None of this looks good for Starmer obvs but Morgan McSweeney is presumably never getting a job anywhere near government ever again (unless someone decides to overlook his vetting because they really want to appoint him).

Where do the personal donations come from?
Who actually writes the column?

This is the nub. The PM dictates the culture. If we don’t accept it from Boris Johnson’s iteration of no10, we can’t hold Starmer to a different standard.

I suppose no10 will simply lay the blame with Morgan McSweeney.

He wants HAM.

Did you make those concerns known to the PM?

Smacks of someone biding their time for a leadership bid.

Appalling.

Funny that a DEM president negotiated a deal with Iran that Trump torched.

And so is Zarah Sultana. What is the value of this?

BBC News December 2024:
‘Farage has meanwhile said that he "might disagree with Mandelson on his politics, but he's a very intelligent man" and would be good choice for ambassador.’

In fairness to her, on this at least she seems to have been consistent. She resigned from Johnson’s cabinet after the Pincher scandal (although that could just be because she saw a leadership opportunity).

Nice. Maybe she can go and get a coffee with Lee Anderson.

The problem with Starmer's argument (well one of them) is that it depends on an assertion that he wouldn't have appointment Mandelson if he'd known he'd failed vetting.

But he appointed him before vetting was complete.

Funny to recall that this government, mired in scandal, policy u-turns and infighting, won a huge majority a little less than two years ago. And while the fiscal inheritance was bad, the bar for improvement was also set incredibly low. It was just so hard to see how you could end up here so quickly.

Has he actually been lied to? Or rather did he just not ask questions the answers to which he didn’t wish to hear?

The cynic in me wonders whether the opposition were this apoplectic about Boris Johnson’s suitability to remain in office over the Chris Pincher affair. Suppose most of that generation in Tories have moved on to consultancy jobs. Jonathan Gullis is a professional flatulist doing the club circuit.

I'm afraid it all stinks. You only had to be paying scant notice to Mandelson's decades long career, punctured with sackings, scandal and sleaze, to know that he was unfit for re-appointment to a Government position. And knowing any of it, you'd ask to see the vetting report at the very least.

*whistles through teeth*
Bloody cowboy builders.

Maybe if Starmer had the gumption to look a bit more closely under his own bonnet, that’s the news we could focus on today.

Regrettably there’s nothing that Kemi Badenoch has said there that I can disagree with.

(Awful grammar here, for which I apologise).

This is awful thing to say, but for Europeans I think think the risk to places closer to home from climate change might focus minds more than the implications of climate change for the Pacific Islands (which are already underway). At least I hope it does. Something has to.

Fun fact - as a child, apparently I loved nothing better than an Orange band, they’d come past the AA in the summer (July obvs) when we’d be on holiday there. I used to march up and down and apparently I was mad for the oul Orangemen’s flutes and drums.
My Catholic forebears would be horrified.

I absolutely love Irish Georgian architecture and it’s tragic that it’s going to rack and ruin (some great 18th century architecture in Ballycastle, mum’s family used to live in the town’s oldest house).

Sad to see this. Mum has friends who lived around the corner for years and I know the building and Ballycastle really well. It’s always been a bit of a wreck in my lifetime but if the money and desire were there it could be something really nice, it’s lovely old building with a lot of history.

Prediction - club make a mess of it and we’re looking for a new DOF by October.

It’s why a decision on Howe can’t wait until the end of the season. Back him now or sack him.

Sorry, but I find the fact that the former DPP didn’t think to enquire about the progress of the vetting process just as astonishing as that person not being told. If this was a Tory PM we’d be baying for blood

Just as well we have the public water infrastructure to cope.

That’s bad, my understanding is that while things might be warming now, the AMOC shut off means things get much colder (one hates to go there but a sort of Day After Tomorrow type scenario, albeit probably not that bad)?