Laura

Thank you.

I'm sure it didn't make any sense at all.

It did to me.

That's right.

And again, it comes to a fact that in politics, ignorance is not a defence.

You know, you can have a debate about whether it should be or not, but ignorance in politics is not a defence.

If you are a political leader to say, oh, sorry, I didn't know.

Politicians, leaders are the ultimate...

in accountability and authority that is the whole basis on which our system rests which is why Keir Starmer was so effectively able to go after Boris Johnson in that way for a long time and they lent into it week after week after week after week you had Mr Rules going after Captain Sleaze to be a terribly cartoony person about it it worked for Labour and now they're finding fairly or not

that the boot is on the other foot.

And when you talk to people who are loyal to Keir Starmer, you can hear almost this sort of agony in their voices.

One of them said to me, this is so painful for Keir Starmer because he sees himself, and he is, they believe, a man of such integrity.

But this row, to use their phrase, was wiping that away in the public's eyes.

And it comes also at a time when the government has been struggling on all sorts of fronts.

They've been unpopular for a long time.

They're going to the polls in a couple of weeks in Scotland, in Wales and right around England in a huge set of elections.

And right when they felt things might have been beginning to stabilise a little bit,

Here they go again, another big fat mess over Peter Mandelson, which is the worst kind of political story because it talks to sleaze, it talks to bad behaviour, it talks to kind of power and ambition, someone everyone's heard of.

which not all political rows involve.

You know, this is not obscure, again, to use our word of the day, this is not an obscure wrinkle.