Lucy Fisher

And just at a moment where people thought that some of the speculation about his future was simmering down, you know, even though Labour is expecting dire results at the Scottish, Welsh and English council elections on May the 7th.

I think there had been this sense in the parliamentary Labour Party that with the Iran war and the geopolitical backdrop looking so turbulent right now, there had come to some sort of consensus in the party that now was not a good time to sort of try and change leader.

It could, this latest crisis involving Mandelson and the vetting, that could reprise questions and plotting about replacing Starmer.

Exactly, either is bad.

And I think, you know, if it's the fact that he didn't know, there seems to have been a long kind of concatenation of events or things he didn't have sight on, which, you know, plays into this sort of wider narrative that he's, you know, drifting, his government is drifting.

He was sort of run, geppettoed by Morgan McSweeney,

And, you know, this idea that he's at the front of, you know, the driverless train, as it were.

So it plays into kind of, you know, existing misgivings about his style of leadership and his grip over the government.

Many more.

That's right.

Potentially, you know, 100,000-odd documents and the Intelligence and Security Committee documents

which is a committee made up of MPs and peers, is carefully filleting those at the moment.

There will be further tranches to come, probably for the next year or more.

Well, look, I think, you know, hindsight's a beautiful thing, of course.

But when you wind back to the appointment and the speculation leading up to its confirmation, yes, people pointed out his links to Epstein and other sort of reputational risks.

However, they also pointed out, you know, his enormous experience in government, not just at the highest levels of UK government, where he had been, you know, trade secretary and de facto secretary,

Deputy Prime Minister, but also in the EU.

He had been a commissioner in Brussels, very sharp political instincts.

You know, one of the architects of New Labour alongside Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but also someone who had proven to be very successful in the private sector.

And in a sense, what made him a strong candidate was also part of one of his key weaknesses, a real interest in and excitement around enormously wealthy people like Epstein was a weakness, but also meant that he tribally understood many of these people and going out to the US and dealing with whether tech billionaires or