Let’s keep it a hundred: the game is rigged, and the elites in Westminster are playing by a completely different set of rules. If a regular person on the street gets caught slipping on a background check, they’re losing their job, their flat, and probably heading straight to court. But if you’re Olly Robbins, the former Foreign Office boss, you can bypass security warnings for a guy linked to Jeffrey Epstein, get fired, and then wait less than three months before another big-time politician tries to hand you the keys to the kingdom.

Word on the street is that Robbins is already having "early exploratory talks" with Andy Burnham’s team about coming back to run the country's national security. Burnham, the newly elected MP for Makerfield, has got his crew looking at Robbins to be the next National Security Adviser. This is wild when you remember that Robbins just got kicked out of his government job because he was caught up in the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal.

Let’s look at the facts. The UK Security Vetting team did their job and said Mandelson should be denied clearance. They weren't just worried about his ties to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; they also flagged his questionable connections to big players in China, Russia, and Israel. But Robbins decided he knew better, overrode the system, and pushed the clearance through anyway.

When the whole thing blew up, Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had to fire Robbins because they lost all confidence in him. Mandelson got sacked too. To make it even shadier, when Parliament demanded to see the vetting paperwork, the Foreign Office refused to hand over a summary to the official compiling the files. They locked down the information to protect their own.

But instead of Robbins being blacklisted, his civil service buddies in Whitehall are treating him like a martyr. They’re claiming No 10 pressured him to fast-track Mandelson's clearance, and that Robbins was just doing what the bosses wanted. Robbins is even talking about suing the government for ruining his reputation.

Now, Burnham’s team is calling Robbins an "outstanding operator" because they’re reportedly "underpowered" on foreign policy and defense. So, their solution to lacking foreign policy experience is to hire a guy who got fired for a massive national security vetting failure. It makes zero sense to regular people, but in the halls of power, they just keep recycling the same names.

If Robbins gets this job, he’ll be replacing Jonathan Powell, who’s been the National Security Adviser since November 2024. Powell was praised by the elites for dealing with Trump’s tariffs, but he took a lot of heat for giving up the Chagos Islands. Robbins is a former Brexit negotiator, so they think he has the weight for the role, regardless of his baggage.