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ninalanyon There are good reasons for the need-to-know principle, but I agree all meetings and interviews should be minuted. And for the "qualifications" for any role in the diplomatic service to be tightened.
Just what the heck is a "Director of Communications" anyway? Who the heck even needs one? A PM who cannot communicate his or her message clearly, unambiguously and honestly is in the wrong trade.
At which we might remind ourselves Mandelson was appointed as a DoC then an EU Trade Commissioner, then Ambassador, without ever having had a proper job in his life!
He entered politics straight from university as a Labour Party HQ clerk. He rose to the dizzily irrelevant heights of "Director of Communications" for Anthony Blair who subsequently appointed him to be Trade Commissioner in the EU. The European Commission being a behind-the-throne body for whom real knowledge and experience of anything on which it pronounces, is unimportant if not downright unwelcome; but which is notorious for secrecy, openess to lobbying it likes, and refusal of accountability.
I don't what if anything of any significance Mandelson did since, until Sir Keir Starmer went and appointed him for reasons we are now trying to extract from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, as the United Kingdom's Ambassador to a country whose relationship with the UK is questionable and fragile.
Hence a classic example of a man given a post for which he is evidently just not suited or "qualified", so my call for better selection methods including examining ability and experience. As well of course any conflicts of interests and possible associations with corrupt foreign money-traders.
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The problem is this nonsense about the useless Peter Mandelson is that it distracts Government and Parliament from what it should be doing - administering the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland as a service to the country.
