As ever, Starmer had a carefully crafted speech for deployment on Thursday. He vehemently - very vehemently - wants us to believe that whatever Parliament thought it had secured the day before, it's really all about a catalogue of "Mandelson's lies" which Starmer "had wanted to hand over yesterday" (if PC Plod hadn't told him not to hand them over; yeah, right). Nice try, Kier; but what your MPs actually want - and won't easily be deflected from - is what McSweeney's role in all this was, blow by, errr, blow.
And what McSweeney was up to is clear enough - orchestrating a sham of a vetting process. How do I know this? Because on top of outright secret sources (and who knows what they knew?), within the security services is an OSINT desk - open-source intelligence gathering. People whose job is to trawl everything available from open sources. And in this day and age of Bellingcat and the extraordinary online resources they've tapped into and made public, and when you have the resources of HMG, GCHQ etc at your disposal, OS is one helluva resource, properly marshalled. Be it immediately added that imposing QA on what is found online etc is a very significant analytic task, when all the OS stuff is assembled, tinfoil-hat dross / disinformation / Маскировка and all. But that's not the point in this case. What can be said for certain is that whatever was available in OS, worldwide, on Mandelson - and everybody knows that includes, e.g., the Deripaska affair - it was ready to hand within Whitehall. And cumulatively, it was all anybody needed to know to conclude he was a non-starter for Ambassador by any rational criteria.
Ready to hand - but seemingly not deployed. In other words - and let's charitably dump this all on the convenient fall-guy - McS ran a sham exercise in which Mandelson was invited to tell whatever lies he liked; and he was then taken at his word, without the security services being tasked to give it the old red-ink marginal annotation routine. Because if Mandelson had simply given them a big assemblage of lies, they could have demolished it, line by line.
The alternative explanations - that all his lies were indeed fisked, or even that he simply didn't lie at all - and still Starmer made the appointment, well, that would be even worse for Starmer. But since PC Plod is conveniently withholding the list of lies, we can only speculate...
ND
(i) Is Mandelson qualified to flee to Israel which would then refuse to extradite him? I like to think of his finishing his life labouring on a kibbutz.
ReplyDelete(ii) Could McWhatsit be an IRA agent?
(ii) Or is it just that everyone involved in government is so hopelessly incompetent that attempts to rationalise their behaviour are bound to lead to false suspicions?
The puzzle in my mind is why did Starmer send Mandelson to Washington at all. Why did Starmer not twig that sending Mandelson could/would blow up in his face. Much as he looks it he is not a total dumbcluck. Just possibly he did realise the possibility and saw it as a way to bury Mandelson forever.
ReplyDeleteHaving been cornered into signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act Trump could usefully use the act to blacken his own opponents and Starmer is of little value to Trump so some mud will not come amiss. All smells of bad planning to me - unless Mandelson holds yet more dirt or was lined up for burial. Just possibly Mandelson dug his own grave, the 'get rid of Starmer' stink will blow over.
Much whining about how useless Starmer is. Due largely to the tight corner the UK got itself into re industry/economy/housing/energy. That corner will be just as tight for Ms Rayner or Ms Badenoch.
What this episode does show is just how interactive and rotten the upper reaches are and just how dodgy the charity business is.
A remaining question is what pressure/influence did Mandelson use to get himself on the list for Ambassador? Him being such a dubious choice n all.
"why did Starmer send Mandelson to Washington"?
Delete'Cos Mandelson would already been moving in the sort of circles that are useful to any Ambassador, with breakfasts promoting Marmite, lunches promoting aircraft engines, and evening soirees trying to flog Midsomer Murders and Strictly.
This, of course, was all vectored via Epstein's network. And Starmer, as did Team Starmer, and everyone else, knew this, as it was public, including what Mandy got up to as EU Trade Commissioner.
There are at least three punts here; the House wouldn't grow a pair and pass the Act nine/twelve months after Peter was in position, anything arising would be purely domestic US politics, or that Mandy would be the fall guy/cut out. Again.
That Mandy wanted the embassy was being talked about from Day 1 of the Starmer regime, July 2024.
ReplyDeleteAt the self-same time he was also angling for Chancellorship of Oxford U. He is just addicted to public platforms and prestige - he knows how to turn both into £££ !
I hadn't noticed, but last week (before the axe fell), not content with the Kuenssberg interview, he did another big self-justifying Mandelspread, this one in the Times, complete with fashion photos of him lounging around in his (rented) Wiltshire farmhouse, repeating the 2025 line, "Epstein is like dogshit on my shoes"
(there's gratitude for you!)
Starmer hinting at blaming the security services is truly the last refuge. Might not be a very safe refuge, either ...
"unless Mandelson holds yet more dirt"
ReplyDeleteCan Mandelson have threatened to publicise der Sturmer's bisexuality? (Or is this another attempt to rationalise what is just as easily explained by sheer stupidity?)
"Bellingcat and the extraordinary online resources they've tapped into and made public"
ReplyDeleteI find it impossible to credit that Bellingcat and co don't have some connection/funding from the secret world, because of where they're aimed. You don't find the White Helmets in Gaza... and what made their founder drop out of a window? I thought that only happened to Russians.
ND - why is blaming the security services "a last refuge"? All along they've been the dog that's not barked (that we know of) - why ?
"a non-starter for Ambassador by any rational criteria"
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps they thought that non-rational US leadership needed non-rational choices - a "Trump whisperer". Maybe they were that desperate.
In many ways Trump has the root of the matter in him. But he's damn disorganised, easily distracted/can't keep strategic ends in view, and again is surrounded by people who are just keen on staying in place. The same force that drove Biden is to some extent driving Mr "No-Wars" ...