Carol

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

My word. This is incredible. A real-life version of that scene from The Life of Brian: "Stan, you haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!"

[Ken @terciops]

@PaulEmbery That is such a good analogy, it deserves context for the 5 people on X who haven't seen Life of Brian.
Here is the whole scene, since the Trans ridicule is quite devastating.

[Manisha Mishra @manishamishra24]

A man spends 50 years teaching at MIT.

He knows his time is running out.

So he records one last lecture — everything he knows, distilled into a single hour.

He died 5 months later.

This is that lecture.

The most important hour you'll watch this week. 👇
Bookmark it for later

[Sorcha Eastwood MP @SorchaEastwood]

Will the real Keir Starmer please stand up? Is it the man who said that his govt would tread lightly on the lives of people? The man that said he'd have a decade of national renewal? The man who said we'd get better and then engulfed us all in this while the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. We deserve better 👏

[Elaine @elainemccombe]

@davidhaye Such a twat!! Sitting there with sunglasses on in a tv studio 🤣. Hes giving out the wrong message to young men that its okay to treat others like shit! I feel for his daughter, either she will be an ugly duckling with a great personality or a real stunner and a complete bitch

[🤍 @Margjacquieline]

Gemma Collins weighing in on the David Hayes & Jimmy Bullard situation!!

Good for you Gemma #ImACeleb

“The jealousy is real honey, disgusting”

[Clare Phillips #overtimingforNickelback @Clareglitter]

#ImACeleb Thanks to his inability to keep his gob shut, I think we can deduce that Jimmy's sudden decision to leave, which would have taken Adam with him, was completely worked out between Jimmy and David Haye.

And what a vile, toxic, bullying, misogynistic piece of 💩 Haye is.

[Carol @CarolMich17]

@atvfriend I think they planned it after David H left.

[Carol @CarolMich17]

@atvfriend Look at scarlets face and Gemmas face. They werent happy with what jimmy was saying!! Feel sorry that they tried to spoil adams win . I think they cooked this up before Heys left

[Carole Malone @thecarolemalone]

Me too. She’s bloody fabulous. Need more like her !

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

The Man Nobody Is Talking About. His Name Is Sir Philip Barton.

Buried inside Tuesday's committee testimony, beneath the headlines about constant pressure, bullying and secret job searches, is the detail that may prove the most consequential of this entire affair. It concerns not Olly Robbins, not Morgan McSweeney, not even Keir Starmer. It concerns the man who was there before all of them. The man who said no. The man who then left his post eight months early.

Sir Philip Barton was the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office when Peter Mandelson's appointment was announced in December 2024. He was, in other words, the most senior civil servant in the building at the precise moment the machinery of state was being directed to place a man with documented links to Russia and China into the most sensitive diplomatic posting in the Western alliance.

What Robbins told the committee on Tuesday is this. Barton pushed back. When the Cabinet Office argued that vetting Mandelson was unnecessary, that a peer and Privy Councillor did not require developed vetting, Barton refused to accept it. He insisted that vetting was a requirement. He had to be, in Robbins's own words, very firm in person. He also voiced reservations about the appointment to Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, reservations that were noted and not acted upon. He was worried, Robbins suggested, about exactly the same reputational risks that had been detailed to the Prime Minister before the appointment was announced.

Then Sir Philip Barton left his post. Eight months before his tenure would otherwise have concluded.

The question Richard Foord put to Robbins on Tuesday was the right one. Why did Barton's tenure end early? Robbins said he did not know. He suggested ministers may have felt it was time for a change. That answer is not an answer. It is the absence of one.

Consider what the timeline now shows. A senior civil servant pushes back against the appointment, insists on vetting when the Cabinet Office wants to bypass it, raises reservations with the National Security Adviser, and departs eight months ahead of schedule. His replacement arrives to find the appointment already treated as a fait accompli, the vetting process under constant pressure from Downing Street, and the question of outcome entirely subordinate to the question of speed.

If Barton was removed because he stood in the way of this appointment, then Robbins was not the first civil servant sacrificed to protect it. He was the second. And the question of who else was moved aside, overruled or silenced in the months between December 2024 and the moment the security services finally said no, becomes the most important question this affair has yet produced.

Starmer sacked Robbins for following the rules. The Foreign Affairs Committee will now call Barton to give evidence. What he says will either confirm what the timeline already suggests or provide an alternative explanation that the evidence does not currently support.

There is a pattern here that goes beyond process failure. Process failures are random. They point in different directions. What this affair has produced is a series of events that point consistently in one direction. Officials who comply are retained. Officials who push back depart. The security services are bypassed. The vetting is treated as an administrative inconvenience. And the one question nobody at the top of this government will answer is why this appointment, this man, this post, mattered so much that every obstacle was removed to make it happen.

Barton apparently asked that question. He left eight months early. The country deserves to know why.

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

"This is a grievous breach of national security."

Olly Robbins calls for "prosecutions" as says he is "deeply concerned" about the leaks from the UKSV process, pointing the finger at Downing Street.

The system "does not work" if it leaks, he says. "That trust, once gone, cannot be got back."

"I am struck and saddened that within days... of the Cabinet Office for their own reasons deciding to open that up, to share what they thought they had found and their perceptions of it internally with Number 10... I hope that prosecutions will result."

[Adrian Hilton @Adrian_Hilton]

“I've been a civil servant for a quarter of a century. I could recite the [Civil Service] Code to you, and I believe it, along with the Book of Common Prayer, it's one of the two things I can hold in my memory.”
—Sir Oliver Robbins, 21 April 2026.

[Christopher Hope📝 @christopherhope]

Sir OIly Robbins sounds a little emotional as he winds up: "I don’t fully understand the reasons that I’m in the position I am in. But that is for the separate process for me to try to get to the bottom of. ... I loved that job, I loved that institution, I was proud to serve this Government and any government that might follow it.
"I hope I was doing it to the best of my ability, I was certainly doing it as hard as I possibly could. I had wonderful colleagues who I miss deeply."

[Karl Turner MP @KarlTurnerMP]

The conclusion that I have reached from Sir Olly Robbins evidence to @EmilyThornberry select committee is that I am incredibly proud to have the calibre of Sir Olly representing our nation as our top civil servents. It is, in my view, a travesty that he was removed from his post.

[Carol @CarolMich17]

@piersmorgan My thoughts exactly

[Beth Rigby @BethRigby]

Robbins also addresses the criticism from PM and No 10 that he didn't alert them in Sept to this after Mandelson was sacked: "I considered the possibility of taking the
unusual step of asking to see the UKSV documentaon. My team consulted the Cabinet Office and were told that I required a national security justification.

Subsequent discussions between FCDO and CO reflected different views on this matter, but I decided
to adhere to normal practice and did not pursue this further. Finally, it is deeply worrying that within days of CO officials briefing No 10 on the issues they perceived with Mandelson’s vetting the story had leaked to The Guardian.

[The Receipts UK ♿ @david_hollas]

Everyone is focused on what Robbins said verbally this morning.
Nobody has read paragraph 10 of his written submission to the committee.
He has formally alleged, in writing, on the parliamentary record, that within days of the Cabinet Office briefing No 10 on Mandelson's vetting concerns the story leaked to The Guardian.
He is accusing Downing Street of leaking national security information.

https://t.co/jZeq2UA1c9