Sir Olly Robbins spent much of his career doing what powerful politicians asked of him, then absorbing the anger when their decisions went wrong.
He was never elected. He was the official in the room: principal private secretary to Tony Blair, head of Gordon Brown's office, deputy national security adviser under David Cameron and Theresa May's chief Brexit negotiator. By the time Keir Starmer brought him back into government, Robbins had advised four prime ministers and worked at the centre of economic, security, immigration and European policy.
That made his dismissal in April 2026 more than another Whitehall departure. Starmer removed one of Britain's most experienced civil servants over Peter Mandelson's security clearance. But Robbins had not chosen Mandelson, conducted the original due diligence or decided to announce him before vetting. He inherited the case after No 10 had committed the country to the appointment and begun pressing the Foreign Office to get Mandelson into post.
A cross-party inquiry later found that Robbins believed he was carrying out the prime minister's wishes and delivering the result No 10 wanted. It concluded that his dismissal appeared to have happened without full due process or even the establishment of the facts.
Robbins was made to carry the blame for the last part of a process that had been politically fixed before he arrived.
The official behind Theresa May's Brexit deal
Robbins joined the Civil Service in 1996 and spent a decade at the Treasury before moving into Downing Street. He later worked on national security, led civil service reform and became the Home Office's second permanent secretary with responsibility for borders and immigration.
After the 2016 referendum, he became the first permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union. That arrangement soon broke down. Robbins was expected both to serve Brexit secretary David Davis and advise Theresa May directly. In September 2017 he moved into the Cabinet Office and became May's Europe adviser and chief official negotiator.
He helped negotiate the withdrawal agreement that covered citizens' rights, the financial settlement, a transition period and the disputed Irish backstop. The agreement was a serious attempt to reconcile May's promises with the practical consequences of leaving the EU. It also failed politically. MPs rejected it three times and May resigned.
Brexit supporters accused Robbins of running policy behind ministers' backs and frustrating a cleaner break with Europe. There were fair questions about the secrecy of May's operation and the amount of influence concentrated around her Europe unit. But officials do not set a government's red lines or command its Commons majority. The Institute for Government's later assessment was blunt: the Brexit strategy belonged to the prime minister and had been endorsed by her Cabinet. Robbins advised and negotiated. Ministers decided.
The deal failed because May could not persuade Parliament or hold her party together. Robbins nevertheless became a convenient human face for decisions taken by ministers.
The same pattern returned under Starmer.
Starmer brought him back
Robbins left government in 2019 and worked at Goldman Sachs and the strategic advisory firm Hakluyt. In January 2025, Starmer and foreign secretary David Lammy approved his return as permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office and head of the Diplomatic Service.
It was a five-year appointment approved by the independent Civil Service Commission. Lammy called Robbins “exactly the person” needed to reshape the department, praising his experience of economic and security policy.
Robbins began the job on 20 January 2025. By then the decisive steps in Mandelson's appointment had already happened. The Foreign Affairs Committee found that the process had no agreed structure and appeared to have been “made up as it went along”.
Starmer received the Cabinet Office's final due-diligence advice on 11 December 2024. He chose Mandelson on 18 December and announced the appointment on 20 December. Developed vetting did not begin until 23 December.
Neither the serving Foreign Office permanent secretary, Sir Philip Barton, nor the foreign secretary had been properly consulted about the choice. The department did not receive the Cabinet Office due-diligence report. Its officials were not asked whether Mandelson should be appointed. They were expected to carry out Starmer's decision.
Before Robbins took over, the King had approved the appointment, the United States had accepted Mandelson, and Mandelson had been given Foreign Office building and basic IT access. He was receiving highly classified briefings on a case-by-case basis and was already on the payroll. The inquiry found that only Mandelson's later employment contract clearly stated that his appointment remained conditional on vetting.
Robbins therefore entered a department being told to complete a process whose result No 10 already treated as settled. He later described a “very, very strong expectation” that Mandelson should be in Washington as quickly as possible.
The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee reached the same conclusion. Officials understood that nothing was supposed to stop the appointment. Reversing it after the public announcement, royal approval and US acceptance would have embarrassed the government and risked damaging relations with Washington.
The decision that cost Robbins his job
On 28 January 2025, UK Security Vetting recommended that Mandelson should be denied developed-vetting clearance. The next day, the Foreign Office granted it.
Starmer later presented that sequence as if officials had ignored a decisive refusal. The system was more complicated. At the time, UKSV made a recommendation to the Foreign Office. The department remained the formal decision-maker and was allowed to grant clearance where it judged that identified risks could be controlled.
Robbins did not read a written warning and casually wave Mandelson through. He said he was never shown the UKSV document and did not know that it used the language later quoted by Starmer about “high concern”. At an oral briefing, the Foreign Office security director told him Mandelson was a “borderline case”, that UKSV was leaning towards refusing clearance and that the most serious risks could be managed.
He was also told, according to his evidence, that the risks did not concern Mandelson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The department's security specialists had experience of dealing with this type of risk and recommended clearance with safeguards. Robbins accepted their professional judgment.
The personnel security team, not Robbins personally, formally granted clearance. He did not hide behind that distinction when MPs questioned him. “I was accountable,” he said. He trusted the security team and backed its recommendation.
The inquiry could not determine whether the safeguards were adequate because parts of the evidence were unavailable, including material withheld at the Metropolitan Police's request. It found no proper audit trail explaining how the appointment as a whole had been handled. Its description of the record-keeping was “appalling”. That criticism applied across No 10, the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office, not to Robbins alone.
Robbins did not make a separate note of his personal reasoning. That was a mistake. But he said the formal decision and safeguards were recorded inside the secure vetting system. The committee did not find that he fabricated his account, ignored advice he had read or knowingly endangered national security.
There was a second issue. After Mandelson was dismissed as ambassador in September 2025, Robbins and the foreign secretary signed a response telling MPs that the normal developed-vetting process had been followed and clearance granted. It did not disclose the UKSV recommendation. The inquiry said it had received “partial truths”, although it stopped short of saying it had been lied to.
Robbins's defence is that national security vetting was deliberately kept independent of ministers. They were entitled to know the final outcome, but not the confidential exchanges and personal information behind it. His union says No 10 drafted and approved the wording used to state that position in September 2025.
The committee found that officials should have found a way to flag the seriousness of the concerns without breaking confidentiality. That exposes a failure in the system and in the information given to ministers. It does not establish that Robbins breached a clear duty which existed at the time.
Two days from discovery to dismissal
Starmer said he first learnt on 14 April 2026 that UKSV had recommended refusing clearance. Robbins was removed on 16 April after the prime minister and foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said they had lost confidence in him.
Starmer told Parliament that keeping the recommendation from ministers was “unforgivable”. Yet he did not first establish what Robbins had seen, what he had been told or what the vetting rules allowed him to disclose. Robbins says there was no investigation, no hearing and no fair procedure. Five days after being dismissed, he told MPs that he still did not fully understand the reasons.
The man Starmer removed had inherited an appointment already made by Starmer, approved clearance under a system that permitted the Foreign Office to do so, and followed advice from the department's security specialists.
The political pressure was not invented after the event. Robbins told MPs that his office and the foreign secretary's office faced “constant chasing” from No 10. The calls asked when Mandelson would be cleared, not whether he should be. The Foreign Affairs Committee found that No 10's approach had created an atmosphere of pressure, even though Robbins and the security director both maintained that it had not altered their professional judgment.
The committee's conclusion was devastating for Starmer's account. It said Robbins believed he was carrying out the prime minister's wishes and delivering the outcome wanted by No 10. Since he had been told the case was borderline and the risks could be managed, his decision was unsurprising.
His subsequent dismissal, it found, appeared to have happened “without full due process and the establishment of the facts”. That conclusion was reached by a majority of the committee, over the objection of a dissenting member.
On 13 July, Robbins asked the High Court to review his dismissal. He argues that Starmer had no statutory authority to dismiss him as head of the Diplomatic Service, that there was no fair procedure and that the reasons given were irrational. The court has not ruled on those claims.
The blame travelled downwards
Robbins is not beyond criticism. He backed Mandelson's clearance, relied on an oral briefing in an exceptional case, failed to record his personal reasoning and signed an answer to Parliament that withheld an important part of the story.
None of that makes the way he was dismissed fair.
Starmer chose Mandelson. No 10 announced him before vetting began. The Foreign Office and the serving foreign secretary were not properly consulted about the original choice. Officials were then pressed to complete a process whose political result had already been presented as settled. When the affair returned as a crisis, Robbins was dismissed within two days of Starmer discovering the adverse recommendation.
The inquiry did not find that Robbins went rogue. It found that he believed he was delivering the result the prime minister wanted. It did not find that Starmer conducted a careful disciplinary process. It found that Robbins appeared to have been removed before the facts and due process were established.
Starmer made the political choice. No 10 created the momentum. The system allowed the Foreign Office to manage the risks and grant clearance. When that system became politically indefensible, the civil servant was sacrificed.
That was not accountability. It was blame travelling downwards.
Principal sources
Foreign Affairs Committee report: The appointment of Peter Mandelson as British Ambassador to the United States, 9 July 2026.
Sir Olly Robbins's evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, 21 April 2026.
Prime ministerial statement on Mandelson's appointment, 20 April 2026.
Government announcement of Robbins's Foreign Office appointment, 8 January 2025.
FDA statement on Robbins's judicial-review claim, 14 July 2026.
Institute for Government: The civil service after Brexit, May 2020.