And this is the significance of the Starmer-Mandelson-Robbins affair: we got to see under the rock. From that we can take the wider understanding that this is how important decisions and indecisions are made more generally. And that, in turn, helps explain why we have such an accountability gap in the government of the United Kingdom.

There is a general disconnect between how ministers and officials take decisions and how those decisions are accounted for to parliament, and to the media and public.

Certain executive-minded pundits and activists want to reduce even further the role of processes and policies and public law in government – to get rid of impediments and barriers.

They think that will make public administration better and more effective, but it is more likely to make public administration even worse than it already is.

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Trump is suing his own government for $10 billion

May Day, 2026

And he wants to negotiate with his own government for a settlement sum

One thing about fundamental legal principles is that they are rarely expressly feature in litigation – at least not expressly. That is because they are fundamental – they are shared and assumed to apply.

Such principle provide the “rules of the game” and the courts deal with disputes about things the parties do not share in common, like differing views on the facts and on the applicable law in a particular situation.

This is why – at least until fairly recently – constitutional law text books both here and in the United States often did not have many recent cases as precedents or even illustrations of certain fundamental principles. An 1800s case there, a 1700s case here, some vague mention of Magna Carta, and that would be it – for paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after chapter.

But the Brexit-Trump years have changed this. Such is the jolt to the United Kingdom and United States polities that certain hitherto constitutional and legal norms in the background have to the fore. Points which one never expected to be the subject of a practical case now fall for judicial determination.

And in the United States we have a case which goes to the very heart of any litigation system, with the court having to ask “what actually is a dispute?”.

That case, of course, is the one where Donald Trump is suing the United States Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.

I have written about this case this week over at Prospect – click here.

Although nominally Trump is doing this (with his son and company) in a personal capacity, and not formally as president, the reality is that the president is suing his own administration – for $10 billion.

And so in reality he wants to negotiate, with himself, and to agree, with himself, for a resolution where the suit is compromised for a high amount of money, in the region one suspects of $10 billion.

It is an extraordinary case, even at a time of many extraordinary cases.

In one way, Trump has a point: he was legally wronged by the Treasury and IRS. His tax returns were unlawfully leaked. And this is the case even if he, like other presidents, should have voluntarily disclosed his tax returns to the public. There has been a prosecution and a conviction of the leaker.

A follow-on civil case is not thereby surprising, for generally (but not universally) when there is a crime there is also a tort.

(That said, there was once an over-confident law lecturer who insisted that there was a tort for every crime and challenged the class to gainsay him, to which one annoying student offered ‘blasphemy’. Sorry.)

So if Trump has been civilly wronged, he should in principle be able to bring a case for damages.

But what makes this case problematic is that he currently controls both sides of the litigation.

This is because of his position as head of government, and also because of an executive order which prevents any federal body or employee from putting forward a view of law distinct from the president.

All this means that not only is he effectively litigating with himself, he would also be effectively negotiating with himself for settling that litigation.

(A great deal of civil litigation ends in settlement.)

There is a legal principle so fundamental that it is sometimes described as one of the very rules of natural justice.

This principle is that a person should not be a judge in their own cause.

Here the application of the principle would be that a person should not settle a legal dispute with themselves. Indeed, one can fairly ask if there is a dispute at all in such circumstances.

And that is what the federal judge has asked in this case.

In this fascinating four-page order judge Kathleen Williams goes back to the very first principles of law to ask whether there is actually a dispute here to be determined.

She did not dismiss the case, but she is now seeking legal argument on the point.

Given there has been a civil wrong to Trump, there is the question of how his private law rights could be enforced against the government while he is a sitting president.

Perhaps the case should be stayed for the duration of his presidency, without prejudice to any limitation period. Or perhaps independent attorneys should be selected to litigate the case on the parties’ behalf, with Trump blind to their litigation decisions, or there could be some binding independent third-party adjudication.

There are various ways his legal position could be reserved or protected so that he is not simply negotiating a settlement with himself.

When litigation lawyers are trained they are warned about sham litigation cases where for money laundering or other purposes an artificial dispute is contrived and then “settled” for a huge a mount of cash changing hands.

What is happening in the United States is not a sham case: Trump has a claim.

But there are ways and means of bringing a claim, some less artificial than others, and the federal court in the United States now has to work out a way for Trump’s claim to be addressed while avoiding the spectacle of the president negotiating with his own federal employees for a cash payment of up to $10 billion.

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Making sense of the week which was

26th April 2026

What, if anything, is the constitutional and legal significance of the fall-out from the Starmer-Robbins matter?

From a political perspective this last week or so in the United Kingdom has certainly been exciting and dramatic.

As set out in the last post here, we have a Prime Minister making a succession of bad decisions, and blaming and sacking others for those decisions.

In particular, we have a Prime Minister who speaks often about process sacking a senior foreign office official without any process whatsoever.

And as I have described at Prospect, that sacking by a Prime Minister who demands of the civil service that things are ‘delivered’ was of an official who worked out a way of ‘delivering’ the appointment of an Ambassador which the Prime Minister, against cabinet secretary advice, had publicly announced prematurely.

This is all a fascinating political spectacle.

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But.

So what?

What is the legal or constitutional significance of what has happened – and what is happening?

From a lega(isitc) perspective not much: the overall result of the vetting (as opposed to the personal information vetted) was probably legally open to Olly Robbins to share with the Prime Minister. But there was also no legal obligation on him to share that information either. We are dealing here with discretion and policy, not rules and obligations.

What Robbins did and did not do with the vetting assessment was probably neither lawful nor unlawful, for it was not a matter of law.

(There is, of course, an important legal point about the dismissal of Robbins – and it is difficult to imagine a stronger case for unfair dismissal in this sort of context.)

Constitutionally, there is an interesting point here about whether it was appropriate for a senior official charged with making this decision to not share the Cabinet Office vetting assessment with the Prime Minister.

Usually, the information about ambassadorial vetting stays with the head of the foreign office civil service, and one can see the point of that with career diplomats.

But when the appointment is external and essentially political and (publicly) directed by the Prime Minister then there is a good argument that the official should place the Prime Minister in the position they should be so as to be properly accountable to Parliament (and the public) for that decision. And there is a strong argument that, by omission, the Prime Minister should not be misled as the vetting exercise.

Yet, when one has an incurious Prime Minister, not asking the appropriate questions and who demands ‘delivery’ – of solutions, not problems – one can begin to see why what happened, happened.

(A follower of this blog messaged to say that Starmer always wanting ‘delivery’ to be both without impediments but also error-free, is about Starmer’s own ‘cake-ism’.)

Add the (fair) security concerns that sensitive information not have wider circulation that necessary, you can see why Robbins did what he did (and did not do), especially as Downing Street is leaky.

Indeed, the only actual security breach in all this is that the media and the public even know about the Ambassador’s vetting failure by means of a leak. For that information to be in the public domain in this manner indicates a serious security breach somewhere.

As the Prime Minister has now said at the despatch box both that the original decision was wrong and that his decision to sack Robbins was right, one could perhaps say that the constitutional aspect of this matter is being addressed.

He has accounted to Parliament, and he is still in office – and he has not and is not facing any vote of no confidence.

As I stated at the time at Prospect, the real constitutional importance in all this lays in the House of Commons vote earlier this year that the Prime Minister and Cabinet could not be trusted to make decisions about the the applicability of the ‘national security’ exemption to the release of the Mandelson appointment documents. Those decisions were instead to be made by a parliamentary committee.

For Parliament to decide not to trust the Prime Minister and Cabinet in this way on national security was, in any meaningful way, a vote of no confidence. For this blog, that was the point the Prime Minister ought to have resigned.

Now the Prime Minister is dealing with the direct and indirect consequences of that vote: the placing into the public domain of documents beyond his control – and the prior (perhaps tactical?) leaking of sensitive information in respect of the documents that may be disclosed.

This is an actual example of a Prime Minister who is in office, but not in power – at least in respect of the Mandelson papers.

There may be further disclosures in this news story which does not seem to be going away.

At some point a constitutional point may be taken, and a vote of no confidence is put forward. Alternatively, the Prime Minister may lose the confidence of his own cabinet and offer his own resignation (or plan for departure). Who knows.

But what is certain is that this matter shows how a Prime Minister can be held to account for a bad decision which they made – and for a bad decision for which they are now running out of other people to blame and sack.

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Robbins Nest

22nd April 2026

Towards understanding an almighty mess

There was once a bad decision, and then there was a worse decision, and then there was an even worse decision.

The bad decision was, of course, the appointment by the Prime Minister to appoint Lord Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States. At the time few expressly objected and some saw merit in such a sui generis appointment to deal with a sui generis President – a Trump Whisperer. (Though we had a perfectly competent Ambassador in place who was good at that too.)

The worse decision was how the Prime Minister opted to react when information was published about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein. He blamed Mandelson for lying, he blamed the civil servants for not telling him about a vetting exercise. He was “furious”. His chief of staff was sacked. He decided it was everybody’s fault, but his own.

And then there was the worst of the decisions, at least from the perspective of his overall credibility. He sacked Oliver Robbins, the head of the foreign office civil service. This has not only poisoned the civil service against a serving premier, but also Robbins’ evidence before a select committee persuasively shows that Robbins and the Foreign Office were simply seeking to find a way to implement a decision which the Prime Minister had prematurely announced (against civil service advice) and which Number 10 staff were pressing (bullying?) the Foreign Office to approve without delay.

The Prime Minister accepts there was a process in place which Robbins followed: that is why the process has been changed. But he sacked Robbins for following that process which he accepts was in place.

And now Robbins can explain, from the outside, what happened.

Had the Prime Minister just owned the original bad decision – which as this blog has previously stated was his own decision – instead of blaming and sacking others, then the second and third mistakes would not have been made.

One can only wonder what further mistakes are to come.

Once this blog has fully digested the Robbins evidence yesterday, there may be more to come on here, at least.

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The decision of a Prime Minister

19 April 2026

Only one person decided to appoint Lord Mandelson

Once upon a time there was a ruler who made a bad decision.

All the courtiers and servants knew it was a bad decision, but they put into effect the bad decision, for the ruler had already made and proclaimed the decision.

And when it turned out to be a very bad decision indeed, those courtiers and servants were sacked by the now “furious” ruler.

When the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom makes a bad decision it always seems that others must take the blame.

Of course, such shruggery is not unusual in politics: one does not usually become a Prime Minister by being the sort that resigns from jobs. That is not how one climbs what Disraeli called the greasy pole to Prime Ministerial office.

But when Keir Starmer appointed Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the United States (thereby sacking a perfectly capable ambassador), it was very much his decision.

A decision which only the Prime Minister could make.

View differ on the reason for the appointment. Perhaps the sui generis problem of President Trump needed a sui generis appointment of a “Trump-Whisperer”. Perhaps, as many political journalists aver, it was simply because it was believed by senior Labour politicians that Mandelson somehow deserved a job in return for something or other.

The reason, however, really does not matter: it was plain that the Prime Minister had made a decision, and it was a decision announced as soon as possible.

And this is the important thing: it was the decision of the Prime Minister.

Yet it is others who are having to resign: the ambassador, the chief of staff, and now the head official at the foreign office.

We do not have full information as to the vetting process (and it is itself a remarkable security failure that we all know as much about this vetting process as we do, if you think about it).

It may be there was some form of communication between the foreign office and Downing Street, even if deft or unspoken, or it may be that the foreign office did not pass on the results of the vetting process so to give effect to the Prime Minister had already and publicly decided.

In either case, the responsibility for the decision is with the Prime Minister.

But the Prime Minister does not want to take responsibility for his decision.

He will keep sacking other people instead – none of whom made the decision, and none of whom are accountable to parliament for the decision that only he made.

Whether the Prime Minister misled parliament or the world at large about what he knew is now bogged-down in a depressing game of semantics.

What will not happen, it seems, is that the Prime Minister will take actual responsibility for his bad decision to appoint Mandelson as ambassador: for that would mean it was wrong of him to sack his chief of staff and the senior official at the foreign office.

All this shows how important it was for the House of Commons to take the decisions on disclosure of papers related to Mandelson’s appointment out of the hands of the Prime Minister.

That vote by the House of Commons was of immense political and constitutional significance. Members of Parliament decided that the Prime Minister could not be trusted to apply “national security” in disclosure matters.

The consequences of that momentous vote are now becoming more and more obvious.

Either we have Prime Ministerial accountability or we do not.

This is not a situation where a minister is being asked to take responsibility for decisions by officials – the Crichel Down situation.

That wider doctrine of ministerial accountability was always unrealistic: a minister cannot possibly know or approve of every decision in their department.

This is about a Prime Minister taking responsibility for their own decision – a high-level decision which only a Prime Minister can take.

And whatever further details is still come out about the matter, it will always have been the Prime Minister’s decision to appoint Mandelson.

Once upon a time there was ruler who was “furious” at being expected to be a ruler.

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