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FPT...

Starmer refuses to answer a question from the SNP about whether Mandelson should face a police investigation.

Whether someone should face a police investigation should be for the police to decide, not the government, no?

So any easy one for Mr Forensic to have swatted away then.

The question to ask is not should there be a police investigation into Mandy, it's will you hold a govt investigation into his vetting when you made him ambassador?

Yep. Starmer has no Epstein links and no responsibility for what Mandelson was doing back in Blair/Brown times. What Starmer did was appoint him UK ambassador to Washington. The rationale/process around that (bad) call is where his vulnerability lies.

FPT...

Starmer refuses to answer a question from the SNP about whether Mandelson should face a police investigation.

Whether someone should face a police investigation should be for the police to decide, not the government, no?

So any easy one for Mr Forensic to have swatted away then.

The question to ask is not should there be a police investigation into Mandy, it's will you hold a govt investigation into his vetting when you made him ambassador?

Yep. Starmer has no Epstein links and no responsibility for what Mandelson was doing back in Blair/Brown times. What Starmer did was appoint him UK ambassador to Washington. The rationale/process around that (bad) call is where his vulnerability lies.

Notable, as someone pointed out on the previous thread that Ed Miliband was, shall we say, unenthusiastic about having Mandelson in the Labour Shadow Cabinet.

Mandelson was in the habit of forwarding emails from people like Jeremy Heywood to Epstein.

https://x.com/danneidle/status/2018250218655851006

A good principle of sending any email is that it will get back to the people you'd least like to see it, and thus should be phrased accordingly.

Earlier today we saw the damning email but couldn’t 100% confirm who it came from (albeit it was obvious).

The reply gave the game away and I think confirms the Official Secrets Act was broken

Alarmingly, broken by a Top Minister fifteen years ago, and we're only finding out now.

What other Bad Shit is happening without anyone noticing?

I suspect this type of abuse by the rich and powerful goes on now and always has done. The Epstein emails were uncovered because in the 2000's and 2010's the rich and powerful unguardedly emailed to each other, not realising the email server was capturing every communication. It was a point in time weakness. In the 1990's they would have phoned; post 2015 they would have Whatsapp'ed. And no-one would be any the wiser.

Consider the Reformation.

Consider the savage hatred of the existing church by a number of Protestants. And the accounts of what was going on in the monasteries in England - that were destroyed on the orders of Queen Mary. Add in the fact that a major reason for the Reformation was the extra-judicial privileges of the clergy. They were legally untouchable by the civil courts. Add in the modern scandals. Add in the fact that human nature has not changed.

What do you get?

Queen Mary destroyed the monasteries?????

I think the implication is that she destroyed the evidence gathered by Wolsey and Cromwell of all the terrible practices and behaviour in the Catholic monasteries. The abolition of the monasteries wasn't all about making money for Henry 8th (and incidentally creating some amazingly atmospheric ruins for 21st century visitors who like that kind of thing...)

I think that Labour are in really big trouble over this. They had a Cabinet member who allowed his paedophile ring running friend front run the UK market by giving him insider information about changes to tax before they were announced. Insider trading isn't a victimless crime, these people are stealing from other people including pension funds and individual investors.

This is probably one of the most serious scandals that the country has had in a while. If the FCA is made to investigate this and it proves that Epstien and linked vehicles profited from this insider information then I hope Mandelson goes to jail for a very long time and Starmer has to resign for resurrecting his career.

It's hard to disagree with this.

The UK government went to a lot of trouble to install Mandelson, who the US initially rejected.

To have installed a 'friend of Jeffrey', and one who appears to have leaked price sensitive information to him (albeit information the dissemination of which is not illegal), is extraordinary.

The only explanation that makes sense is this:

(1) Mandelson lied
and
(2) The US chose not to share information with the UK about Mandelson (either during the Biden administration or the Trump one)

Anatomy of a very bad call:

Mandelson lied about the extent and duration of his links to Epstein.

Whether by choice or not the US didn't share all the info.

Due diligence was skimped due to the eagerness to appoint somebody thought better able to navigate the murky waters around Trump than a conventional career diplomat.