The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests that for everything that can possibly happen, there is a universe in which it has. Which might explain how we find ourselves in the universe where, on Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch did a frankly pretty good job at Prime Minister’s Questions.
Her subject was Britain’s ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson, who has — and who could have foreseen this? — got himself into trouble for fawning over a multimillionaire. It seems possible that Lord Mandelson will achieve the distinction of resigning from high office three times in three different decades, brought down each time by his sheer enthusiasm for huge piles of cash. Truly he’s just a man, standing in front of much richer men, hoping they’ll drop some money.
Before Keir Starmer’s difficult half-hour, we had questions on science and technology, where freshly appointed Liz Kendall was asked about artificial intelligence by her Conservative shadow, Julia Lopez. Earlier, there had been hints that the new team in the science department is going to take less of a fanboy attitude to AI than their predecessors. Lopez pointed out that so far the technology hadn’t delivered any public sector job cuts.
She finally had a session on her specialist subject: stories that are massive in the online conspiracist community
“If someone in the private sector led a reverse efficiency drive, they’d get sacked,” she claimed. MPs often take a starry-eyed view of private sector efficiency. Those of us who actually work in it know that disastrous managers get promoted far more often than they lose their jobs.
Speaking of which, it was time for Badenoch and Starmer’s weekly face-off. The prime minister led off with a long list of things that had gone wrong in the past 24 hours, condemning Israel’s attack on Doha and Russia’s sending of drones into Poland. It’s amazing that anyone who turned on the radio this morning even got out of bed.
The first question went to Luke Evans, a Tory, who listed all the ministers who had resigned over the past year, before finishing: “Is this the integrity he meant when he came to government?” Starmer was ready for that one, pointing out that under the last administration it was the ethics adviser who had resigned, rather than the ministers.
Badenoch rose to ask whether the prime minister had full confidence in Mandelson, who was this week revealed to have written one of the many oily messages in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book. On Wednesday morning we’d heard him telling The Sun that there were many more such messages to come. Truly, this is a man who never met a wrong ’un he didn’t like.
“The victims of Epstein are at the forefront of our minds,” said Starmer. This seemed unlikely, given all the things he’d already told us were on his mind that day. And indeed given the fact that Mandelson’s unsavoury association had been well-known when he was appointed. “The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for his association with him,” the prime minister went on. This was presumably a reference to Mandelson’s February interview with the Financial Times, when he deeply regretfully told the paper: “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off.”
Badenoch stayed with the subject. Had Starmer been aware of Mandelson’s closeness to Epstein when he appointed him? “Full due process was followed during this appointment,” the prime minister replied, woodenly.
Again the Tory leader went in: Mandelson had carried on dealing with Epstein after his conviction for child sex offences. “Full due process was gone through in relation to this appointment,” intoned the prime minister. What does that even mean? Is it supposed to make it sound as though Starmer had no choice in giving Mandelson the job, when everyone knows it was a personal appointment? Or that he couldn’t be expected to have known things that were in the public domain?
Up in the gallery, there was astonishment that Badenoch was actually doing OK. After a year of fairly terrible performances, she had finally got a session on her specialist subject: stories that are massive in the online conspiracist community.
We shouldn’t get carried away. Her suggestion that Mandelson’s association with Epstein would make it more difficult for him to deal with the White House suggests a certain naivety about what kind of man the president is. If anything, a mutual friendship with Epstein has given the ambassador something to talk about with the president.
Nor was her attempt to link this scandal to Angela Rayner’s resignation wholly convincing. Although it prompted an answer from the prime minister that was frankly weird: “I see that she is finally catching up with the questions that she should have asked last week about the Deputy Prime Minister.” What exactly does he think she should have asked? Was there a question that would have revealed something that we didn’t learn until Friday? Or is there something else he’d like to tell us?
It was probably a symptom of being on the ropes. He was, frankly, rambling at this point, declaring, apropos of absolutely nothing: “We reopened Doncaster Sheffield airport yesterday!” Only when Badenoch asked about the deputy leadership contest did he get back into his stride with a scripted joke: “Our deputy leader contest started this week and ends on 25 October. The Conservatives’ leadership contest has been going on for months.”
Can Mandelson survive? How would it affect relations with Trump to sack the ambassador over a birthday message in a document that the president says is fake? And will finally delivering a good performance save Badenoch? Well, steady on, the multiverse is wide, but it’s not that wide.
