Dough Mandy
THAT Keir Starmer made a huge error of judgment by appointing Peter Mandelson as US Ambassador is undeniable.
What was kept secret until yesterday was Downing Street’s desperation to pay off the disgraced peer.
The detail in the first batch of documents relating to Mandelson is shocking.
Civil servants scrambled to hand him a £75,000 settlement.
One official was even congratulated for keeping the sum so relatively low after Mandelson, with typical high-handed arrogance, demanded £500,000 to walk away.
What no one involved in this grubby horse-trading seems to have considered at any point was the effect on the victims of Epstein’s appalling crimes.
READ MORE FROM THE SUN SAYS
In all the discussions revealed by the files they are not mentioned.
What on earth were Starmer and his advisers thinking?
The PM was warned FOUR times that appointing Mandelson was a “reputational risk”.
There can now be no doubt that Downing Street wanted him in Washington so badly it was prepared to cut corners in a dodgy vetting process described by Starmer’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell as “weirdly rushed”.
The papers also suggest Mandelson was given access to sensitive and secret Government information BEFORE he received clearance.
There will now be deep concern at how such material might have been handled.
Only a fraction of the files held on Mandelson were published yesterday.
Yet they have already shed a harsh light on the moral vacuum at the heart of Government over this appointment.
In the months ahead, much worse for the PM is likely to follow.
Under the pump
IT seems the Prime Minister is listening to The Sun.
Keir Starmer yesterday gave a heavy hint to MPs that Labour will U-turn on Rachel Reeves’s plan to increase fuel duty by a penny in September.
As we have pointed out on behalf of our hard-pressed readers, it is madness for the PM to say tackling the cost of living is his number one priority while hitting families at the pumps.
An inflation spiral caused by widespread conflict in the Gulf will only make it worse.
No Churchill
BOOTING Winston Churchill’s image off the £5 note at a time when our military weakness is exposed on a global scale must send the irony meter off the scale.
And what has been mooted as a replacement for our great wartime leader? Images of fluffy wildlife.
Why are so many in our public institutions desperate to erase our past?
