Former political adviser Charlie Rowley has ripped apart Labour after it was revealed the Government handed Peter Mandelson a £77,000 payout after he was fired.
On Wednesday, the first batch of documents on Lord Mandelson’s vetting process to become ambassador to the US showed the New Labour titan receiving the eye-watering five-figure sum as severance pay when Sir Keir Starmer fired him.
The figure, which was described as “good value for money” by Foreign Office boss Sir Oliver Robbins, fell well short of Lord Mandelson’s original hefty demand.
The 147-page document was released shortly before the Prime Minister’s Chief Secretary Darren Jones stood in the House of Commons to update MPs on the matter.
In the chamber, Mr Jones argued the settlement dodged having to cough up cash for an employment tribunal – after finding his initial demand to be “inappropriate and unacceptable”.
Nevertheless, Mr Rowley took aim at Labour for even handing him such a large sum at all.
“If you’re sacked, it’s not as if it hasn’t worked out. ‘I’m terribly sorry. And we’ll tie you over because of a terrible misfortune’. Um, you’re asked to leave because you clearly can’t do your job properly,” he blasted.
Continuing on, he added: “This is surmountable to the whole problem with this No10 and the Government, the idea that you’ve got officials sitting around a table saying, ‘well, we must pay him something, we must have a payout because he might take us to court as a tribunal’.
“The guy has been sacked for an association with a convicted paedophile, where he could not do the job that he should never have had in the first place.”
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