In the Commons on Monday, Starmer apologised for appointing Mandelson. But then spent the next half hour recounting the timeline. He was adamant that he wasn't told about the outcome of the security check which, rather stupidly, was undertaken only after the announcement of the appointment. This has now been changed. The problem being, and for which Starmer has not provided an answer, is that The Indy ran a lead story on the checking's failure last September and had contacted Downing Street about it. Starmer side-stepped the this question from Kemi Badenoch, hiding behind the "all process was followed" excuse. Even if this was true, didn't this query involve further discussion in Number 10 at the time? It's difficult to believe this did not reach the ears of certain senior people.
Whatever the ins and outs of process, no one is likely to believe Starmer apart from those who want to. Easily Boris Johnson's equal when it comes to matters of the truth, Starmer's leadership is so fully compromised by an economy with the actualite that everything he says should come with a warning and a lengthy fact check. His strategy to come out fighting is all about burying the problem in boring procedure to avoid blame. Reams and reams of articles going over the prescribed way of doing things and making it look like a dysfunction of arcane Whitehall machinery. This, however, is nothing but a shield. Starmer knew who Mandelson was, his history and record, his disgraces, and his close friendships with billionaires, above all convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Starmer wasn't to know about Mandelson's treachery, but there was plenty of other things that suggested giving him the top ambassador's job was stupid. And he was appointed anyway, following Mandelson apparently lobbying Morgan McSweeney for the post and as reward for services rendered. Despite Starmer's insincere apology, he's never proffered an explanation for employing him in the first place. Because he hasn't got an acceptable answer, hence why we're getting treated to the unique tedium of Starmer's bureaucratic theatre.
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21 comments:
Could Starmer have been leaned on by Trump to get Mandelson appointed? Idea being that when more Epstein files released, Mandelson would be sacked drawing focus of attention away from Trump’s relationship with Epstein. Mandelson fully aware of this plan and paid off somehow?
But announcing appointment before security vetting tantamount to guaranteeing trouble down the road? Is Starmer really that clueless? See Jonathan Cook’s recent blog post: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-04-17/starmer-excuse-dont-believe/
Wheels within wheels - to what end?
It's unlikely because Trump and co were said to be happy with the mooted replacement before Mandelson's name entered the frame. And, indeed, I remember some mischief making among the Tory press that suggested some concerns that team Trump had with Mandelson.
And a main plank of his defence by Ministers and his MPs is to stress his integrity! You feel its is almost Shaksperean - Brutus is an honourable man, they are all honourable men - and women. When evidence of his lack of integrity is so evident.
RW Troll here. Agree with much. The problem is Starmer has no political agenda apart from competence and international law. He doesn't believe in anything. So when he gets being a competent political manager wrong he has no points in the bank.
Just a matter of lining up the replacement.
As a RW troll I could live with Burnham. Feel he would take seriously any criticism, engage in debate, sense his duties extended beyond the narrow political. Possibly Rayner too. But please not Miliband. An incompetent zealot doing wholesale pointless damage to the UK. Convinced of his own genius despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
It is just awful- we desperately need a new politics. I just hope that the Green Party, as good as they maybe - are not naive. They may have a chance to shape politics. To make sure young people can afford a future without rich parents. To have a home, and education, children if they want, and to make a contribution. We can do so much better- to give young people a chance. The Labour Party has let us and our children down.
Two total turds, McSweeney and Mandelson, both terminated. Rejoice. Will Starmer be the next to go?
What’s it with these tedious posh kids called Oliver and Catherine, who end up in top civil servants jobs in the Foreign Office, want to call themselves Olly & Cat, respectively?
All adds to the theatre, I suspect? But what quintessential British theatre? Like a Brian Rix farce set in a Home Counties public school: we see prefect Mandy caught in the Headteacher’s office, only wearing his underpants; his best friend & head boy Keir denying that Mandy hung-out with some awful ruffians from the local town, which the audience already know otherwise; Olly & Cat saying they knew Mandy was a wrong’n but we were too decent to tell Matron…..
End of Act 1
I wonder what this mooted "overwhelming evidence" against Miliband is supposed to be.
Most expensive energy in the developed world, a grid of massive expense and unreliability, no reduction in global CO2 output because it’s just exported to dirtier production, massive manufacturing job losses. All down to someone who shows no sign of understanding what he is doing.
That doesn't sound like evidence against Miliband.
That sounds like decades of systemic rot due to Thatcherite privatisations, deliberately misattributed to the "green"-labelled policies of someone who has been in the job less than two years, by a doddering Thatcherite zealot who has probably never moved past the initial peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve in any matters of energy, industrial, or environmental policy. Garnished with a bit of entirely characteristic smug hand-waving. None of it remotely convincing.
11:46 seriously? If you want to all me thick that's your prerogative, but what about Kathryn Porter? Good luck out-arguing her. And the Tories just followed on Ed's Net Zero policies. Which is why they are being crucified electorally.
I do enjoy and admire the many finely honed insults that come in my direction, but insult is not a substitute for argument.
If you can't argue your own position, RW Troll, then you might maintain more dignity and credibility by simply writing "you all need to read Kathryn Porter" and leaving it at that. You might maintain more of her credibility as well.
I've never heard of her, but thanks to prior experience and your own psychological presentation, I can already make a pretty good guess at what I'll find if I can be bothered to look her up.
I'm motivated to belatedly add, RW Troll, that - quite independently of my low opinion of your opinion on matters of energy policy - I don't particularly want to see Ed replacing Keir either. Not for any reasons to do with the heresy of green posturing; merely to do with suitability as a leader and figurehead.
Even so, there are hypothetical reasons why he could wind up being the best person for the job anyway. Even more to your chagrin, I imagine, if it does come to pass this way. The one thing that matters more than any other for saving Labour, the one thing that the next leader absolutely must do in order to avoid being the last ever Labour PM, is to swallow the party's inflated sense of entitlement and make an electoral pact with the Green Party. If Miliband is capable of doing that, then it would put him at the front of the field by default.
Anyway, it keeps the upcoming trial of the Ukrainian rent boys off the news
Sadly, wherever you look , from Ireland, to the Greens in charge of Brighton, to innumerable Green participated coalitions at both German Lander and National levels, they have NEVER ever opposed austerity measures, despite lots of out of office posturing. The Greens are ideologically biased towards austerity measures , "to save the planet". They are not a socialist party , despite having socialists in some numbers in their ranks . Even more recently, as the farce of Your Party has driven those socialists desperate for more radical policies to combat the continuation of Tory/Labour uniparty policies, into their ranks in considerable numbers. They still just abandoned their previously clear policy to renationalise the energy utilities !
It is good that the Green vote is stuffing the Labour Party under its Starmerite neoliberal current form, but don't expect the glib but blatant opportunist, Polanski, and his shape-shifting party, to actually deliver - particularly if in some lash-up coalition with Labour , Lib Dems , Westminster SNP, etc in the next government.
Currently there is little hope of deflecting a Reform surge on about 25% of the voting population, despite their staggering ineptitude and vile attitudes. There are plenty of Greens who see socialist policy as a vote winner (and YouGov indicates that is true) but the absence of Green voices in the MSM seriously restricts the reach of policy. Anyway, much of Green policy looks likely to be enacted simply as the knock-on effect of the Gulf and Middle East attacks from Trump and Bibi. The serious possibility of food and power rationing is on us.
I'm not sure that the whole affair is even worth your valuable commentary, Phil. Starmer is a zombie PM. The question is not if, but when. Then there is by whom. It's too easy to list the flaws of SKS, and a real struggle to suggest any strengths. I suppose he was able to fool enough people to get the top job despite his wooden inauthenticity. Possibly nobody could imagine that someone so wooden could also be devious, insincere and rabidly ambitious.
He will go because the only justification anyone is now giving for keeping him is that there is nobody else, and given the absolute mess he is making, that argument is untenable, unless we are to believe that everybody else in the PLP is at least as useless as him. Surely the law of averages (very averages) ensures that cannot be true.
How disappointing that someone posts claiming to be a RW Troll, but they can't even come up with a Troll name. Speaking as a genuine Troll, albeit swinging to the Left, can I suggest Anon RW Troll that you check out the handy Troll Name generator site for a suitable moniker? Anything you say might then be given a little more weight - which, let's be honest, it desperately needs too stop it floating off into the depths of uninhabited space.
The insight that our electricity prices are the fault of, checks notes, ed Milliband??? That is so out there that it has long passed the Kuiper belt and is now drifting off beyond the reach of solar radiation. You are giving genuine Trolls a bad name, please desist before the Troll Council issues a PhatxVaah for your reduction to the role of Gnome.
There are people worse than him in the PLP... Streeting, to name one. A wax dummy animated by an evil spirit and owned by Palantir.
So why are our electricity prices the highest in the known universe?
Presumably the same reason why all our other infrastructure costs so much and performs so badly. Decades of profits from privatised public infrastructure going into the pockets of shareholders and even foreign governments, instead of being reinvested in maintenance and upgrades. Toothless regulators, and complicit politicians who never dare to rock the boat. End result - failing infrastructure which can't withstand any sudden shocks (or even business as usual, in the case of the water utilities), bankrupt operators, and government forced to repeatedly bail them out to keep the lights on and the toilets flushing - until the government simply has no money left to do that, the infrastructure just collapses, and the country rapidly begins to resemble "the developing world".
Why would we expect the energy sector to be faring any better than the water and rail services?
And why, unless we've got an emotional agenda and a stunted intelligence, would we look no further than the end of our noses - or incumbents who have barely warmed their seats - to explain what are obviously deeply ingrained problems?
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