As many people anticipated at the time! Labour of all parties should have been more wary of applying the 'move quickly and break things' approach

1/ Russia is entering a full-scale debt crisis, according to newly published official figures. Non-payments have reached an all-time high equivalent to nearly 4% of GDP or a fifth of the entire federal budget. It's a fresh sign of a deepening economic crisis worsened by war. ⬇️

Freedom not to get a flu jab, but not the freedom to grow a beard

And even on asylum I expect the position is more nuanced, at time of Rwanda there was polling which found plurality support for 'stop the boats' policies but also for the position that UK should offer some sanctuary for people genuinely fleeing war and persecution.

The US example is instructive, as is our own experience (Windrush etc). People understand different things by 'deportations', sure, I can buy that median voter wants to deport most small boat arrivals, but that's different to the kind of sweeping, racially-driven changes some want

Agreed, but that doesn't get to why Trumpworld were reportedly keen on KP? Honestly my instinct at the time was that even if they liked her, that briefing was more about talking the UK down a peg, stirring the pot domestically etc.

And competence clearly isn't something that is valued excessively within Trumpworld either.

Sure, but he's hardly unique in that regard, look at Rubio, Vance etc. Trump clearly enjoys humiliating his critics and then accepting them into the fold once they've demonstrated sufficient contrition.

Its also funny because even aside from the 'we were just re-establishing the borders of the Russian empire' defence being inherently... imperialist, Eastern Galicia hadn't been part of the Russian empire pre-WW1, it was part of Austria-Hungary

Especially since this feels like a good thing to hit back on the Greens with

Now fully possible this was just an attempt to sane-wash a nakedly factional appointment but it did strike me as somewhat compelling, i.e. that ultimately someone not entirely unfamiliar with shady characters would find it easier to deal with Trumpworld

Very interested in why this was the case? Possible she was just a very good diplomat, but given how UK policy and Trumpworld worldview are chalk and cheese. On Mandelson, I did hear at the time many Labour people talk up his business acumen, his trade expertise, his ease with 'dealmaking'...

This is absolutely it. You can't at the one hand go 'tepid bath of managed decline', then clearly signal who you want as ambassador and then be surprised that the process yields that outcome.

Quite funny that the anti-Corbyn faction's warnings of how Corbyn and co would run the party into the ground was (eventually) proved correct and that simultaneously, the pro-Corbyn faction's warnings of how the Starmer project would play out have also been proven largely correct.

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

After 20 months, Starmer is now on his third Cabinet Secretary, his third FCDO Perm Sec, his third/fourth No. 10 chief(s) of staff and his fifth No. 10 Director of Comms

It's a tough one - I can see how directly elected President could in principle also be counterweight to a kind of HU/PL style authoritarian government.

At the time of his appointment, I assumed he'd had a light touch vetting process which had been signed off by No 10, even if not Starmer personally. I lacked the imagination to anticipate he'd been given the job prior to vetting and the offer wasn't contingent on having passed vetting.

Starmer was left in dark about Mandelson’s vetting by two other top civil servants Exclusive: Officials have spent weeks debating whether or not to release highly sensitive information about the affair

This is absolutely stupefying. Any vaguely politically clued up person with acess to information already in the public domain could've anticipated the red flags in Mandelson's case. So clearly the political side didn't want to know and civil servants took the hint www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

And a President without their own direct mandate

However the new Hungarian government has an amazing new minesweeper, the SMS Constitutional Majority.

Roaring 20s with Boris still his best work though

But surely the integrity of the process also relies on it being meaningful?

I'm sorry but taking a step back out of the procedural thicket, what is the point of this process if the things it reveals cannot be shared with the political principals?

I don't think that the cultural stuff was just a smokescreen to hide the corruption even if it did in part serve that purpose, I think that e.g. on fertility they did genuinely believe this and they threw considerable money at it, its just that its a complex issue without a quick easy fix

Some kind of magical state of existence in which the relationship delivered tangible economic and geopolitical gains for the UK (setting aside that Trump's worldview and policy agenda is inherently incompatible with that of Labour) while at the same time avoiding major domestic political blowback

If you step back, it is truly extraordinary that so many people went to such great lengths and broke so many conventions and risked their political careers and the only outcome of all these efforts and risks was appointing a washed-up old spinner to an ambassadorial post

Not really my area of expertise, but I always thought that was deliberate, his brand if you will, so that would offer a certain umbrella of protection to his clients?

Completely - and Mandelson had his own delusions about being able to game Trump.

My first ever job, compliance at a private bank, featured the following case studies - Jeffri Bolkiah and the Abacha family. Guess some of the accounts I worked on then might be today's compliance case studies #circleoflife