Starmer's Appointment Mess Is Unraveling in Real Time

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Keir Starmer’s got a problem that won’t stay buried.

He admitted this week—at Prime Minister’s Questions, where you basically can’t lie—that No. 10 asked about a diplomat job for Matthew Doyle, his then-communications chief. This wasn’t some wild accusation from the opposition. This was Starmer himself confirming the government had actually done the thing people were accusing it of doing.

But here’s where it gets uglier. The vetting of Lord Mandelson for his new Foreign Office gig has become a case study in how the machinery of British government either works when it’s convenient to bend it, or doesn’t work at all. The PM’s former chief of staff is now facing questions about how Mandelson got approved. And Sir Olly Robbins, the lead civil servant at the Foreign Office who signed off on the security clearance, says No. 10 had a “dismissive attitude” toward the actual vetting process.

Translation: They wanted Mandelson in the role. The paperwork was secondary.

Photo by Leeloo The First / Pexels

The Vetting Problem Isn’t Really About Mandelson

Let’s separate the noise here. Mandelson’s return to government isn’t shocking—he’s a heavyweight with genuine diplomatic experience, and bringing back elder statesmen happens. What’s explosive is the process, or lack thereof.

Robbins defended approving the clearance by saying there were legitimate reasons to move quickly. But “dismissive attitude” isn’t a phrase that accidentally gets attributed to a senior civil servant. He said it because someone was dismissive. And when Robbins got sacked by Starmer shortly after—fired for doing his job, basically—it sent a specific message through the entire civil service.

The FDA, the union representing senior civil servants, called it a “chill.” That’s diplomatic language for: your government just punished someone for not rubber-stamping what they wanted.

This matters because vetting procedures exist for a reason. They’re not bureaucratic theater. They’re supposed to be the guardrails. When a Prime Minister’s office decides those guardrails are inconvenient, and fires the person who tried to maintain them, you’ve fundamentally changed how government functions. Not in a dramatic revolution way. In a slow-corrosion way.

In 2009, when Gordon Brown’s administration faced ethics questions about special advisers and their access, there was pushback but also accountability mechanisms that kicked in. Starmer’s government appears to be operating from the assumption that if you control the narrative hard enough, you can move past it in a news cycle or two.

The bet he’s making: most people don’t care about civil service vetting procedures.

He might be right about that. But he’s gambling that none of this escalates.

Photo by Andrew Neel / Pexels

Inflation Comes Knocking (And It’s Not Your Fault, Sort Of)

Meanwhile, in the real world where actual voters live, UK inflation just ticked up. The Iran war pushed fuel prices higher, which fed into the cost-of-living figures. This is the kind of external shock that doesn’t care about your press strategy.

Starmer inherited an economy that was already creaky. Growth is sluggish. Energy costs are volatile. And now you’ve got geopolitical risk factors—Middle East tensions—feeding directly into household bills. The appointment chaos isn’t helping the narrative that this government has a grip on things.

Here’s what I think: Starmer’s team believed that getting the right people in the right roles (starting with Mandelson) would signal competence and change the mood music around the government. Instead, the appointment process itself has become the story. He’s spent political capital defending how he hired someone, rather than letting that someone do the work they were hired to do.

What’s Happening in America Is Its Own Flavor of Chaos

Across the Atlantic, the Trump administration is playing a different game entirely with different rules.

Consider: The Treasury Secretary is backing a currency swap line with the UAE. The administration is trying to rescue Spirit Airlines with potentially $500 million in loans. The CDC’s acting head just killed publication of a study showing covid vaccines work. Meanwhile, someone named Charlie Kirk apparently got killed at a college in Utah, and the fallout is about graduation speakers getting disinvited for old social media posts.

I’m flagging this not because these stories are connected, but because they reveal something about how government operates when there’s no consensus on what “appropriate” even means anymore.

The Bessent-UAE currency swap? That’s economic statecraft. The Spirit Airlines rescue? That’s industrial policy, or maybe just throwing money at a problem. The CDC canceling a vaccine study? That’s narrative management dressed up as institutional judgment. And the graduation speaker getting booted? That’s cultural politics seeping into every institution.

None of these things individually are automatically disqualifying. But together, they paint a picture of governments—US and UK both—that are making decisions based on what they want the outcome to be, then fitting the reasoning around it.

My Read: We’re at a Threshold

I think what’s happening is that political institutions are being tested for whether the informal rules still matter. Starmer’s government tested whether you can override civil service vetting if you have the political will. They’re finding out that you can, but at a cost—the civil service gets nervous, opposition gets ammunition, and people start asking whether anyone’s actually in charge or if it’s all just power.

Here’s what I’d bet on: By spring, there will be another scandal involving an appointment, advisor, or process issue in either the UK or US government. Not because the people involved are uniquely corrupt, but because they’re operating under the assumption that the old guardrails don’t apply anymore. Eventually someone gets caught doing something genuinely indefensible, and the whole stack of “we decided what the rules were going to be” comes down.

I’m genuinely uncertain about timing on this. It could happen in weeks. It could take months. But I don’t think this pattern ends neatly.

The one thing I’m confident about: Rep. David Scott’s death—a Georgia lawmaker who stayed in politics despite serious health problems because he thought his work mattered—is a reminder that institutions depend on people who care about them more than they care about the next political win. We’re not seeing a lot of that right now.

What I’m Watching

• Robbins’s testimony on Mandelson vetting (next 2-3 weeks): This is the crucial moment. If his testimony makes clear that political pressure explicitly overrode procedure, it changes the legal exposure for Starmer’s government. Watch for specific dates when he appears.

• Another appointment controversy emerging by mid-March: Not because I have inside information, but because the pattern is established and the incentives haven’t changed. If Starmer’s team gets away with one, they’ll try another.

• The Iran war fuel price impact on UK inflation by April/May: This is when wage negotiations and spending decisions get made based on real inflation numbers. If prices stay elevated, it puts pressure on Starmer’s government to either admit the economic situation is worse than they said, or find someone to blame.

• Whether the CDC study cancellation gets reversed or defended: This is a tell about whether the US administration will let institutional pushback happen, or whether political messaging always wins. The answer tells you something about how much power the executive branch has decided it has.