[Malcolm Armsteen]

I see that Lewis Goodall (aka a snotty little shit) has now opined that Starmer has been cleared, but his explanation means he has to resign.

I don't get it. Goodall is a supporter, at one time at least a member, what is his fucking game?

[Tubby Isaacs]

The game is that it's all a game, creating as much drama as possible.

The Guardian has 4 headlines up. None of them are "Robbins backs Starmer account that he wasn't told".

[Tubby Isaacs]

Add The Alliance Party to the list of gobshites. Look at this rubbish.

Sorcha Eastwood, the Alliance MP for Lagan Valley in Northern Ireland, said that the Mandelson affair showed how disconnected the Commons was from everyday life.

She said that if one of her constituents overclaimed on benefit, they would have to pay it all back. Or if a disabled person parked in a disabled bay without showing their permit, they would “get hammered”. But Keir Starmer was able to get away with just saying appointing Mandelson was a mistake, she said.

She said MPs had to show they valued integrity. For the sake of his party, and the country, Starmer should resign, she said.

Which previous MP has ever been asked to resign for making a bad appointment? This is tripe.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Jessica Elgot has weighed in now.

Yes, this is one of the most pervasive myths of the whole business, that it was to appease Trump. Total bollocks.
“Oh they needed an operator!” They literally had someone already there who the White House asked to keep in post and they put their mate in there instead.

Inventing quotes and then rubbishing them, nice working if you can get it. I'd certainly have stuck with the established ambassador, but the argument that Trump was a unique proposition or that Mandelson had qualities and experience that made him suited is surely not that ridiculous. She's talking like he appointed his made from down the pub.

I don't remember anything like this fuss when Mandelson was sacked, or appointed. They all went in half cock on Thursday last week, on the basis of what looks like someone leaking to get Starmer. They're following through with everything they have because they know that they created a false impression that he'd misled Parliament,

[Boiler]

Hasn't Marina Hyde weighed in as well..?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Lou Haigh.

Haigh has given an interview to LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr. She said the latest Mandelson revelations showed “a very small clique at the heart of the Labour party and the heart of this government have been pushing decisions in their own self interest, not in the parties and certainly not in the countrys”

Thanks, Lou. What was the self-interest here? What was "certainly not in the interest of the country"? Because even people who really hated Mandelson and thought he'd never been appointed weren't telling us that he was doing badly.

Any chance you could tell us? Preferably next week, seeing that the most urgent issue here seems to be a stitch up of the PM by someone with classified information.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Davey is still going. This is basically the same as Badenoch, except less strident.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, intervened to ask if Jones thought Keir Starmer followed “due process” when taking the Mandelson decision.

What's the due process not followed, Ed?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Hasn't Marina Hyde weighed in as well..?

She's more like John Crace, a sketch type columnist.

Elgot is supposed to be a heavyweight political reporter. Making the PM replacing an ambassador into some sort of unprecedented action and describing a former Deputy PM and European Commissioner as a "mate" isn't heavyweight political reporting.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Hmm, not sure about this. Could be that Robbins has exaggerated to get himself off the hook. Jones could be counterattacking here by making stuff up.

I think this ups the ante considerably. This doesn't look like something that can be squared off.

Darren Jones, chief secretary to PM, rejects claim Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not need security vetting
Jones said in the debate today it was claimed the Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson did not need security vetting.

(This did come up in the debate, but the claim was originally in the evidence given by Olly Robbins this morning. See 9.26am.)

Jones said it was the other way round. He said it was the Foreign Office that asked the Cabinet Office if Mandelson needed to vetting given that he was already a peer and privy counsellor. He said the vetting then took place.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Davey's said this on Bluesky. This is basically froth. He's got no idea what the embassy's links to Trumpworld were like. Trump got Kim Darroch kicked out last time, and was evidently way more rabid this time.

The ‘Starmer appointed Mandelson because he needed someone to manage Trump’ - not true. What happened was:
1) From the general election there was a desire in Downing Street for a political appointee
2) There was no question that the US embassy had good Trumpworld links as it was
It was just the old story of appointing political allies to diplomatic posts - something which we learnt today some in Downing Street wanted to do to one of the sacked comms directors, too.
Mandelson’s first major task when he arrived in Washington (which to be fair he did pull off) was having to soothe Trumpworld that a pro-EU, previous Trump critic and China dove had become ambassador.

"Same old story" in that politicians have not infrequently appointed political allies to diplomatic roles. Ed Llewellyn will have worked with Ed Davey in the Coalition. He got appointed ambassador to France, I see. The PM can appoint career diplomats (my preference) or allies. there's not impropriety in that.

Nice bit of admitting that Mandelson actually did have some diplomatic skills there in the last bit too.

[Tubby Isaacs]

BBC

A question of leadership

For all that Sir Olly's evidence session was bruising for the prime minister on the specifics of Lord Mandelson, it feels like this territory is where things get more dangerous for Sir Keir because it speaks to how he has operated as prime minister.
When Labour MPs come to form a judgment on the prime minister after the elections on 7 May, the events of the past few days will be a factor, but less because of what exactly transpired with Lord Mandelson and more for what the Mandelson saga tells them about Sir Keir.
It's a saga which has some distance left to run even this week. Later on Tuesday there will be up to three hours more debate in the House of Commons on this.
It seems inevitable that Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch will focus on this issue at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday (perhaps re-asking the six questions that she posed to Sir Keir in the Commons on Monday).
Then there are still enormous quantities of documents the government has undertaken to publish as part of the "humble address" process, including communications between ministers and government advisers with Lord Mandelson when he was in position as ambassador. All sorts of embarrassment could lurk in those.
For Sir Keir, acknowledging that appointing Lord Mandelson was an error may have been the easy part. Drawing a line under that error is proving impossible.

Roughly translated, there may be bad stuff in the documents not release, but we're going to tell you the PM's shit anyway in the meantime. Great framing of Kemi as a master inquisitor there too. No mention that she's had to stop saying the PM lied because there's no evidence.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Does anyone think a Tory Government would have been made to publish all these communicatios between ministers? I don't. How long did it take to get the Covid stuff out of them?

[Tubby Isaacs]

This looks like big news. Is it credible?

Decisive action to break influence of gas on electricity prices

I was told this was not possible, except by installing so many alternatives that gas doesn't set the price. How have they pulled this off?

[mattomac]

Is it because Starmer and his cabinet generally didn’t go to their public schools.

I can’t see any other reason at this stage

[davidjay]

Johnson could lie to the Queen and be excused. He lied to the country countless times and it was Boris being Boris. I fear that history will be kind to him in a way not seen since the Evil Witch. But every Labour politician is liable to be thrown to the wolves.

[satnav]

Starmer really needs to announce a new system for appointing people to senior government post. In future the relevant departmental select committee should be given the opportunity to question somebody before they can take up a post. This would hopefully avoid a repeat of the Mandelson debacle and it would be a useful safeguard to have in place just in case the country has a national stroke and Farage becomes the next PM. He has already hinted that he might give senior posts to people from outside of politics. Some of the outsiders might be less willing to take up posts if they know they will face scrutiny even before taking up their posts.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Is it because Starmer and his cabinet generally didn’t go to their public schools.

I can’t see any other reason at this stage

I don't think so. I think it's that all the papers have their idea of a base readership that Starmer's Government doesn't fit.

The Right media obviously speaks for itself, with the BBC taking its cues from it. You've basically got only the FT, the Independent, Guardian and Mirror that's left. The FT and Independent are fairly small reach. I know the FT isn't all negative about Labour. The Mirror seems to be reasonably loyal.

That leaves the Guardian, who've caused me particular irritation. They've been shown not to care very much about lots of stuff they've claimed to care about for years- union rights, child poverty, borrowing for investment, and indeed climate change (or at least not enough to credit the PM and Chancellor for a role in it, as if Miliband is running some detached fiefdom, like Peter Walker in the Wales Office when Thatcher was PM).

What they care about is what you might call liberalism, and Starmer isn't very liberal. And they don't like the idea of any sort of "deregulation," even if gets more homes built, or makes building railways more affordable. Plus Starmer hasn't defined himself against Brexit, the way they do. (In practice I think it makes little difference how you define yourself, we're working our passage back, and it takes time). All these things add up to The Guardians preferring the Lib Dems and Greens to Starmer's Labour.

Starmer of course picked the illiberalism, and that looks like a very bad political strategy, But it's no excuse for the ridiculously one sided coverage. I'll give you an example that someone BTL drew my attention to today. Here's a ranking of governments on climate policy. The UK comes near the top of the OECD, well ahead of France, Germany, Netherlands, and current Guardian fave, Spain. Only Denmark is ahead.

https://ccpi.org/ranking/

This isn't exactly the impression given by the paper, is it?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Starmer really needs to announce a new system for appointing people to senior government post. In future the relevant departmental select committee should be given the opportunity to question somebody before they can take up a post. This would hopefully avoid a repeat of the Mandelson debacle and it would be a useful safeguard to have in place just in case the country has a national stroke and Farage becomes the next PM. He has already hinted that he might give senior posts to people from outside of politics. Some of the outsiders might be less willing to take up posts if they know they will face scrutiny even before taking up their posts.

I'm not sure about that. MPs in Select Committees can grandstand, and someone pointed out today that they didn't seem to respond to Ollie Robbins' actual answers, but just kept asking the same things. I'd keep MPs at some distance from most appointments. I think some sort of new standard process might be needed though.

I also think Farage-Badenoch would tear up any rules anyway. So don't handicap yourself with giving your appointees extra hurdles to jump over.