Chris Mason

It's not the kind of thing that anybody's going to ignore.

But like I say, obviously Keir Starmer will fundamentally disagree with what Elon Musk is posting about this case in this instance.

I don't think he minds being seen to stand up to Elon Musk.

Yeah, and the twist is not what was in that big data dump.

It's what wasn't in that big data dump.

And this is some messages that didn't appear in those documents but have subsequently been leaked to The Spectator.

And these are messages from Darren Jones to Peter Madison.

Darren Jones, obviously, a really key figure in Downing Street.

He's the chief of staff to the prime minister.

And these messages, basically a couple of things.

So at the point of Peter Mandelson losing his job, Darren Jones texts him and effectively says, I'm so sorry, you were doing a great job there, mate.

And then there's some other messages, which I'm pretty sure Darren Jones didn't necessarily want to be made public because he's not overly complimentary about some of his cabinet colleagues, including the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, talking about the idea of her getting the economy moving and just basically casting some aspersions on her ability to do that.

So these have all come out via a leak.

Now, Darren Jones has said the reason they weren't in the original data dump was because he'd put on that disappearing WhatsApp message function, you know, when you can put a little swirly thing on your messages, drop off your WhatsApp after 24 hours or a week or whatever you said it to.

Yeah, and I keep forgetting to turn on my disappearing WhatsApps.

But now I might, given that apparently most of the government has their disappearing WhatsApps turned on.

There seems to be very little about Epstein and quite a lot about... Well, and also some key stuff wasn't in there about, you know, the actual appointment of Peter Mandelson to the US ambassador post.

Because it had been redacted because of the ongoing police investigation.

So some of that kind of stuff wasn't in there.

But we just got a lot of this kind of strange interaction between Peter Mandelson and certain cabinet ministers who hadn't had their disappearing WhatsApps on.