Will the Privileges Committee cashier Starmer?

In my well-thumbed dictionary, if you turn to page 1157, you find hidden away between the word scilophylax and schalshutin, the word schadenfreude. I always thought schadenfreude is a word for an unpleasant emotion, not a particularly Christian one, and one that though I sometimes have, I feels a bit grubby. But I hope you will forgive me on this occasion for a little grubbiness, because this German word that comes from Schadehut and Freud joy, describes perfectly what I'm feeling, as I see that the House of Commons will debate Sir Keir

Starmer being put to the Privileges Committee for potentially misleading the House. Mr. Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has agreed to an application from the Conservatives that the House should debate whether or not Sir Keir Starmer has misled the House inadvertently, recklessly, in any way in relation to the Mandelson affair and that the allegation is not frivolous. It is not a very high bar for a reference to the Privileges Committee but the

Speaker quite rightly and quite consistently having referred Boris Johnson now refers Sir Keir Starmer. And this is an interesting debate that will take place tomorrow where Labour MPs will be in a quandary. They will face the challenge of truth and honesty against party loyalty. I know which will win, party loyalty will win. I'd be astonished if they dared allow their leader to go before the Privileges Committee, because we know what

would become clear. What would become clear is that he made a decision which he then wanted to cover up. It was his decision in the beginning. The whole starting point of this scandal is a decision made by Sir Keir Starmer. It's no good trying to pretend that he was forced to do it by other people. You're the Prime Minister, you're not forced to do things.

The King has to do things. He has a constitutional obligation to do things, such as to appoint Peter Mandelson to be Ambassador to the United States, but the Prime Minister has a choice. And when advisors, special advisors, chiefs of staff, whatever the title may be, doesn't particularly matter, advise a Prime Minister, it's exactly that, it's advice. It's not a delegation of power to unelected officials.

It is a decision-making authority that is vested in you as Prime Minister and which cannot be passed to others. Technically, of course, it's a power that ought to be with the Foreign Secretary under the Constitutional Reform and Government Act of 2010, which says specifically that political appointments of ambassadors are allowed, but they're a matter for the Foreign Secretary.

But we know from other information that has emerged that the Prime Minister didn't care for that constitutional nicety, for that legal nicety. Our lawyer friend, our former public prosecutor, doesn't always follow the law when it's not so convenient for him. He finds a little sneaky route rounded. So it became his decision and in a way that's fair enough. After all if you appoint the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Secretary has the power to

appoint, de facto that power is with you as the boss of the Foreign Secretary if he doesn't want to do it. You can always fire him and find somebody else who will or of course as Lord Salisbury did be the Foreign Secretary yourself. So it was Mandelson's appointment that has caused the trouble and that was Starmer's decision. And then we look at every step along the way where he's tried to cover it up and muddy the waters. What has he tried to do? He elided the advice of two cabinet secretaries, Sir Simon Case

and then Sir Chris Wormald. The first one, before the appointment, said had the developed vetting first. The second one later on, which excused him for not having done so. He pretended to the House of Commons that he followed a process, but the process was his process, the one that he had devised and designed and was under his control. To say that it is process driven when you've decided how to do it is at the least misleading. And then we had the suggestion that no pressure was put on Foreign Office civil servants,

particularly on Sir Oliver Robbins, to make the decision to push through the developed vetting, when clearly they were being badgered to make the decision and to make it quickly. So two pieces of information given to the House of Commons which were there to cover up the mistake and this is what we must always get back to that Zakir Starmer has rotten judgment and that the point of a Prime Minister is to have good judgment and this is where he has failed. He decided

he wanted Mandelson, and that was the error, and then, having done so, he has blamed everybody else in sight, rather than honestly, in a manly way, taken blame upon his own shoulders. Hence the reference to the Privileges Committee. What does the Privileges Committee do? It considers whether the privilege of the House of Commons has been breached. And this is many things. Any of us could be hauled in front of the Privileges Committee.

Historically, people who treated the House of Commons with contempt even reported on its proceedings. Sir John Junor was hauled to the Bar of the House in the 1950s for saying that MPs were fiddling their petrol ration. It can call anybody in front of it and nominally can punish anybody including with imprisonment, though that sanction I believe has not been used since the 17th

century. And the privileges of the House of Commons are in terms of its own proceedings in a way whatever the House of Commons chooses them to be. But misleading the House is something that the Commons has always deemed to be a serious breach of its rules, of its privilege, of the way it expects to be treated. That's why they found against Boris Johnson, though to my mind that was a ridiculous kangaroo court, badly led and coming to a decision

that was deeply politicized. However I think Labour MPs won't vote for this recommendation or won't vote in favour of this motion they will vote it down. Why? Because it would be a bad result for them. The exposure of the machinations of Downing Street would be embarrassing, the failure of the Prime Minister would be humiliating, and they're probably going to get rid of him anyway, and the political damage would continue to be done, even if by the time it reports,

as with Boris, Sir Keir Starmer is a former Prime Minister rather than a current one. So narrow political advantage makes me think that they will vote it down but actually it's just as valid if not more valid than the one into Boris because the issues are fundamentally more important that this whole question of our special relationship of appointing somebody who is a friend of a known sex pest, of a paedophile, is something that shames the nation and has

shamed the nation now for quite some time. So it's an important issue. It's a major misleading of the House of Commons, but politics will get in the way. That's why the Privileged Committee hasn't managed to have a big role over the centuries, because a party with a majority would normally use it to vote down such a recommendation or such a motion as the one that's coming

before it. If it were to happen, the insights that it would reveal into the inner workings of the Labour Party would be absolutely fascinating. I don't think it will happen, but I think people have made up their mind about Starmer anyway, so in a funny sort of way it doesn't matter, except to show up Labour MPs as hypocrites, as humbugs, as people who don't actually care about proper parliamentary procedure,

don't mind about the country being misled, and will always put party loyalty first. There is a narrow partisanship in the vote that will come tomorrow in my expectation to vote it down. Now I gave you two words at the beginning I thought we might like to know what they meant. A sucophylax is in the Greek church a sacristan. And the other word, a shalshtin, is slaty darbastath, which is a type of slaty rock. I didn't know either of those words

that sandwich schadenfreude between it, but it's always interesting to find new words. And a final comment, because people are always interested in which room I'm in. I'm in the library here, and have been for quite a few of these broadcasts,

because I'm afraid there's a leak inquiry going on in the drawing room, and I can show you a quick picture of that if you're interested. if you're interested. As always, thank you very much for watching.