it should be lost on nobody that - but for the US not giving a damn about burning the British ambassador - Peter would still be glad-handing senators, Morgan would still be shouting at underlings and everyone would still be pretending nothing is fucked, and the plane hasn’t crashed into the mountain

What does it mean, if you can’t lift a stone anywhere near politics, media or the cops without something hideous and hairy scuttering out from underneath it

Michael Crick • @MichaelLCrick X.com In two to three years time, when Starmer and his government are no doubt deeply unpopular, I hope we in the media will ask ourselves: "Why were we so supine during the long 2024 election; why didn't we hold Labour properly to account while we could, and ask more probing questions, and explore their records, rather than give them such an easy ride?"

I think we can see the reason for this is the same as any number of abysmal scandals at all kinds of major British institutions: Nobody wants to go lifting rocks because of the very high risk that moving one of them will send a geyser of scalding hot corruption leaping two hundred feet into the air.

What if... what really makes Britain "ungovernable" is... the nature of its political media and of its political class?

Telegraph newspaper editorial on Mandelson's appointment in December 2024 versus editorial today

So now we've established that Mandelson is a corrupting force that sullies everything and everyone in his sphere of influence, what are we going to do about the fact he hand-picked the entirety of Labour's 2024 intake of new MPs?

You can tell it was Peter Mandelson’s project because it isn’t a political operation that dabbles in bungs and influence peddling. It’s a bungs and influence peddling operation that dabbles in politics.

Henry Hill: [Narrating] For us to live any other way was nuts. Uh, to us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean, they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something, we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again.

As I said all along: shit gangsters. Shit gangsters all the way down.

I won’t relitigate the whole thing but: all that shit you saw play out this morning? That was the whole point of the exercise, the reason why Mandelson and McSweeney recruited Sir Keir as their vocalist, the reason why it’s now all so desperately bleak and corrupt. Because these lads had to get paid

A member-led, left wing party could set its own policy, so it had no use for zillionaire bungs. A member-led party didn’t need post-politics gigs with Drax or PWC, it didn’t need contracts with Palantir. And Morgan was very, very clear with the journos that this was unacceptable to him.

The *entire Starmer project* needs to be understood as one big Jobs For The Boys operation. That’s why McSweeney - Labour’s squillionaire bungs officer - spent 2017-19 running around telling dejected MPs to hold tight, because he was going to hook them back up with their clout, status and freebies.

Destruction of Jesus statue should serve as moral wake-up call for IDF, Israel Israel boasts about being safe for Christians and other minorities, yet is unwilling to crack down on soldiers and civilians whose actions are taking a hammer to ties with Christians

Hahahahaha

‘just how central was Peter Mandelson to the Starmer project’ is a question that is becoming increasingly close to being permissible, and I think Starmer is 100% done once it starts being asked

Senior Labour figures charged after criminal investigation into alleged vote rigging Exclusive: Four people charged after criminal investigation into irregularities surrounding Labour candidate selection process for Croydon East

Hahahaahhaha
www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...

I think we’ve tested Good Chaps Theory to destruction and well beyond, at this point.

Because in the absence of people being annoyed and indignant, we do have to conclude everyone at least suspected that Peter was the key figure in all this, don’t we

I mean, if the position is that nobody understood this was Peter’s project and they were all hoodwinked into treating it as if it were honest, well-intentioned, principled and squeaky clean: why isn’t anyone publicly upset about being lied to and manipulated?

Truth and Reconciliation Committee

I mean, we can all get up on our high horse here but the presence of a deeply compromised wrong un right at the top, who was already known to be crooked and in hock to Russian oligarchs, Chinese business pals and sex-trafficking billionaires, does not imply “isolated incident of wrongdoing” to me.

How would you start? Fire the top tier of the Labour leadership, run a river through every politics desk at every paper, twang various people to Saturn? This is the kind of thing that can’t happen unless politics is a game like the football match in Escape To Victory, without the happy ending

I mean, the problem with all this isn’t that the PM specifically shouldn’t have let his underlings reward the man who recruited him for the job of party leader. The problem with it is, is that it shows the whole thing is comically bent from top to bottom in ways that can’t be tackled.

Let he who did not - say - stampede anonymous quotes from Mandelson or one of his placemen into print knowing them to be dubious cast the first stone, am I right or what

McTague O @TomMcTague X.com Starmer's position is that Olly Robbins behaved appallingly for not blocking his decision to appoint Mandelson US amb after it had been announced, blessed by the King and agreed by the US in time for the inauguration-as requested by No 10—because of security risks the Foreign Office deemed manageable.

Yeah, but the position of almost everyone in politics and media is that it was just fine for them all to at very least play along with Mandelson’s ludicrous secret wrecking campaign and forcing his friends back into high office via lying and bullshit, but this is unacceptable.

Remember when former Labour MPs Ian Austin and John Woodcock were given peerages as their reward for running a shady-as-fuck anti-Labour campaign *by Boris Johnson*, after urging the public to vote Tory? Great times, nothing at all suspect going on there

Actually I think Dr Paisley has done remarkable things for religious tolerance

oh hang on, 4 fronts - that someone in no 10 was angling for a head of mission, ie diplomat, job Matthew Doyle (head of comms sacked by PM, v much not a career diplomat, bonkers idea ) which suggests they saw diplomatic service as somewhere you could park people you sort of owed one.

I would look at the astonishingly long list of MPs and officials who suicide bombed their own careers to tank their party and put these swine back in the top jobs, and were rewarded for it with peerages and other non-jobs for life or e.g. ambassadorships, and start putting two and two together.

bsky.app/profile/flyi...

I stress constraints more than most and I am still certain that Starmer's operation has made massive, avoidable errors, and that his position has probably been untenable for some time. They have blown a major opportunity. That is on them, and him, and Labour supporters should not be forgiving.

Not in the sense that they necessarily still do that, but I imagine it has created and maintained a particular political culture, even now decades later.