QUENTIN LETTS: MPs used to deal with Whitehall’s panjandrums with awe. Now they snort at them with open ridicule

To be Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office was, once, to be a demi-god. Yet Sir Olly Robbins, the incumbent, yesterday described himself as ‘Peter Mandelson’s line manager’. One doubts Lord Mandelson saw it quite that way. If Peter ever uttered the term ‘line manager’ it would have been greased with irony.

How mundane our mandarins have become, made drab by managerial jargon. Priggish superiority fell on Sir Olly’s small lips when he declined to give further details of l’affaire Mandelson.

He ‘owed Lord Mandelson a duty of care as a former employee’. Part of that ‘duty of care’ included not telling us how much Mandy pocketed in a pay-off after being sacked. Not that Sir Olly used that abrasive term. ‘He was withdrawn,’ murmured Sir Olly.

Sir Olly was at the foreign affairs select committee to discuss vetting procedures for Lord Mandelson before he was sent to Washington DC. Alongside Sir Olly sat Sir Chris Wormald, Cabinet Secretary.

Sir Chris has been in situ less than a year but already the black spot is on him.

Starmerites have told reporters he will be given the bullet. Sorry. ‘Withdrawn.’

Sir Chris was asked if he expected to survive. ‘I certainly hope so,’ he whimpered. ‘Hear hear!’ added Sir Olly just a little too fast. Some think Sir Olly (an accommodating chap, as Theresa May found when she tried to stuff Brexit) could replace poor Wormald.

As for Sir Chris, he sat low at the table, shoulders hunched, rocking to and fro’. He seldom raised his eyes.

Sir Olly Robbins, the incumbent, yesterday described himself as ‘Peter Mandelson’s line manager’

He and Sir Olly defended the light vetting undergone by ex-ambassador Mandelson. Sir Keir Starmer had indicated he wanted Peter to have the job. ‘We acted on that view,’ said Sir Olly with satisfaction.

And yet Whitehall was clever enough to send Sir Keir a report on ‘reputational risk’. This seems to have included details of Mandelson’s closeness to the pederast Jeffrey Epstein.

Sir Chris, who has difficulty with the letter R, said ‘weputational wisk’ a good ten times. He enjoyed repeating the term.

As for the vetting process undergone by Lord Mandelson, ‘we believe it could have been improved,’ said one of the mandarins. The MPs laughed. Commons committee members used to treat Whitehall’s panjandrums with awe. Now they snort at them with open ridicule.

Pukka grandeur has not vanished entirely from Westminster. Lord (Chris) Patten, these days on a stick, shuffled into a joint Lords-Commons committee that is considering the threat from China.

There were two other witnesses at the table. One of them was a retired MI6 top brass who wore a dashing eye-patch and had the glorious name of Inkster. But Lord Patten was the witness that the committee was most keen to hear.

The MPs laughed. Commons committee members used to treat Whitehall’s panjandrums with awe. Now they snort at them with open ridicule

Agent Inkster? An urgent, pessimistic, fidgety presence, doing all sorts of things with his fingers as he spoke: cat’s cradling, tugging on his nails, flexing the knuckles.

You expect an MI6 man to be more composed. Not a chap to entrust with an exploding Noilly Prat bottle, put it like that. But Lord Patten was the opposite.

He drawled. His eyes closed at tortoise speed. At one point I thought he’d popped off. He was wonderfully rude about Labour’s ‘cooperate, compete, challenge’ doctrine on China. Said they’d do better with that ‘see it, say it, sorted’ slogan of British Transport Police.

Where Inkster seemed fretful about China, Lord Patten was airily snooty, arguing that the Leninists of the Chinese Communist Party were scared of Western freedoms. We were now ‘past peak-China’. Their birth rate was going to scupper them. Britain should be confident and stand up to Beijing.

The day also saw the Commons gardens of remembrance opened by Speaker Hoyle. A Royal Bitish Legion band played, prayers were led by the Speaker’s excellent chaplain and we sang Abide With Me.

I was next to Defence Secretary John Healey and can report that he has a tenor almost as dulcet as Gunner ‘Lofty’ Sugden from It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum.