I want to find out what happened at the FAC hearing this morning - but when I search on Bluesky it just gives me kittens!

Over 10 years since my diagnosis with Graves’ disease (autoimmune condition causing over-active thyroid), I’ve now been free of antibodies for 18 months, and off medication since last summer. 🤞🏻🤞🏻 After five negative tests I’m starting to believe it’s real.

Something shifted for me overnight and I can’t now “unsee” it. I think Starmer needs to go. A steady accumulation of misjudgments, in policy and personnel. Too many to blame all on poor advice, bad luck, or difficult circs. I thought he’d be a safe pair of hands; but, now I think it’s weakness 🧵.

"No pressure existed whatsoever" on the FCDO to appoint Mandelson, Keir Starmer tells the House of the Commons. And that, I think, is gonna be a big big hostage to fortune.

Process for people like Mandelson Vs Process for people like Louise Haigh www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/730...

It's almost as if M&M picked the luckless Starmer to front their Centrist Labour project on the understanding that he would follow their guidance…

@bendorgrosvenor.bsky.social I’m finding your article from 2024 invaluable as I assemble the high-res images for my book (not an art book but still has c. 30 pics and hence the costs/free copies are mounting).

“Oh they needed an operator!” They literally had someone already there who the White House asked to keep in post and they put their mate in there instead.

Robbins claiming in March 2025 he was asked to "potentially" find PM's then director of comms Matthew Doyle a job as an ambassador or high commissioner: www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce...

The key point from Olly Robbins is that, in his view, Mandelson did *not* technically fail vetting - the vetting outcome was the FCDO decision on whether to grant, not any UKSV recommendation as part of that process...

So far Olly Robbins has dropped govt in it x 3 - that Cabinet Office suggested Mandelson might not even need vetting, that No 10 pressured him to get on with it, that publicly rejecting M on vetting grounds wd be v awkward - & himself in it on maybe 1 (dsn't sound like he recorded much of this...

The problem with Starmer's argument (well one of them) is that it depends on an assertion that he wouldn't have appointment Mandelson if he'd known he'd failed vetting. But he appointed him before vetting was complete.

While this seems obvious as to how things *should* work, it's very much not at all what Starmer actually did when he appointed. Which is to say: oooooooooof.

And no, attacking Starmer over Mandelson is not somehow serving Reform and Farage. Rather, Starmer making a big mess of all of this is serving Reform and Farage. Glossing over it doesn't help.

Today the Prime Minister will assure Parliament that there was no window, or if there was a window it did not break, and if it broke it was not from a ball, and if there was a ball there was no kick. He will add that he is "furious" about the window that broke from a ball that was kicked. (By him.)

They wanted to appease the monster by appointing a known corrupt ambassador. For shame. There are no excuses.

Keir Starmer should just go. Now.

Fwiw. The Prime Minister should have resigned when House of Commons voted that he (and his cabinet) could not be trusted with "national security" decisions on the release of the Mandelson papers. If House of Commons has no confidence in a PM to do that, they have no real confidence in PM at all.

"He has managed to be both dull and incompetent; and that is nobody‘s idea of a winning combination.“ Absolutely brutal by @jonathanfreedland.bsky.social And rather hard to argue with. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The decision of a Prime Minister Only one person decided to appoint Lord Mandelson The Empty City blog emptycity.substack.com/p/the-decisi...

“Look, we knew he was a shit, but we did it anyway” is a better look than all these lies upon lies upon lies.

Ooof. (Look, whenever someone told me over the last few months that Starmer might not make it until the end of his first term, I thought it was nonsense. Not so sure anymore…)

It was in the public domain that Mandelson had been fired from the Cabinet twice, that he was Epstein's friend, that he'd stayed in Epstein's house while Deputy PM, that he'd been a lobbyist for 15 years, and more. It was in the note prepared for the PM, too. So…what game are we playing here?

I wonder how many people will end up getting fired to maintain the artificd that Keir Starmer didn't know who Peter Mandelson was when he gave him a prominent public service job.

Don’t forget the angry older women too. #OmasGegenRechts

So Starmer found out on Tuesday evening but didn't think to mention it to the *Foreign Secretary* at all. The Guardian told her? WTF

NEW: Yvette Cooper only became aware that Peter Mandelson had failed security vetting when approached by Guardian on Thursday, I’m told. Foreign sec then spent evening in FCDO and Downing Street with the PM where she spoke to Sir Olly Robbins. They concluded he could no longer continue in post.

If you step back, it is truly extraordinary that so many people went to such great lengths and broke so many conventions and risked their political careers and the only outcome of all these efforts and risks was appointing a washed-up old spinner to an ambassadorial post

The McSweeney, Mandelson, Cummings political guru model is possibly one of the most overrated factors in UK politics

I am planning on appointing someone who has publicly resigned twice in scandal. They resign a third time in even bigger scandal. The fallout should, however, not include me, the person who made the big call in the first place. Totally untenable.

This the key point. If FCDO did overturn the vetting without telling anyone it was because it had already been announced. Which was a ridiculous thing to do.

How many more people are going to have to resign for Keir Starmer's decision to ignore the advice of every single person who told him not to appoint Peter Mandelson?

I’ve no brief for Olly R but the time line is crazy: He’s appointed 8 Jan 25. Mandy announcement had already been made 20 Dec 24 in advance of vetting. Trump inauguration was 20 Jan. So we’re basically talking about Robbins’ first 12 days.

Robbins had been in the job only days. Crazy.

We seem to have lost sight of the concept of accountability.

Omg it’s obvious. Larry did it. He’s in charge after all.

This is why Members of Parliament were right to take the ultimate decision on non-disclosure of the Mandelson papers for “national security“ reasons out of the hands of the Prime Minister www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The nub of so many of this government’s problems is that there is a Keir Starmer where the prime minister should be.

This is gobsmacking, if true. Surely no FCDO official would have the temerity to issue an override for an appointment of this significance? But if indeed it was not referred to No 10, why the hell not? A massive breakdown in process, or of judgement, or both! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Why does that get him off the hook? He damn well ought to have known!

What a total screw-up: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

EXC: Treasury accused of reneging on deal with MoD to pay for proposed British peacekeeping contingent in Ukraine from central funds MoD left to fund millions for Coalition of Willing from over-stretched budget, in latest example of wrangling btwn the two depts over military funding

Donald Tusk in Polen, Péter Magyar in Ungarn, die tapferen Ukrainer seit 2013/2014 - Es ist mehr möglich, als die Geschichten vom unaufhaltsamen Niedergang oder epochalen Trends glauben machen. Es wird nicht einfacher, aber nichts ist dauerhaft entschieden, nie, an keinem Tag

Great to see the Westminster government doing this.

What we wanted was for Keir Starmer to go on Kuenssberg the day after the election and do this

So the whole fawning at the court of King Trump, the mad OTT announcement of an undefined trade deal, the Mandelson affair, the invitation from King Charles, and soon the royal visit to the US.... all of it for nothing because we don't follow Donald C*** down into his self-made abyss of insanity.

Vance says that stopping funding for Ukraine is one of his proudest achievements in this administration. ​I’m watching this stunningly cruel speech from Ukraine, as Russia continues to kills us every day. Just today, they killed 8-year-old boy in Cherkasy and five people in Dnipro.

Trump comparing himself to Jesus while Vance tries to lecture the actual Pope on matters theological proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the ‘Christian’ element of their support is, morally & doctrinally, about as Christian as a hula hoop. Their conduct is literally unconscionable.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey says the King's state visit to the US must be cancelled. “(Trump) is a dangerous and corrupt gangster and that is how we must treat him.”