Best Of

Take my hat off to Putin. This is all brilliant. Firstly obtain Compromat by activating his agent to utilise and enable Epstein who they knew was a pederast and thoroughly convincing individual able to entice and entrap those they wanted him to meet.

Then, if and when this comes to light use the fall-out to implement and achieve “active measures” and cause the West an existential crisis implicating most, if not all the major players in its economic and political system. It’s outstanding. It really is.

One has to ask who the puppet master in all of this mess is. And who the person who inherited the contacts and networks which allowed Epstein to run his thoroughly abhorrent (in ways the mainstream media has not even yet dared to report) is.

We’re concentrating on Mandy and Pandy, as we would. And should. But this goes so much deeper. And we’ve not even been told what else has happened.

Seems like a good time to remember some Frankie Boyle mockery of Mandelson (in terrible quality because it was the first hit and I cba finding a better one).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf6CNXwtLQA

Always been a bit on the fence, has our Frankie…

His comments on Thatcher's planned funeral were hilarious, whatever your views on her.

'She should have a state funeral. A lot of people will want to pay their respects to a great national leader. And a lot more will want to make sure she's really dead.'

Good joke, but not as good as his Diana joke:

I thought it was sad, you know, that they had that pop concert to commemorate Diana. I mean, she didn't have much to do with pop music, did she? They should've done something that celebrated what was really great about her life: By staging a gangbang in a minefield.

The follow up was funnier.

While Dara O'Briain was still staring with a shocked look on his face, Boyle turned to him with an engaging smile and said 'be interesting to see if that makes it in, to be honest.'

Funnily enough it didn’t make it into the TV show, and appeared in an outtakes DVD some years later.

A mate went to a recording of MtW around that time, and said they filmed for almost two hours to get a half hour show and a 45m re-edit. They just kept running, and the comics said all sorts of sh!t knowing that no-one had a phone in the audience.

New episodes for mock the week are being made and is back on some obscure tv channel, which many of the original people, but no Frankie Boyle or Hugh Dennis.

I’m sure it will be to the same high standard it was before its resting.

The last few seasons before it could cut were piss poor. It was the first few seasons that was the magic.

Yeah, the early stuff was really good. I even remember Frankie Boyle releasing a podcast/audio of jokes he was trying out for it.

But it really lost its way. Rather like HIGNFY

Take my hat off to Putin. This is all brilliant. Firstly obtain Compromat by activating his agent to utilise and enable Epstein who they knew was a pederast and thoroughly convincing individual able to entice and entrap those they wanted him to meet.

Then, if and when this comes to light use the fall-out to implement and achieve “active measures” and cause the West an existential crisis implicating most, if not all the major players in its economic and political system. It’s outstanding. It really is.

One has to ask who the puppet master in all of this mess is. And who the person who inherited the contacts and networks which allowed Epstein to run his thoroughly abhorrent (in ways the mainstream media has not even yet dared to report) is.

We’re concentrating on Mandy and Pandy, as we would. And should. But this goes so much deeper. And we’ve not even been told what else has happened.

I thought Epstein was a paedophile, not a paederast? Paederast is specifically underage boys.

I appreciate it’s probably not the most pressing of matters in the current Epstein stories but when people write ‘pedophile’ it triggers my inner Luckyguy and I just want to correct the spelling.

First to say I can't see Starmer resigning over this.

An atomic bomb wouldn't remove Starmer

What about a redhead?

I think this all increases the chances of Ange being next.

It makes her financial arrangements seem a bit meh, and allows her to say we've had enough of the old boy's club.

Rayner is now best-placed

As I posted as the old thread was closing.

The obvious one is Angela.

She has behaved dutifully and perfectly since resignation.

Labour has a number of very competent ministers in place she would be well advised to keep

Cooper
Mahmood
Healy
McFadden
Both Alexanders
Nandy
Phillipson
Ed M
Emma Reynolds
Jarvis

Some of the new intake.

Likes of Haigh and Thornbury return.

Compares very well with threadbare Shadow Cabinet of failures like Philp, Patel Stride, Atkins, Couthino.

Badenoch probably be gone before Starmer coronation for Cleverly.

Labour edge left.
Tories edge centre.

“dutifully and perfectly since resignation”.

Has she paid her tax due?

If Angela Rayner is the answer, the wrong question is definitely being asked.

She’s no Mandelson, who can keep coming back again until yet another scandal finally kills her off almost three decades later.

Angela Rayner is not the answer to any question relating to the government of this country. Maybe “how can we fuck things up more”.

The question is, who do we put our money on? Not who would be best, or who would we like, but who will win?

If it helps I'm a Labour member and if/when the vote comes I'll be judging 2 things:

Who would be the better PM?
Who would more likely beat Reform?

Assuming a Streeting v Rayner choice, I'm clear on the answer to the 1st. Streeting. But on the 2nd I'm not sure at all. And if I end up concluding it's Rayner I can see myself (reluctantly) prioritising that and voting for her.

Nothing (for me) is more important than preventing Farage and his gang getting their filthy mitts on this country.

Far be it from me to suggest solutions to Labours quandary but Rayner is so far from your desire to beat Reform as you can get. Honestly - Labour supporters and members need to read the fucking room. Your only hope is a Cooper ticket with Streeting as Chancellor maybe. This fascination and love for Rayner is perplexing. She’s clearly thick as shit. And a proven tax dodger.

Northern accent = thick as shit

Thank goodness none of my university exams were orals, or it would have been an instant fail.

Nope. You’re making that stretch, not me. JRM
Is as thick as shit. As is Jenrick. Hague wasn’t. Neither is Burnham. She’s objectively as thick as shit. You just like her because she’s northern. And in your mind that means she’s beyond criticism.

It does depend on what sort of PM we want, though. Since Thatcher and Blair, the UK model has centralised power in its leader such that it is often called ‘presidential’ - yet ironically, until Trump showed what is possible by stretching the boundaries, our PMs have had more power than any US president. Reagan was also thick as **** yet ran a decent presidency by picking people be trusted and letting them make most of the decisions, content just to be the front man. There’s no theoretical reason why a British government couldn’t run like that - it’s just that we’ve forgotten, not having been alive back in the day, how collective cabinet government actually might work.

In some respects that the government you might have thought Johnson would run. It seems to be how he run London when he was Mayor, which is why so much proper cycle infrastructure was built.

But instead he appointed Cummings and a bunch of non-entities who were willing to be nodding dogs.

But there's an absolutely critical difference:

- the London Mayor appoints officials who can't therefore become political rivals, and so pose no threat. They have no political power base and are entirely under the Mayor's thumb in terms of hiring, firing and preferment

- the UK government already has officials appointed through the civil service, which is politically neutral and the process isn't under the direct control of politicians. The PM appoints a team of politicians, who have their own power base and any of them might one day bring you down. Consequently Johnson's buried self awareness of his own essential inability to do the job, having winged every gig he'd been given through his life and escaped accountability for his many failures with humour, bluster and charm, led him to appoint people who he thought would pose him no threat. Aka a cabinet of people chosen specifically for their idiocy and incompetence.

BTW -

Worth noting that the Clintons have agreed to appear to be questioned on the Epstein revelations. I imagine there will -from Bill- be a lot of 'taking the fifth', but it could be a real interesting show.

They’re actually going to turn up in Congress in person? 🎇

Yes:

The more interesting testimony, I suspect, will be Ms Clinton's. Bill will take the Fifth, because he has to. But Ms Clinton...

And fwiw, I suspect that quite a lot of people (of every political hue) will be nervous about those two testifying.

Didn’t the Clinton’s state that they would only testify if it’s public rather than in private? I imagine not being stupid people, they know who is going to be most nervous.

That was last week.

Now they said they wanted it to be private, with no cameras and their own note-taker producing the official record of the meeting.

It's going to be transcribed and filmed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/02/bill-hillary-clinton-epstein-congress-testify/

It’s that classic scandal that everyone can imagine and understand. Nothing complicated, just a guy wandering around a peaedo’s house in his underwear about to get a bung of £75,000. Even voters with an IQ down there with Leon can relate to that.

This has cut through to the public and no matter how many excuses Starmer and his supporters make, as our PM and the person who appointed him they will deliver their verdict in due course

Well, yes, but it's three years to a General Election and we'll see how much "cut through" it has then.

For those opposed to Starmer and Labour, it re-enforces a view and there seems very little possible defence for Mandelson and his actions both past and more recent but the extent to which Mandelson matters very much in today's politics set against all the other issues and crises, it's harder to say.

I wouldn't want to be pounding the streets canvassing for Labour currently....

Apparently my comrades are getting a good response on the doorstep.

I can only think that they are canvassing each other.

Seems like a good time to remember some Frankie Boyle mockery of Mandelson (in terrible quality because it was the first hit and I cba finding a better one).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf6CNXwtLQA

Always been a bit on the fence, has our Frankie…

His comments on Thatcher's planned funeral were hilarious, whatever your views on her.

'She should have a state funeral. A lot of people will want to pay their respects to a great national leader. And a lot more will want to make sure she's really dead.'

Good joke, but not as good as his Diana joke:

I thought it was sad, you know, that they had that pop concert to commemorate Diana. I mean, she didn't have much to do with pop music, did she? They should've done something that celebrated what was really great about her life: By staging a gangbang in a minefield.

The follow up was funnier.

While Dara O'Briain was still staring with a shocked look on his face, Boyle turned to him with an engaging smile and said 'be interesting to see if that makes it in, to be honest.'

Funnily enough it didn’t make it into the TV show, and appeared in an outtakes DVD some years later.

A mate went to a recording of MtW around that time, and said they filmed for almost two hours to get a half hour show and a 45m re-edit. They just kept running, and the comics said all sorts of sh!t knowing that no-one had a phone in the audience.

New episodes for mock the week are being made and is back on some obscure tv channel, which many of the original people, but no Frankie Boyle or Hugh Dennis.

I’m sure it will be to the same high standard it was before its resting.

The last few seasons before it could cut were piss poor. It was the first few seasons that was the magic.

I presume that we can assume that the intelligence services knew more about Mandelson than the general public knew when he was appointed Ambassador

What information was given to the Prime Minister that he forensically ignored?

What information was withheld from Starmer by the intelligence services?

Presumably none, because the security services didn't know the really juicy stuff.

(At least I hope they didn't know. If the spooks knew this for the last fifteen years and told nobody, that's even worse than them not knowing.)

Their record over friend to politicians and the royals Savile suggests not knowing is their standard mo.

And that's the most alarming prospect of all.

The last straw clutched by Britain Is Still Great types was that our spies were the best. Even if everything else was decaying, our secret agents were still the best. James Bond, John Steed, Mother and M and Q were still there doing it for Queen and country.

The idea that they didn't know what was happening doesn't compute. But yes- it probably should, no matter how traumatic to national pride.

Who can Starmer blame for Mandelson's appointment?

His paunchy paws are all over it

It’s a question what Starmer knew at the time. Or what can be proved he knew. And it’s not easy to get to that to be honest. Or failing that, merely a slap for should have known better and been more diligent as we would have been.

For preservation of true history, {I didn’t like it} but PB consensus liked the appointment. back Bench Conservative MPs stood up in commons said it was good appointment. What did Starmer know at tgst time that we didn’t, what the Conservatives didn’t?

Did UKs security Services not know the detail held in the Epstein Files? Is this the first time anyone’s found out the true depth of PantyPetes collusion with Epstein? Is this the first time anyone’s found out UK Business Secretary was carrying out what looks like insider trading using levers of governmental power in UK, with an investment financier friend?

Correct. Being wise after the event by the likes of Badenoch is not a good look. I don't want to be partisan but it was generally those of us on the left who disdn't approve of Mandelson's appointment. In my case as most others i suspect it was the kow-towing to the loathsome Trump that was particularly unattractive.

Always good to see history re-written

In what way? Mandelson was never popular inside Labour, hence the Blair quote: My project will be complete when the Labour party learns to love Peter Mandelson.

Mandelson was also absolutely central to the reinvention of Labour as a party of centrist managerialism, hence the Blair quote.

But it's also true he was always hated by the left. That's why the only people salivating more than the right and tory partisans over this are the left. They share a deep antipathy to the New Labour project.

Richard Burgon on Sky just now making your point

He really wants Starmer out

Did Richard Burgon ever want Starmer in?