What would Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby have made of cancel culture, Brexit and woke? If you were tempted to see I'm Sorry, Prime Minister to find out, save yourself the trouble. www.newstatesman.com/culture/thea...

"It would just be nice if flawed women were given the same opportunities to try and fail as flawed men – if they were considered for top jobs on their own merits, not just their ability to wield a mop." On Starmer, women, the glass cliff and the bucket www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

My column in this week's @newstatesman1913.bsky.social, on bad data used in bad faith. FOI-ing the stats myself, I didn't find a great deal of difference in sex offending rates: 5 per 10,000 Afghan men, 7 per 10,000 UK men:

"Can a country’s economy succeed when its bright young things are weighed down by a misconceived debt-tax their elders breezily avoided? Can its politics?" In this week's @newstatesman1913.bsky.social, you can read me banging on about student loans - again www.newstatesman.com/internationa...

The number of men who have chosen to misinterpret this thread as me arguing that women are inherently better than men or that I think this is always the reason women get appointed (citing Liz Truss) is really quite amusing. Almost as amusing as the men trying to explain my point back to me

PMQs review: Whatever unofficial pact existed between Labour and the Lib Dems, it's just been blown up www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Just listened to the recent @newstatesman1913.bsky.social podcast - fascinating observation from @rmcunliffe.bsky.social i.e that the fallout from the Mandelson scandal and the resulting political drama is mainly discussed on X, a platform that is part of the problem of toxic male behaviour 😐

"History is women following behind with the bucket." So Morgan McSweeney has been replaced by Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson. Antonia Romeo is about to take over from Chris Wormald. Steph Driver may return to fill Tim Allan's vacancy. Sense that now there's a mess to mop up, get the women in

If you’re in/around London, you have 5 weeks to see the folk rock sensation Ballad Lines. Do not miss the opportunity. One of the most powerful and innovative musicals I’ve seen - all about heritage, history, identity, and how it all comes together with what we want for ourselves and our children

Absolutely fascinating insight into the vetting process for officials - revealing that, yes, you really can just lie your way through. A decade ago a friend's career was thrown into turmoil when he failed vetting - no reason or chance of appeal. Who knows why he was failed but Mandelson passed...

Once again, I am forced to highlight the OUTRAGEOUS INJUSTICE that so far NOT A SINGLE UNIVERSITY has invited me to give a speech about how amazing cats are. This is FREE SPEECH CRISIS. I am being SILENCED. I expect a flood of invitations to be arrving imminently.

This is a public service announcement to say that there is a NEW cat in the garden tonight who is MADE OF LOUD and tried to come in. We have named her The Duchess Of Meowlfi. Obviously. Clio remains unimpressed.

Not today's main point, but I do find it odd that ministers are signalling their support of Keir Starmer - pretty important as their silence is interpreted as a sign they might quit and force him to resign! - by... posting on X. You know, the site condemned for being an AI porn hellscape last month

Wrote in January that Scottish Labour had broken with Starmer and would be putting “country before party” – Sarwar calling for him to go is the ultimate expression of that logic. www.newstatesman.com/politics/lab...

This is like when politicians call something "sub-optimal"

Nice slow Monday, easing ourselves into the start of the news week...

This was the "reshufflet" now said to have been partly orchestrated (or at least heavily influenced) by Peter Mandelson, because that is totally a job US ambassadors usually do

Just discovered Mandelson’s reaction to our first report he’d leaked government emails:

"In eight years we’ll be commemorating the 200-year anniversary of the fire that burned down parliament. And MPs will probably still be arguing about how to prevent it burning down again." Some personal thoughts on the plans for the restoration of parliament www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

People love to say “cats are antisocial”, but THIS cat has spent all afternoon sitting on my lap while I research the crumbling Palace of Westminster, dribbling on my notes about asbestos and fire incidents. She started purring when we got to the mice issue

Can we make the abyss prime minister?

J.M.W. Turner painted not one but two splendid pictures depicting how this sorry saga of procrastination and indecision ends.

In case anyone is curious, this is the text of what Wednesday’s humble address demanded the government release. It’s not just the vetting documents. It’s WhatsApps and minutes from meetings and oh so much more. Seem some in Parliament are only just realising this now…

"£1.5m is spent per week maintaining and repairing the Palace of Westminster." The report into making Parliament safe to actually work in is full of jaw-dropping stats, but I think the above is a pretty good place to start... committees.parliament.uk/publications...

Mandelson: here's where we're at so far... The government knew Mandelson had ties to Epstein - as was reported in the FT in 2023. This was raised in the initial vetting report when he was a candidate for ambassador (the full vetting process dind't happen til after he'd been announced)

A year to the day since Mandelson told the FT that their questions about Epstein were "an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off." I wonder if the paper sent him a card, @pickardje.bsky.social?

Wimbledon has been lost to the Lib Dems

It's just vibes. British values. The importance of communities. Economic security. Taking responsibility. Tough on immigration - but also something something Windrush. Hope, change, common good. All we're missing now is Peppa Pig

This feels like a very odd speech. The government is in crisis, the Labour party is on the brink of mutiny... and the Prime Minister is talking about litter-picking

New from me: you've seen the TV show, now read the book I reviewed Bonfire Of The Murdochs, the real-life Succession tale of a multi-decade blood feud to win a father’s love... with the battle over democracy on three contients a mere subplot www.newstatesman.com/culture/book...

The tone of this debate about releasing the Mandelson info is really fascinating. It's become a matter on the sovereignty of parliament itself. Owen Patterson has been mentioned. And Labour MPs are standing firm against the government. Starting to really wonder how Starmer gets through this

I’m not sure ‘our national security developed vetting technique can be beaten if a candidate is prepared to lie’ is an especially helpful line to push.

One piece of good news for Mandelson this week... I can reveal the council is NOT taking any enforcement action against him for pissing in the street, due to a "lack of evidence"

Mandelson stayed in the house of a convicted sex criminal. The Prime Minister knew that. He chose to appoint him as US ambassador anyway. That's all you really need to know about PMQs today www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

Let’s see how long this lasts…

Wes Streeting saying on Today that Mandelson is ‘not the man we thought he was’ but the trouble is, he is exactly the man we thought, just on a much worse scale than almost anyone thought. And there is an alternative world where none of this is this govt’s problem, because they never gave him a job

"Mega-wealth so often erodes a moral compass. Epstein’s appeal was an insidious gift of permission. Girls, tax evasion, private places to play. An underground railway of upper-echelon decadence." Devestating from Tina Brown www.newstatesman.com/internationa...

It's a bit like if they got Capone for tax evasion and only later learned about all the gangster stuff.

Nigel Farage tells the Reform press conference on pubs: "By the way, my name was mentioned in the files 37 times, but just to repeat, I never met Epstein and I never went to the island"

Trying to explain to non-politicos that no, we had no idea Mandelson had leaked market-sensitive information to a foreign pal when he was forced to resign in September, that scandal was about said "pal" being convicted of a child prositution offence, which is scandalous for totally different reasons

exactly. this is not difficult. as.ft.com/r/58ed1b23-d...

"We no longer live under New Labour, and Starmer’s cabinet is very different from those in Mandelson’s day. But that impulse for pragmatism – voiced by many suffering nostalgia for the Blair years – still pulses through the political ether" @anooshc.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

This would explain why Vadera's email is in all-caps. Brown had terrible eyesight - advisers knew to write memos to him in giant font in bold capital letters

Alistair Darling and the official Treasury were always aware that investment banks had an inside track to Number 10. But the brazen nature of that inside track is rather breath-taking.

Amazon Firestick now crashing and restarting constantly. Impossible to watch anything. Have tried all the fixes (clearing cache, software update, new power adapter), no luck. Question a) what else can I try? Question b) when I inevitably admit it needs replacing, what should I buy instead?

I'm not prone to exaggeration but this is probably the biggest scoop I've ever been involved in Mandelson's partner took £10,000 from Epstein to pay for his osteopath course while Mandelson was de facto UK deputy prime minister, according to new files more to follow www.ft.com/content/c950...

"It always animated readers: the left dislikes tuition fees, the right dislikes high marginal tax rates. But at Westminster it remained an irrelevance." @georgeeaton.bsky.social capturing how weird (also good!) it is that student loans are finally headline news www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

this this this this this. Arts & Humanities grads *heavily* subsidise most STEM grads.* I don't mind, I hated science at school, but it does mean getting into the question of "who is paying for whom" is slightly more complex than people like to think. *with the exception of theoretical mathmos &c

At the risk of preaching not just to the choir but to the house of bishops, for my New Statesman column this week I have written about leaving Twitter a year ago, and how surreal it's been watching people make excuses for sharing a site with an AI sex pest tool www.newstatesman.com/culture/soci...

Graduate: Why do I have to pay usurious interest rates on this loan? Government: It isn't really a loan - think of it more like a tax. Graduate: Why do I have to pay an extra 9% tax compared with older graduates? Government: It isn't a tax - it is a loan!