Chris Mason: Mandelson saga is a messy palaver – and the questions continue to swirl

Prof Ciaran Martin, who has worked in government himself and so is schooled in the protocols of Whitehall, told The World at One on Radio 4 that Sir Olly was a stickler for exactly those precedents and was right not to tell Sir Keir Starmer, given how inevitably prying and personal the vetting process is.