Best Of

"Suzanne Moore
I went for dinner with Peter Mandelson – he’s blind to people of lower status
The way the disgraced ambassador behaved towards the waiting staff spoke volumes about his lust for power" (£)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/16/went-dinner-lord-mandelson-blind-people-lower-status

I find myself warming to Peter Mandelson after reading that.

Do you think it is acceptable to be rude to a waitress? I thought your cocktail waitress headline previously was rather sexist and snobbish. (Yes, I know it is a song.)

Anway, I have just learnt that Robert Redford has died so I am going into mourning.

I am somebody who is always very well mannered.

I have never been rude to staff even on the occasion one of them spilled my food and drink all over me.

Be nice to people and you’ll receive kindness back.

Sir David Davis is uniting the Commons against Mandelson

I wonder what further measures they can take against Mandelson. Expulsion from the Lords, a prison sentence, execution even?

Silly comment

He should be removed from Labour and the Lords

For what?
Writing yum yum in a birthday card?

This is hysteria.

Maybe if you listen to the house debate you would see mps anger and more importantly the Epstein victims family tearful interviews about Mandelson

By the sounds of it, the “debate” is less of a debate than a tawdry display of schmaltz-stirring.

What is tawdy is Mandelson representing our country

An appointment widely considered very savvy politics, and which seems to have actually paid off for the UK, at least until last week.

I dislike Mandelson as much as the next man, but his excessive loyalty to Epstein is the least of his offences, and Britain is in a geopolitical crisis.

Tell that to the Epstein's family victims who condemned him in tears this weekend

In your excitability, your posts give the impression that Mandelson should be held responsible for the abuse that Epstein's victims suffered. I don't think anybody is accusing Mandelson of that. If Mandelson had never existed, I don't imagine it would have made any difference to Epstein's victims.

Mandelson was a poor appointment by Starmer, especially with the benefit of hindsight. But that's about all there is to it.

There is nothing excitable about the victims families tears even if you find this difficult

Indeed Ed Davey is speaking on this now

Unfortunately discussing the victims’ families tears does not serve to improve the country - the Mandelson appointment was an error, the PM probably knows and accepts this and is running out of rope, everyone has had their pound of flesh (however much it is fun to jab at Starmer on here for it).

This debate however shows, in my mind, how unserious our political class has got. There will inevitably be shroud waving and MPs lining up to emote, do doubt we will have tearful personal stories from MPs as has become a habit and it won’t change a damn thing in the country or the world but will make MPs feel worthy.

As TSE pointed out earlier, this time would be better used on matters such as drone incursions into Poland, sending RAF planes and other kit to aid our ally. Or debating the new google data centre’s future energy needs in relation to closing off North Sea drilling, frankly anything that MPs can achieve to make the country run better and grow.

This however is easy vanity, Mandelson has paid the price, Starmer is paying a price, others in his team will pay a price and yet nothing said today will ensure that the majority of those responsible with Epstein, namely a lot of high profile Americans, will pay a price as it’s not in the remit of Parliament.

Yes. My point, eloquently expanded.

I agree, but everyone seemed happy to pile in on partygate, which was equally trivial.

Disagree.

Johnson and his team asked the country to make enormous sacrifices that - it was revealed - they themselves were not willing to make.

Morning all! Look, I like Sir Ed Nice, but he is too nice. We LibDems aren't cutting through because in a time of ragebait media we are trying to politely cough and offer reason.

My colleagues up here are doing a traditional campaign for Holyrood - door knocking and fetes. A few leaflets which aren't punchy enough. And they will struggle to be heard.

I deliberately kept myself off the regional list so that I can do my own thing. As a PPC in a seat where we took 3% of the vote I am going to be loud and outspoken in ways that will alarm the party CEO who sits in our biweekly campaign meetings. I need to be loud and outspoken or we get 3%.

And that's to say nothing of my other social media. You all know about my Tesla channel. I also cohost one called Emergency Podcast (which was being swamped by Tommeh Two-Names supporters yesterday) which primarily clips the show into reels for YT / X / TT. On this I have said things like "Liz Truss was Right", "We need to get shagging and have more babies" and shortly "We need a new EU referendum" (hat-tip to @leon)

So that is the challenge for the party - say stuff. The country is broken at a fundamental level and only reform are talking about it. We Liberals prompted massive reforms a century ago and we can do it again. But we need to not shy away from today's political battle ground which is social media.

Now if you will excuse me for 15 minutes I need to record for X and tear Muskybaby apart for the hard of thinking. I'll be back.

We truly are in strange times:

Labour imploding
Tories imploded but it hasn't yet hit the central nervous system of those who remained to the end
Davey leading the Make A Stand movement with most people still sitting
Reform fighting it out with Tommeh Two-Names for command of "patriots"
Racist hate-filled cockwomble shot dead and the tragedy of his murder somehow wipes clean his life

I have no idea where our politics goes as we move forward, but I am clear that I don't have enough popcorn. Whatever happens I am glad that I will be here for the ride.

Frankly, after Musky Baby's 'intervention' at the weekend, this is where I stand:

I stand for democracy. We have a long-standing and robust democratic process, one which has seen us through many centuries with slow evolution.

Musky Baby does not stand for democracy. What he said was against democracy. And if the Farage Party wins, I expect UK democracy to disappear in the same way that it seems to be disappearing in the USA.

Off thread: Daughter #3 did the eleven plus today.
We don't really expect her to pass. When her oldest sister did it passing was the preserve of the top 25%, now it's significantly harder. And, what with the ADHD, she faces her own challenges. Still, she did her best and - in contrast to many - didn't come out crying. She didn't panic when unfamiliar material came up. So I'm proud of her.
We'll now be £2-3k a year better off as six years of paying for tutors (two years for each child).

I'm pretty ambivalent about the grammar school system. The whole process of what ten year olds in Trafford (and adjacent postcodes) have to go through seems ridiculous and ridiculously costly. Still, we've done pretty well out of it: my oldest two have ended up at what are probably the right schools for them; my youngest will probably also end up at the right school for her (indeed, if she does have, it will cause us a problem, so memtally geared are we all to the local High school).

Anyway - the rest of year 6 will be a breeze now.
What did she choose for her post-11+ treat? A small box of Ferrero Rocher.

Best of luck to her.

Seems odd to hear of the 'eleven plus' these days.

I don't think it helps Starmer that he has no substantial power base or ultra-loyalists within the Labour Party. I recall reading an article mentioning that there is no such thing as "Starmerism" and that in itself is instructive, I think.

He doesn't really believe in anything (he's not even confidently wedded to pragmatism, which Blair and Thatcher both had, aside from their overarching orthodoxies). And that makes it hard to inspire loyalty.

Most other PMs had to build a base of loyal, fellow travellers within their party - look at Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson - all good examples of this. Starmer instead inherited a party where the most ambitious figures were desperate to stop losing, and as a result I suspect that a lot of this iron-fisted party management style that people lauded him for was a bit of luck - in that the party was so weary of defeat people just accepted it. Compare this to New Labour, where the same desperation existed but the architects of that project realised they needed more.

This is now coming back to bite him, because now he is politically short of friends, who is there to help him? Who are his loyal lieutenants ready to ride to the rescue? Burnham clearly now sees himself as a rival. Rayner wasn't a "ride or die" ally, often on leadership manoeuvres herself. Streeting also has one eye on the top job. The closest he has is Reeves, who is also utterly discredited - and even for her, he couldn't back her in the Commons as she sobbed next to him. He also simply doesn't have the ace up his sleeve that other PMs had - the underpinning vision, the ideology, the team moving towards a common goal - that saved them and gave them allies through their darker hours.

The Starmer story is one of a man who was parachuted into the top of politics, who got very lucky but who ultimately lacks the skills that make a good political leader.

Superb post @numbertwelve! And I recommend that @TheScreamingEagles should do what Mike Smithson OGH used to do when he spotted a similar post containing such an excellent and insightful political analysis and he should use it as the headline in this mornings new thread.

I don't think it helps Starmer that he has no substantial power base or ultra-loyalists within the Labour Party. I recall reading an article mentioning that there is no such thing as "Starmerism" and that in itself is instructive, I think.

He doesn't really believe in anything (he's not even confidently wedded to pragmatism, which Blair and Thatcher both had, aside from their overarching orthodoxies). And that makes it hard to inspire loyalty.

Most other PMs had to build a base of loyal, fellow travellers within their party - look at Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson - all good examples of this. Starmer instead inherited a party where the most ambitious figures were desperate to stop losing, and as a result I suspect that a lot of this iron-fisted party management style that people lauded him for was a bit of luck - in that the party was so weary of defeat people just accepted it. Compare this to New Labour, where the same desperation existed but the architects of that project realised they needed more.

This is now coming back to bite him, because now he is politically short of friends, who is there to help him? Who are his loyal lieutenants ready to ride to the rescue? Burnham clearly now sees himself as a rival. Rayner wasn't a "ride or die" ally, often on leadership manoeuvres herself. Streeting also has one eye on the top job. The closest he has is Reeves, who is also utterly discredited - and even for her, he couldn't back her in the Commons as she sobbed next to him. He also simply doesn't have the ace up his sleeve that other PMs had - the underpinning vision, the ideology, the team moving towards a common goal - that saved them and gave them allies through their darker hours.

The Starmer story is one of a man who was parachuted into the top of politics, who got very lucky but who ultimately lacks the skills that make a good political leader.