The gurus of very very sensible hardline centrism have finally weighed in on the Peter Mandelson scandal. What does Alastair Campbell really think of the man who helped him build New Labour, only to later appear in his underpants in Jeffrey Epstein’s flat?
On the latest episode of The Rest is Politics (not billed as an ‘EMERGENCY PODCAST”for some reason):
“It just looks like politics is a kind of horrible, murky game… I think it was always going to be a risk.
[…]
Peter is talented. There’s no doubt. If you push to one side the reasons for his resignations, he was an effective cabinet minister… but I think [he has] two weaknesses to me. One has always been he’s constantly wanted to tell the story about how effective he is… and the second thing is this sort of, I guess, this propensity for risk and for men of power and wealth.”
A third weakness might be leaking market sensitive information to a paedophile, for example. For Mandelson’s part, he thought Al’s diaries would be helpful for making his own book look “tame and sober“…
Burnham confirms he spoke to Trump last night about drilling in the North Sea:
“I indicated in the phone call that we had a week last Monday that I would take a pragmatic approach when it comes to the North Sea, and that is my intention as we go forward from here. There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that. Hence, me indicating that to the president…”