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Tom Swarbrick is joined by former Prime Minister Liz Truss to discuss Olly Robbins’ sacking, government accountability, and whether our system is 'broken'. It comes after the former top official at the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, says No 10 had a "dismissive" approach to Lord Mandelson's vetting earlier today. Robbins was sacked after the prime minister discovered he did not tell him that Mandelson had failed the vetting process to be the US ambassador. Downing Street denies showing a "dismissive" approach to the vetting, and says Robbins made an "error of judgement". In an emergency Commons debate about Mandelson's appointment, the Tories and SNP call for a no confidence vote in the prime minister. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #tomswarbrick #liztruss #LBC #ukpolitics #starmer #news #uknews #debate LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
Do you think Olly Robbins should have been sacked
0:02
I don't think he should have been sacked. I don't think he did anything wrong
0:07
I do believe in principle, though, that the Prime Minister should be able to choose
0:10
the civil servants that work for him. So I don't think there was a principle problem wrong with it
0:16
but it's not obvious why he's been sacked, apart from not disclosing the information
0:22
But we know that he wasn't allowed to disclose the information thanks to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act
0:28
which Keir Starmer, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair are all supporters of
0:32
So it seems to me that Keir Starmer's basically been hoist on his own petard
0:37
They created, New Labour in particular, created this very rigid system of independence
0:45
which essentially made decisions unaccountable. And now he's blaming the guy who made the decision in the system that they created
0:54
So the Prime Minister should be able to request the details of that vetting, even if that bit of legislation says, no, this has to be kept, quote, independent
1:05
Well, I think the legislation should be repealed. I think that's where the problem is
1:10
And what would that have done in this particular case? What it would have meant, and I think this is a principal point, I think the Prime Minister is the leader of the nation
1:20
they should have access to all the information in the government system
1:25
No ifs, no buts. And then if Keir Starmer makes a bad decision about Peter Mandelson
1:34
he's responsible because he's seen all the information. But the problem is we've got these laws
1:39
that basically stop him seeing the information. He says it's not my fault, it's this other guy's fault
1:44
And it's dysfunctional, it's completely dysfunctional. And the point I would make is this is not the only area it takes place
1:52
There are lots of areas where information is not at the behest of the Prime Minister
1:59
where decisions are made independent of the political process. And I just think that's a problem
2:06
OK, well, let's get into that, because you say bureaucrats withhold information all the time
2:10
So in your experience, you were cabinet minister for a very long time, you know, trade secretary, foreign secretary
2:16
what information was withheld from you do you know what information was with for example you know in
2:22
the case of the bank of england when i was prime minister we didn't know that they were selling
2:28
40 billion or announcing the sale of 40 billion pounds worth of government gilts the night before
2:34
our budget and you know they essentially had complete control over monetary policy
2:39
they made decisions that were did not have political input and they made decisions on the
2:47
timing of their decisions as well and I so that's just one example I could go through independent
2:53
aren't they correct but the the same is true of this vetting process that we're talking about that
2:58
Ollie Robbins conducted I didn't think Ollie Ollie Robbins didn't do anything wrong you know
3:02
he acted within the process but I'm saying there's a process problem in government people elect a
3:09
party and they elect a prime minister under the expectation that that is the person making the
3:14
decisions. But the reality is in modern Britain, so many of those decisions have been outsourced
3:20
to the Bank of England, the Climate Change Committee, the permanent undersecretary at the
3:24
Foreign Office. It's hard to say what the politicians are actually responsible for
3:29
And I think that is at the heart of the problem here. So what would you have done? You would have
3:36
removed independence from the Bank of England so you could as Prime Minister could have decided
3:39
we're not selling 40 billion quid's worth of gilts on the day before the budget. Correct. And by the way this was the status quo pre-1997
3:48
And the reason it changed is because there was a feeling that the government was basically controlling interest rates it was marking its own homework when it comes to things like the OBR and that wasn good for transparency or democracy
4:00
But I think we've now seen what the opposite looks like, which is the Bank of England has made huge decisions about quantitative easing
4:07
which have affected people's lives. You know, why have asset prices risen so high
4:13
Why are young people struggling to get on the housing ladder? A lot of that is because of the debasement of the currency
4:19
the actions of the Bank of England, but there is no direct electoral accountability for that
4:25
You say that Keir Starmer is angry that the rigged bureaucratic state
4:30
that he, Blair and Brown, created has come back to bite him on the backside. Does that not conveniently ignore five different Conservative prime ministers
4:36
in that time, in that creation of that? Well, I think there was a big mistake by the Conservative Party
4:43
not to repeal the various Blair laws that created where we are now
4:48
And it's not just the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which is the one we're talking about today
4:54
It's the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act, the Bank of England Act
4:58
But what all of these acts did is they took power away that used to sit in the hands of Parliament, the Prime Minister
5:06
and it gave the power to the independent bodies. And now Keir Starmer is pointing the finger at Ollie Robbins and saying
5:12
you know it's wrong you made this decision but there was new labor that gave ollie robbins that
5:19
power so do you have do you have some sympathy with keir starmer you've been in that office
5:23
you know where where the power can and where the edges of that power are do you have some sympathy
5:29
for him well i don't have any sympathy partly because he spends all his time lying about me
5:34
so i'm not i'm not you know i'm not well claiming all sorts of rubbish about i crashed the economy
5:42
and so on, which is not true. And the Bank of England have acknowledged that two thirds
5:46
of all those market movements that occurred back in 2022 were down to them
5:52
But so I didn't have any sympathy from a personal level. It is true, though, that prime ministers
6:00
do not have enough ability to run the country. And the way that it's set up, and you've been a
6:08
number 10 yourself, Tom. The way it's set up is Byzantine. It is dysfunctional. And it ends up
6:18
pitting departments against each other. You end up with lots of decisions that aren't coordinated
6:23
You end up with a prime minister with a lack of information. And I don't think in this case
6:28
Keir Starmer was lying. I think he was telling the truth that the foreign office hadn't told him
6:33
And in fact, Ollie Robbins confirmed that in his testimony today. So I think we have a dysfunctional system
6:40
but I'm critical of Keir Starmer because Keir Starmer, when he was in opposition
6:46
pointed the finger at the Prime Minister of the day and said, it's all your fault, you're not taking responsibility
6:50
He didn't say we as New Labour made all these mistakes of creating this system that is now an out-of-control albatross
6:59
Yes. So is there a world in which you think that Keir Starmer should have been able to appoint basically whoever he wanted, sort of regardless of
7:07
the security checks? Yes. So Mandelson could have been appointed by the Prime Minister and no security
7:13
check would need to happen because the Prime Minister decided he was the man? No, I'm not
7:18
saying that. I think the Prime Minister should receive information. But I think ultimately we
7:23
want decisions about key appointments made by the Prime Minister, not by an unelected official
7:30
Otherwise, why are we living in a democracy? If we think that permanent bureaucrats are best placed to make decisions
7:37
what is the point of politicians talking? Isn the issue here and to some extent the issue that you encountered is less that you are meant to follow a process that denudes you of being able to enact your power and more that you didn follow the process that
7:55
allows you to do it. So for instance Keir Starmer was told vet first then appoint by Sir Simon case
8:00
he didn't do that. You came in with your budget you wanted to not go through the OBR you wanted
8:07
to avoid the kind of processes that had been undertaken for a budget before and you lost your
8:12
job and some people lost their homes as a result of the chaos they did not they they there were
8:17
issues in the mortgage market because of the bank of england that is simply a lie tom it's not a
8:21
lie to say people lost their homes people did lose their homes it's it's a lie to say it was my fault
8:26
when the bank of england have admitted responsibility yes no but the bank of england have literally
8:31
admitted responsibility for what happened so that is a lie tom well i didn't say you were responsible
8:36
for people losing their homes i was saying the resulting chaos led to people losing yeah but
8:40
You were implying it was my budget, and it wasn't. It was the Bank of England's sale of the gilts and the failure to regulate LDIs
8:48
It was. The Bank of England wrote a report saying exactly this in 2024, Tom
8:53
Have you read the report? I have read the report, and the Bank of England does say that
8:58
but there are also decisions that you made that contributed to the difficulty in the mortgage market
9:02
Had you not done the budget in the way that you'd done it, there would not be a blow-up in the mortgage market
9:06
If the Bank of England hadn't announced the sale of £40 billion worth of gilts the night before, this wouldn't have happened
9:13
So what effect did your budget have on any of it? None? Very little. Very little. It was a monetary issue
9:21
And this is my point, that politicians get blamed for things that independent bodies make decisions on
9:30
My point would be, had you followed the... No, no. Hang on a sec, hang on a sec
9:35
Had you followed the processes laid out for other people to do other budgets in different ways
9:38
I did follow the process. You ignored the OBR? You told the OBR to take a running jump
9:43
This is getting really into the weeds here. But the OBR only have to be consulted twice a year
9:49
I did not have to consult the OBR at all. I did everything within the process laid out
9:56
And I got authorisation from the Treasury Civil Servants to go ahead
10:01
They also didn't know what the Bank of England was going to do. That's how dysfunctional the system is
10:06
Would you have done the budget? There's a narrative being created, Tom
10:11
by people who support Keynesian economics and don't want to change the system
10:16
that it was somehow my fault. That's simply not true. And plenty of reports have been written since
10:23
which show it's not true and show it's the actions of the Bank of England that caused it
10:28
So your argument is Keir Starmer was left in the dark by a process that wasn't apparently allowed to tell him about the vetting
10:36
you were left in the dark as you went to do your budget because the Bank of England didn't tell you that they were selling gills
10:42
Well, these are two separate examples of a dysfunctional system where the person who has been elected to run the country
10:52
doesn't actually have control of the levers and in some cases doesn't know what's going on
10:58
Now, the difference between me and Keir Starmer is I'm a critic of the system. I even wrote back in 2009 that we needed to have an accountable civil service. This is something I've believed for a very long time. Keir Starmer is a lover of the system
11:15
You know, this is, I describe today's altercation as blob versus blob, because Keir Starmer is
11:22
somebody who believes in independent experts making decisions. But what he's doing is when
11:27
he doesn't like the decision, he's then, you know, shooting the independent expert
11:33
I somebody who believes in democracy I believe that if Keir Starmer knowing all the vetting report wants to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador He should be able to do that Because I don like living in a country where the governor of
11:49
the Bank of England is making decisions, the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office is making decisions that aren't sanctioned by our elected leaders. But I don't blame Ollie
11:58
Robbins for that, because he was following the law. You have to change the law. And this is the
12:03
point I would make to anybody who does want to become prime minister in the future. Unless these
12:09
laws are repealed, like the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, like the Bank of England Act
12:14
you will not have the power to make the changes that the country needs. And this is why the country
12:20
is in a very serious state. We have a dysfunctional system of government. We really do
12:27
And you can criticise what I did in office. There have been numerous prime ministers in office
12:32
before and since and they're all struggling with the system that doesn't work um couple final
12:39
questions how long do you think he's got Keir Starmer I think he will last longer than people
12:46
expect because I don't think the Labour MPs want the alternative I mean personally I don't think
12:52
it matters very much which Labour MP is in in number 10 I think we've got a system problem
12:59
and I think we've got a system that is wedded to an economic system that doesn't work
13:06
that's wedded to mass migration, that's wedded to things like net zero
13:11
all the policies that aren't working for our country. Let me ask you about one policy that some people think isn't working
13:17
Would you, in order to help the day-to-day spending, would you want the government to look again at the triple lock
13:24
£15 billion by 2030, that's going to come. I think there does need to be a new system
13:29
I certainly do. And I think... Including on the triple lock? Including on the triple lock
13:33
And I think the British public want bold change. And they're actually fed up with politicians claiming
13:42
that we can just carry on with the way things are. Does that bold change include, as the government did the other day
13:49
a law that allows them to direct pension providers to buy UK assets
13:58
No. You don't think that's the bold change the country will? No, it certainly isn't. It certainly isn't. You know, I believe in property rights. I believe that
14:05
people should be able to control their own pensions. And I think we've got a very worrying
14:10
trend in this country of a diminution of not just people's freedom of speech, but also their freedom
14:17
to own property. I deprecate inheritance tax. I deprecate attempts to fiddle with people's
14:25
pension pots. It's all a way of trying to fleece the public of more money. We've already got a
14:31
government that is spending 45% of our national income on the state. It's far too much
14:37
Final thought. You've been quite close to the Trump administration, talking to the Trump
14:42
administration. Would you ever take a job there in the Trump administration, if one were offered
14:47
I'm not interested in working for the American administration. I'm interested in what we can do to save Britain. Do you think Trump's been a good president
14:56
I do. I think he's been a very good president. I think he's been a very good president. And
15:01
I think if we'd had Kamala Harris, the West would be facing a very, very serious crisis
15:09
Do you think the war in Iran is justified? I do. I believe that the nuclear weapons that
15:15
the Iranians were developing are a threat not just to the Middle East, but to global stability
15:21
And I watched, I was Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister when Biden was in
15:26
and I just watched the can being kicked down the road again and again, and the Iranians playing the system
15:33
And Trump has called them out
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