Starmer faces Commons showdown as Mandelson fallout spreads
The PM will fight for his political survival tomorrow as fallout from the Peter Mandelson scandal intensifies the threat to his leadership, writes Catherine Neilan
https://bit.ly/4vW4ZVR
This story isn't going away...
fascinated that the PM found out on Tuesday but told neither Cooper nor Jones, who both only found out yesterday it seems? what were no10 doing with the information, if not discussing it with the ministers who oversee the vetting process and the department in question?
The core problem is the appointment. They wanted Mandelson, the system gave them Mandelson. The system worked as it is meant to. The problem is the original sin - the decision (the desire) to appoint Mandelson.
Revealed: Peter Mandelson failed vetting but Foreign Office overruled decision
+++ The Guardian can also reveal +++
Officials debate withholding Mandelson vetting documents from parliament
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
w/ Paul Lewis, @pippacrerar.bsky.social
NEW: Foreign Affairs committee intends to summon Robbins over previous evidence on vetting process.
Emily Thornberry, committee chair, says: "Looking at the evidence given & the letters written, to be charitable there are glaring holes. It really is a question of whether we were knowingly misled."
It’s striking that Keir Starmer once argued that Boris Johnson’s decision to award Lord Lebedev a peerage – despite vetting concerns – went ‘to the heart of national security’.
At the very least, in this case, Starmer’s government has not practised what he, its leader, preached.
buff.ly/dgXuYEp
As I noted yesterday, if Labour had not lost so many votes to the Greens and Lib Dems they would be AHEAD of Reform in the polling and the narrative would look extremely different. I also suspect May will be Reform's ultimate peak in electoral success. But will Labour now be the beneficiaries?
We covered an important (and upsetting) story on the last Radio 4 #TheNakedWeek of the series, all about forced adoption and a drug called DES. You can read about it in @theobserveruk.bsky.social today, written by our very own @catneilan.bsky.social.
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
This part of the show was quite a tonal handbreak turn, but good on the Naked Week for broadcasting this story, which is horrifying and astounding
This is horrifying
Thanks Alex, luckily he only has @jonholmes.bsky.social's number so hopefully the rest of us will be safe for another series! (We didn't need him anyway...)
This was a hard piece to do, and am grateful for @garethceredig.bsky.social's help particularly for the radio segment which you can hear here www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
But research is limited, partly because of patchy documentation, with papers either not routinely kept or destroyed.
Even where they do exist, as with one batch of mother and baby home files, the govt is refusing access until 2038
I spoke to several women who believe they were given DES, and that it may have contributed to cancer later in life.
Two of the women fear it may have also harmed their subsequent children, who were born with reproductive abnormalities
My final joint investigation with The Naked Week and @theobserveruk.bsky.social was a challenging one - the use of a known carcinogen in forced adoptions.
Secrecy, shame and locked documents are making it harder to get answers - and treatment
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
Foreign Office job cuts ‘send wrong signals’ on Iran crisis
Shrunken department less able to respond to conflicts, critics warn our Whitehall editor Catherine Neilan
https://bit.ly/4tvKkWt
London’s viral video crisis: “London has fallen” content has become so pervasive globally that Sadiq Khan held a meeting with the foreign office and British ambassadors to discuss how to convince foreign investors/tourists to ignore it and come to London. www.londoncentric.media/p/sadiq-khan...
Meanwhile @sundersays.bsky.social said: “Farage’s party has a decade-long record of shouting loudly about fraud without bringing cases. Whenever there are British Asian people in the constituency - whether it’s Rochdale, Peterborough or Gorton - he pops up with claims about electoral integrity.”
Farage ‘playing with fire’ over family voting claims
@robfordmancs.bsky.social told @theobserveruk.bsky.social: "It is troubling that they do this when the sun is shining on them electorally. What does this imply if they underperform in a general election?”
observer.co.uk/news/politic...
A spokesperson for Reform told me: "“Starmer’s emergency changes to the law are an unprecedented attack on a political opponent who raises money perfectly legitimately. However, out of an abundance of caution, we have paused while we review our procedures."
One Labour MP added: “The bill won’t be worth the paper it’s written on [without] a requirement that you can’t convert into cash at an earlier stage in the funds’ journey.”
Eliza Lockhart of @rusi.bsky.social said: “We have a window of opportunity that is rapidly closing... If we fail to address how funds may be obscured upstream or used to shape political discourse outside election periods, we risk missing the problem we are trying to solve.”
In last week's @theobserveruk.bsky.social I revealed that Reform was using a third party to convert crypto into cash before it reached the party coffers, a method that is not banned by measures announced this week
Crypto moratorium only bans the digital currency at the point of declaration, creating a loophole that has already been used by Reform
observer.co.uk/news/politic...
This is obviously a huge amount of money for anyone to pay. But the landlord gave residents two weeks to either agree to pay, or be on their way.
Obviously, residents pushed back. Now, those who pushed back the hardest have received no-fault eviction notices – which will be illegal from May 1st.
I've spent the past three weeks speaking to residents on a housing estate in Richmond. In February they were told that because the Renters' Rights Act is coming in, their landlord was going to have to raise the rent.
The smallest increase I've seen is about £500. The largest is £800.
So, who is their landlord? It's The Poppy Factory – the charity that makes poppies and wreaths for the Royal British Legion.
Of course what they're doing is completely legal. It will also make a lot of people homeless.
Here's what MHCLG told @catneilan.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/catn...
