Esther McVey MP has said she believes the bombshell dropped by Sir Olly Robbins about finding an appointment for Matthew Doyle will be “explosive within the Cabinet”.
Speaking on GB News, McVey said: “Keir Starmer thinks he’s clever, Olly Robbins is. And when you’re looking at the intellect of the two of them, I’m afraid Olly Robbins, you could tell by the testimony he gave today at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He knew his facts, what happened, what he’d said, how he was pressurised, how he was forced into it. They wanted Mandelson appointed, irrespective, right?
“Stark contrast, and it’s about five hours I’ve been listening to this over the last two days, Starmer really knows nothing. He says nothing. His only defence is, I didn’t know. I was never told, and Mandelson lied to me, and he has caught himself up in knots.
“I call him half a story Starmer. You get half a story, and the rest of it’s not true. So when he said he’d sacked Olly Robbins, because obviously he was furious he’d given him clearance despite the concerns of the vetting process, isn’t sort of true.
“And everything that Starmer said yesterday in the chamber was cringeworthy. He was torn apart by his own side. Diane Abbott, why didn’t you ask a question? And the one I put to him, you knew, through the due diligence of the Cabinet Office. This was a twice sacked minister flying and yet you listen to what he had to say.
“This is somebody who had connections with Russia and China, which was actually the key bit. There’s business dealings with them. And then obviously the connections with Epstein.
“All of which, all of that, made him a bad person to employ, because he was vulnerable on every ground to any kind of, I don’t know, blackmail threats, whatever.
“And remember, he’d given information away before, which we knew, to Epstein so he could trade on that information when he was business secretary and make money from it.
“The guy was not to be trusted. He was run rings round yesterday in the chamber.
“What everybody had come to the conclusion of listening to this was, unfortunately, Starmer had gone in and said, ‘This is the man I want, deliver him’ to the Permanent Secretary before and this one.
“There is an element of he said, I don’t want to hear, don’t come to me and tell me anything. I don’t want to hear, I just want him delivered.
“There’s a bit of truth in what Starner said because he didn’t want to hear, despite all the warnings he had.
“The only person who has misled people, lied on various occasions, is Starmer. And the person who sacked Olly Robbins incorrectly, was a Starmer and this is why it’s all unravelling.
“And that’s why I say, Olly Robbins deployed lots of different things, explaining what had happened, explaining why the facts were wrong. And the killer was when he dropped poison into the cabinet office by saying, ‘Oh, you want another appointment. But whatever you do, you tell me not to tell your foreign secretary.’
“That will be explosive within the Cabinet, because the Cabinet will decide who brings Starmer down, it’ll no doubt be them.
“He is well ahead of the game, and he proved and pointed out all of Starmer’s lies.”
