Cheltenham Friday
It’s been a rather jolly week one way or another. I find I always cheer up when very ordinary people with huge self-regard and a vainglorious vision of their elitist position in the world, move from simple collegiate back-stabbing to kicking each other under the table, and then onto very public pistols at dawn.
Several Starmer allies are facing public execution in Westminster Square. (Cut off the hands, and there won’t be any need to cut off the head). Mandy Mandelson had yet another leak, designed to wound Starmer and kill Mandy’s title off; this one the official note from the Head of the Propriety and Constitution Group, Darren Tierney to Starmer in 2024 which said: “After Mr Epstein was first convicted of procuring an underage girl in 2008, their relationship continued through to 2011, beginning when Lord Mandelson was Business Minister and continued after the end of the then Labour government. Lord Mandelson stayed in Epstein’s House while he was in jail in June 2009. You will wish to consider his suitability given this and the other information in this note.”
Told you so…
Simultaneously, the MP for Chipping Barnet had to face the embarrassing news that over £70k of illegal cigarettes had been seized last month alone in his constituency. In the grand reshuffle, of course, young Dan Toml;inson was appointed to be Secretary to the Exchequer, so he will grasp how that must look politically at budget time.
As does Starmer, who is still trying to explain when a recusal on the grounds of a conflict of interest still means you sign off on an appointment of a donor and mate to a job he lusted after. You wouldn’t trust any of them to run a bingo game in an old-people’s home, let alone the country. Is this truly the best one can get?
A similar question about US politics was asked of Jonathan Sumption the other day at a lunch to which I was very kindly invited.
Crikey, there’s a clever chap. If you listen to him for any length of time, you find yourself having extraordinary political thoughts that fly in the face of all one’s convictions—I use the word advisedly. And yet he is happy to lose
