Ministers are now in the unfortunate position of having to defend Mandelson’s record in order to claim that Starmer was right to have appointed Peter Mandelson in the first place before sacking him for impropriety. Mental gymnastics at play here…
Scotland Secretary Douglas Alexander told the Today Programme that Mandelson’s abilities “outweighed the political risks” but that the appointment would not have gone ahead if the emails released on Wednesday were in the public domain back then. The only new information is that Mandelson thought Epstein was innocent. That means:
Alexander told Sky: “We knew this was an unconventional presidential administration and that was the basis on which there was a judgment that we needed an unconventional ambassador.” One way of putting it…
Alexander also said Starmer was too busy on Wednesday morning to call Mandelson and ask him to explain what he meant when he said in an interview that much more embarrassing material was on the way. Starmer and McSweeney taking a battering for the judgement calls at every stage of this…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”