Health minister Karin Smyth was pressed on why Starmer wouldn’t pass primary legislation to remove Peter Mandelson from the House of Lords. Instead Labour is pushing ahead with the ‘Lords reform’ red herring…
Smyth struggled to answer why the King could remove Andrew’s titles, but Starmer couldn’t boot Mandelson out of the Upper Chamber. She told Sky News:
“We don’t have a majority in the House of Lords. So that has to be done in cooperation with all parties. That’s why we’ve asked for all parties to come together to look at look at this um and make sure that any legislation comes forward is fit for purpose. It is a wider issue. People understand we’ve got a majority in the commons. We can bring forward emergency legislation. I brought forward emergency legislation last week about the doctors. But you do need to get that through the House of Lords and it needs to be right and it needs to be wider than one person.”
Smith added that Mandelson’s latest interview with The Times suggests he doesn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. In the interview, Mandelson said being sacked “felt like being killed without actually dying” and that resigning from Labour wasn’t an easy decision but: “I feel better for it as I need to reset…I think I want a sea change. I want to be more an outsider looking in than the other way round. I want to contribute ideas that enable Britain to strengthen and to work for all, in every part of the country.” Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police are “reviewing” reports of alleged misconduct in a public office. The Scandalson isn’t going away for Starmer…
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”