In the Whitehall version of the “Play that Goes Wrong”, everything that could go awry for the protagonist Sir Keir Starmer has done so. He faces yet another disastrous plot twist in the miscalculated appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. The programme notes version is that having failed a key security check in the Cabinet Office vetting operation, Mandelson was anyway given his business-class ticket to Washington, on the green light of the Foreign Office to please the PM.

Starmer’s enthusiasm for Mandelson had already become a liability when the Epstein files disgorged distasteful details of the shape-shifting politician-turned-businessman-turned-diplomat’s transactional friendship and business relationship with the late paedophile. Those details led to a police inquiry in the UK and another in the EU about Mandelson’s conduct as UK trade commissioner.

On the face of it, this could be curtains for a PM who is often described by those who have dealt with him as curiously missing in action for a man who wanted to lead the country. The spectacle of two of the country’s top civil servants desperately trying to get the information about the failed check to formally reach the PM in the last few weeks may perversely turn out to be helpful to Starmer.

When everything is a Whitehall farce, blame becomes distributed across institutions. So, the PM will tell the Commons today how shocked he was – in the way of Captain Louis in Casablanca – to find out the oversight equivalent of gambling........

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