Ex-UK diplomat says Downing Street pushed to find role for Starmer aide

Downing Street pressured the UK Foreign Office to find a diplomatic posting for the prime minister’s communications chief over the head of the then foreign secretary, according to evidence given to MPs by a former senior official.

Testifying on April 21 before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Sir Olly Robbins, the former head of the Foreign Office, said he held several discussions with No 10 about creating a senior diplomatic role for Matthew Doyle, who was at the time Keir Starmer’s director of communications, the Guardian reports. 

Robbins said he was instructed not to inform then foreign secretary David Lammy about the discussions.

“It was, to be honest, hard to find something that I thought might be suitable. But I also felt quite uncomfortable about it and I kept giving advice that I thought this would be very hard for the Foreign Office, and hard for me personally, to defend,” Robbins told MPs.

He said the requests formed part of broader pressure from senior figures in government to place political appointees into prominent diplomatic positions.

“There were several discussions initiated by No 10 with me about potentially finding a head of mission opportunity for Matthew Doyle, who was then the prime minister’s director of communications,” he said. “I was under strict instruction not to discuss that with the then foreign secretary.”

Robbins said the conversations took place in March 2025, shortly before Doyle left his role at Downing Street. Doyle was later appointed to the House of Lords but was suspended from the Labour whip in February after reports emerged that he had campaigned in 2016 for a former local councillor later convicted of possessing indecent images of children.

In separate testimony to the committee, Robbins also addressed the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington.

The developments follow reports that Robbins is leaving his post after the department failed to inform the prime minister that Mandelson had not passed security vetting for the ambassadorial role.

By Sabina Mammadli