They brought in Mahmood to mimic Farage. That's not a discredit to Cooper.

'uncharted territory', ffs.

Acvording to Chris Wormald it's standard procedure to announce the appointment first subject to vetting.

So why does Chris Wormald say it was?

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers

He'd definitely need to stand on a chair to do it.

Looks like Saliba with the beard rather than Gabriel.

Was it an erected organ?

We need pics of Vance sitting in Islamabad while the Iranians don't show up.

"We hold all the cards." Sure, but you're playing patience.

Isn't that Nick Timothy in the foreground?

Guy I know was just made redundant my Hachette after 20+ years. When I asked whether he was being replaced by an AI bot, he raised an eyebrow.

He had the ear of McSweeney, which was enough. He's a manipulator. He didn't get where he is through people respecting him.

He wasn't respectable! There would have been outrage if he'd got the Oxford job - sensibly they chose Hague.

And the Strait of Trump?

Boris Johnson was FS and PM while having unsupervised meetings and parties with dodgy Russians. Our security services will know all about it, but there isn't a mechanism to block him.

'My guy'? Wtf is that? I do expect more, but I also try to understand the processes before assuming everybody should have known everything. You don't, and are being a dick about it.

He's been fired for doing so, but there's more information we don't know. You say 'the entire government' as if he reports to all 100 ministers. He reports to one person, the Foreign Secretary. We don't know whether what the press knew in Sep are the full details as we don't know those yet.

Sorry, where did I say it was criminal? A secretary of state relies upon their permanent secs for advice, and has to trust them. If he's gone before Parliament and misled them, then she's in no position to assume he's lied, and can't bypass him without assuming that.

Starmer's skills as a politician are minimal - he got praise for sucking up to him in the Oval office, but we got little out of it, the relationship has broken down, and we've handed Trump a state visit here and Charles visiting the US. Mandelson was only interested in how it helped him personally.

Either Starmer knew, in which case he's out, or Robbins judged that blocking Mandelson would be worse for the govt than letting him through, given Starmer (and McSweeney) plainly wanted Mandelson in. Interpreting the leader's wishes. But there's more we don't know.

Robbins misled a Parliamentary committee. Do you think Cooper should have bypassed him and dug around in the files herself, just in case he was lying to her? There are limits to what a Minister can do.

The unanswered question is who gave the instruction to suppress the negative vetting and why. If Starmer, he's toast, obv. If Robbins, why, given that revelation of it would be career ending (as it has been)? Did Robbins think it was the least worst path to take, compared to blocking Mandelson?

The Streisand effect, but for teleportation anecdotes.

I think this is an AI company getting a reverse listing by being bought by another already listed company.

You can go back to 2000, when companies added .com to their name and shot up in value.

On the BBC lead story you can work it out if you combine all the figures on one graph at the bottom of the page (about 1300 claims on the basis of sexual orientation) with the total claims on another (about 100k) So the real context has been omitted or suppressed to make a story. Tabloid practices.

Because the President is such a good actor himself. Grifting on the way up and the way down. He sets the tone.

No, that's not what the report says or what Powell could do. He can stay on the Fed Board as a governor, but not as the chair.

Still better than Salt Bae.

Living his life backwards.