[Tubby Isaacs]

"Watered down" and "tinkering round the edges" seems to be the standard left take on nearly everything. Increasingly there are lots who think the problem with everything is insufficient boldness. It's increasingly like the right.

[davidjay]

Few things in life are full of such self-importance as an open letter.

[mattomac]

Some of the most radical changes in Renting Law is not “tinkering around the edges”, of course it probably doesn’t affect him.

My colleague who I don’t think is particularly to the left was praising it, I wrote a breakdown of it for students it’s a really really good bill.

[Abernathy]

Just read this post on the Fleecbook, which I think is rather interesting :

Oh, this one’s going to make the right wing squirm. They love claiming Labour wreck the economy so the Conservatives can swoop in and save the day. Funny thing the facts tell a very different story.
A mate of mine and I were having a friendly debate about which side has actually handled the British economy best since World War Two so we fact checked it. Some very interesting facts emerged.
We looked at three things only
Economic stability
Unemployment and growth
Whether poverty levels improved or worsened
No ideology. Just outcomes.
On the left, Labour chancellors like Stafford Cripps, Hugh Dalton and Gordon Brown focused on stability first. Post war Labour rebuilt a bankrupt country, created the welfare state and kept unemployment low for decades. Gordon Brown then delivered the longest continuous period of economic growth in modern British history with low inflation and falling poverty. The Bank of England was made independent and the economy stayed stable for a full decade before the global crash.
On the right, Conservative chancellors focused heavily on inflation control and market reform. Inflation did come down in the 80s and 90s, but this often came with sharp rises in unemployment, deindustrialisation and higher inequality. Growth tended to be more boom and bust. The early 80s and the post 2010 austerity period both saw prolonged economic pain and slower recoveries.
So what does the evidence show.
Longest periods of stability
Labour
Lowest unemployment overall
Labour
Biggest sustained reductions in poverty
Labour
Inflation control at any cost
Conservatives
The conclusion surprised even us.
If you judge chancellors by efficiency, stability, jobs and living standards rather than slogans, the left has the stronger post war economic record.
Not perfect. Not flawless. But on the facts, they come out on top.

[davidjay]

Yeahbut cap in hand to the IMF, Brown sold the gold, Rachael from...

[Oboogie]

Yeahbut cap in hand to the IMF, Brown sold the gold, Rachael from...

Don't forget the note...

[davidjay]

Yeahbut cap in hand to the IMF, Brown sold the gold, Rachael from...

Don't forget the note...

Silly me. How could I forget the note?

[Abernathy]

Mandy has just resigned his Labour Party membership. He says he doesn’t want to cause the party any more embarassment about his close friendship with Epstein. Which suggests there’s more yet to come.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

What, again?

[Oboogie]

Is that the third time he's been sacked by Labour?

[Youngian]

Just like Trump and the rest of them, Mandelson is questioning the authenticity of the documents. Closing ranks with the worst human beings on Earth isn't a good look.

[Boiler]

To borrow an oft-used phrase on here:

"Man's a cunt"

[Abernathy]

The Mandelson affair has been causing me quite some disquiet, the more I think about it.

He resigned from Labour - in order not to "cause the party further embarrassment". So, had the latest revelations remained covered up, Mandelson would have just carried on being a Labour Party member? That's objectively repugnant. Getting caught with your fingers in the till. Bunter only admitting he ate those cream cakes when he was found with jam and cream all round his gob. But it also suggests that there are further embarrassments in the pipeline - and Mandelson knows this.

It isn't great for Starmer, either - to put it mildly. Starmer clearly should never have appointed Mandy as USA Ambassador - even if he really didn't have all of the information on his connections to Epstein to hand at the time. It inevitably does raise questions of judgement for him, that probably won't go away. The Tories, not unexpectedly, have been quick to condemn Starmer for waiting for Mandy to resign instead of expelling him before now. They do have a point, of sorts. And of course, they'll work it.

[Boiler]

It's been a gift to the Opposition, that's for sure.

I see a lot of calls for him to be stripped of his title - how hard is it to do that?

I know I'd certainly remember if someone put $75,000 in my bank account.

[Abernathy]

I’ve had a further, horrible thought about this. Because Mandelson is a gay man, he has appeared sometimes to cite that as evidence that he could not possibly have been involved or complicit in Epstein’s appalling, but in essence (in so far as anyone can tell) entirely heterosexually centred abuses.

However, there is a certain strain of bigotry and homophobia that likes (incorrectly) to associate and even equate paedophilia with homosexuality - and classes both simply as perversions . It strikes me that the Mandelson/Epstein scandal (for scandal is what it undoubtedly is) provides that particular strain of bigotry and hatred with ill-deserved fuel.

I’m still deeply uneasy about this. I’m sensing there are yet more serious repercussions from it to come. For Starmer, and even for this government. Mandy won’t be forgiven this time.

[Abernathy]

From Andy McSmith :

I am inviting trouble by saying this, but I feel a scintilla of sorrow this morning over the self-destruction of Lord Mandelson.
I have known him for over 40 years, since just before he took over as Director of Communications at the Labour Party. I had to work alongside him. We did not get on, but he was brilliant at what he did.He was the first person in British politics to fit the description ‘spin doctor’, who did the Labour Party great service back then.
But like many highly focused, ambitious, selfish social climbers, while he plotted and connived, he was forever convinced that he was a victim of other people’s plotting and connivance.
Every time his roller-coaster political career took a downward lurch, there was a rich man involved. The first time he had to resign from the Cabinet was over money he secretly borrowed from a millionaire MP. The second was over his dealings with an Indian billionaire. He was lucky not to chalk up a third over the revelation that he had spent time sunning himself on an £80 million yacht belonging to the Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who is now sanctioned by the UK government.
I can almost hear what was going through his mind as he sat back comfortably in his white dressing gown, enjoying a luxurious free holiday as Jeffrey Epstein’s guest. He would have loved the feeling of success, of done better than those who spoken ill of him and tried to do him down.
Mandelson is not a clown, like Boris Johnson or Liz Truss. He was a brilliant political strategist brought down by glaring faults in his character. In some ways, he resembled the Earl of Rochester’s description of Charles II “whose promise none relies on; He never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one.”

[Oboogie]

I’ve had a further, horrible thought about this. Because Mandelson is a gay man, he has appeared sometimes to cite that as evidence that he could not possibly have been involved or complicit in Epstein’s appalling, but in essence (in so far as anyone can tell) entirely heterosexually centred abuses.

However, there is a certain strain of bigotry and homophobia that likes (incorrectly) to associate and even equate paedophilia with homosexuality - and classes both simply as perversions . It strikes me that the Mandelson/Epstein scandal (for scandal is what it undoubtedly is) provides that particular strain of bigotry and hatred with ill-deserved fuel.

I’m still deeply uneasy about this. I’m sensing there are yet more serious repercussions from it to come. For Starmer, and even for this government. Mandy won’t be forgiven this time.

I've not seen it, but there is apparently a photo, taken on Epstein Island, of a trouserless Mandy with a young woman (no suggestion she was underage, though she might turn out to be). Given what I've heard about both Mandy and about Epstein, I'm curious how that picture came about.

[Killer Whale]

Can't the fucker just be prosecuted for feeding Government inside information to Epstein?

[Abernathy]

Can't the fucker just be prosecuted for feeding Government inside information to Epstein?

I think he can be, and frankly, I think he should be. This is why I keep thinking that this is huge, and much more serious and consequential than it has as yet been regarded as. This was a serving minister for business passing inside information from the UK cabinet to a global financier who was at the time a convicted sex offender. Sounds pretty fucking serious to me.

[Boiler]

Anyone else, the Fuzz would be involved already.

But as we know, normal rules don't apply.