The game of what Keir Starmer knew and when is taking another turn after former Labour NEC member Mish Rahman takes to X to claim that the Labour leader’s team knew about his deposed adviser’s Diane Abbott messages before the election. Rahman alleges:
I was aware about this during the General Election campaign.
I even provided the following quote to @BBCNewsnight
In the end they and @Channel4News refused to publish.
It’s clear the gloves are off now and instead of protecting Starmer as they did before – his time is done. https://t.co/kUQaMNRw29 pic.twitter.com/uF3LPqeOd6
— Mish Rahman (@mish_rahman) September 15, 2025
Rahman was endorsed by Momentum-backed Centre Left Grassroots Alliance, so is on the left of the party. This is all looking very factional…
Lord David Frost has just penned a piece in The Telegraph on Danny Kruger’s defection to Reform this morning. He says he’s unlikely to be the last MP to defect…
Frost said:
“Expect plenty of criticism of Danny, in sorrow or in anger, over the next few days. But many MPs on the Right will also be thinking: maybe it’s game over for the party. Maybe it’s time for me to go too.”
Reform figures will no doubt be on the phones. Frosty towards the Tories…
UPDATE: the grammar has changed in the quote above on the Telegraph website. They swapped out the full stop before “maybe it’s time for me to go too” with a semi-colon…
Starmer has spoken for the first time since sacking Peter Mandelson. He says he “wouldn’t have appointed” him as US ambassador “if I knew then what I know now.” The Trump state visit will be fun…
He told Sky News:
“Had I known then what I know now, I’d have never appointed him. I knew that questions had been put to Peter that he had not yet answered. Um, and he hadn’t answered them by the time it got to PMQs. There is, of course, a time lag in America, but I knew that there were questions that have been put to him, but I didn’t know what answers he was going to give to those questions.”
Starmer stood up at PMQs last week, declaring he had “full confidence” in Mandelson, knowing that there were more “very embarrassing” revelations to come about the relationship with Epstein and that the Foreign Office was investigating new emails. Starmer’s spokesman insisted this morning that the PM did not know or ask about the content. How can you declare full confidence in someone without knowing all the details?
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick told GB News that he profoundly disagrees with former campaign manager and now Reform MP Danny Kruger that the Conservative Party is “dead“. He said:
“Well, look, obviously I’m very sad to see Danny leave the Conservative Party. He’s a personal friend of mine and he’s somebody I hold in very high regard. But I disagree with him profoundly on this issue. What I need to do now, and the fellow members of the Conservative Party, is focus on the future. There’s no point looking backwards.”
Kruger said earlier today: “I wished that [Jenrick] had won because I think he would have done things differently”. Jenrick insisted that Kemi was the right person for the job, though that “there’s a mountain to climb”. Tough times for the Tories…
Starmer’s Director of Strategy Paul Ovenden has resigned this afternoon after the Mail published details about sexually explicit emails concerning Diane Abbott. According to the Mail, Ovenden stood down today following the publication of the 2017 messages in which he recounted a story about “a game of ‘shag, marry, kill’ involving Abbott”. He resigned to avoid becoming a “distraction“. A government source tells Guido:
“Paul was one of the most important architects of last year’s landslide election and Keir has relied on him heavily every day since. His loss to the project is monumental”.
Yet another massive resignation from the top…
Tory MP Jack Rankin has written to the CEO of the Charity Commission demanding it investigates Hope Not Hate for possible breaches of its charitable status. Bad news for the Labour-linked group…
Rankin writes:
“Hope Not Hate Limited is purely political operation with a reported history of fabricating security threats, spreading disinformation and pushing smear campaigns…it seems incompatible with the charitable requirement to further public benefit in a balanced, non-partisan manner.”
Guido has long been chronicling some of the group’s more eyebrow-raising messages…
Read the letter in full below:
Continue reading “EXC: Tory MP Demands Charity Commission Investigate Labour-Linked Hope Not Hate”
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”