The point being that they should be nowhere near the House of Lords and only those who are of genuinely good character should be there, if we have to have the place at all.

That said there is no suggestion that the young woman in question is not of good character, though she shouldn’t be there.

True. But Starmer ought to have been able to say: Mandelson is a Lord. I had every right to assume that he was of sufficient good standing to do any job at all. There should have be no question that he was not suitable to be Ambassador and if he wasn’t suitable then he should not be in the Lords.

Call me naïve, but should we not be able to assume that every member of the House of Lords should, by virtue of being in that position, be of impeachable character? Aren’t they supposed to be honourable?

Since that is obviously too much to ask, should they not all be vetted?

I wasn’t deflecting, which is why I said “out of interest” and if I knew what the security concerns were I could make a judgement myself whether it was connected to his sacking (dismissal)?

Out of interest did the things that caused him to be of concern from a security point of affect either the job he did or the reason he was sacked / resigned in the end?

So did Starmer!

Well that’s certainly one way of looking at it.

Agreed. I wonder if she had said or done something to upset him.

I wish she was prime minister, but I also wish she had never taken the piss out of white van man, and the two may be connected.

Could someone please explain to me what “in and of itself” means? What does it add to a sentence, given that it doesn’t need to be there for the sentence to make sense?

Emily Thornberry was shat on from a great height by Starmer, on taking office, and it is to her absolute credit that she is defending Starmer in this way (irrespective of whether he is in the right or not). I’m not sure he deserves such loyalty.

That is not the job of the head of state. It is his job to rubber stamp the decision of the government member.

What about Louise Hague? If she dyes her hair to a natural colour she is on manoeuvres.

Sorry, I misread that as Raynor :-)

I’m still struggling to think of Mandelson as a prestige appointment. Starmer comes in promising to clean up politics and gives a top job to a man who was sacked, not once, but twice, for corruption, and had just failed to be chosen as chancellor of Oxford. Surely there were better candidates?

By the way, if you want to test this, subscribe to the FT as - for some inexplicable reason - you can only buy it with a coupon once a Sainsbury staff has input their details on the screen. Like it was alcohol.

This might be a generalisation but the things Labour said it would do were good ideas & should be kept, but the things it said it would not do (& should never have been in the manifesto) are the cause of most of Starmer’s domestic problems. Ditch the red lines. What’s the worst that could happen?

You said the other day that people were wrong to think that Starmer chose Mandy because he knew how to get along with Trump. I meant to ask you this: in that case why did Starmer insist on him, a political appointment, rather than a civil servant as is usually the case? Do you have a view on that?

What is David Milliband doing at the moment?

You simply can’t have someone who sounds adenoidal. Starmer and Reeves both have this problem, but especially Reeves, and whatever she says goes in one ear and out the other.

Thorsten Bell for either job. I rate him very highly. Mind you, I also rated Darren Jones and he has been a disappointment.

She would be crucified by the press.

He’d find the salary a challenge but he is venal - I’m sure that if his boyfriend was allowed to do the soft furnishings he might be persuaded. Worth a shout.

That’s genius. What are the deets, please?

Unless they have just started to do it for all parties, but even then it is wrong since they give Reform far more coverage than they deserve.

Haven’t heard it but I think I listened to Il faut du temps 20 times over when it first came out. It remains one of my all time favourite songs.

There is no way that Raynor is still under investigation. Whatever complexity there was was resolved when it all became public.

Are you speaking to us from 1985?

That could be an argument if that was reflected in the coverage that they give to Reform in other areas, but it isn’t. They changed the criteria for appearing on and audience of QT from parliamentary representation pre the election to whatever allows Reform to be on every week.

OMFG I had to go and check that this ACTUALLY happened.

Since when does the BBC ever do chyrons with a political party's branding, rather than their own? Not to mention this is during a pre-election campaign purdah.

(h/t @iainsol.bsky.social)

Apparently ministers are not subject to vetting.