Cat Little's Mandygate Bombshell: Vetting Scandal Deepens

0:00On April 23rd, Cat Little, the top civil servant at the cabinet office, dropped some serious bombs in her testimony to Parliament over the Peter. Mandelson vetting scandal, now dubbed Mandy Gate. Unlike Oli Robbins, her counterpart from the Foreign Office, who testified just two days before, little backed her story with a rock-solid audit trail instead of just memories. Earlier this month, in a face-to-face meeting in mid-March 2025, Little asked Robbins for files on Mandelson's security clearance. Those docs showed the Foreign Office had been advised against clearing him in late January, but Robbins overruled it anyway. Little looked genuinely stressed, spilling these national security beans, a far cry from Robbins' smooth delivery. Her role puts her in charge of uniting kingdom security vetting, which recommended denying Mandelson develop vetting for his appointment. Her paper trail exposed more, despite Robbins claiming he couldn't access the full file without justification, records confirmed the Foreign Office.

1:01Security team got key vetting documents that same day, and this was after Mandelson got sacked, no clear reason given. With three private secretaries witnessing and Little's own notes from that meeting, this feud between top mandarins keeps unfolding, forcing, Parliament to dig deeper into how clearance is really work, behind closed doors.