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“…
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?”