Rob Watson

Well, the EFF who started this latest legal challenge has already reached out to the parliamentary speakers saying that they must set up an impeachment panel as soon as possible. We're still waiting to hear what the president's decision is going to be. The EFF has said that he should resign.

Even if impeachment proceedings continue, president hasn't said one way or another whether he'll do that, but he has issued a statement saying that he respects the decision of the constitutional court and urging everybody to also do the same and respects that ruling. The president's coalition party partners have said that they also respect the ruling of the court of law, that nobody is above.

It is a complicated tale, but much of it is quite simple. And essentially that civil servant, who, if you like, Keir Starmer, had made a scapegoat for hiring Peter Mandelson, or at least not knowing about the risks, has been testifying and essentially hitting back. And much of his testimony was about the complex issue of the vetting process to senior positions, but actually at the heart of his evidence, Celia,

was the deeply damaging allegation against Keir Starmer that the prime minister had known all along about the risks in appointing Mandelson, because his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and business ties in Russia and China were all well known. And yet, Mr. Robbins said, when he arrived to be the senior official at the foreign office in January 2025, all the pressure from Downing Street wasn't on security checks, but on getting Mr. Mandelson to Washington sooner rather than later.

It's dangerous in that it undermines the defense that he gave during a two and a half hour truly bruising session to MPs on Monday, as he was suggesting, in which he basically said, look, not my fault. If I'd shown this vetting stuff, I never would have gone ahead with the appointments. It really undermines that.

But it goes to something else, which is a danger for Keir Starmer about his judgment, his style of leadership and this idea that he'd always promised that if he became prime minister, he would always take the can if anything went wrong. Well, now he looks like he's been doing what other prime ministers have been accused of doing, which is getting somebody else to be the fall guy. Rob, what's been the British public's reaction to all of this back and forth? Are they following along?

I think they're following in the sense that's bad for Keir Starmer, that it reminds them that Peter Mandelson is back in the news and that is bad for the prime minister because it reflects on his judgment in appointing him in the first place. It's bad because the voters are reminded that Sikir Starmer had promised no drama, Starmer, well there's been plenty of drama. And it reminds them of course that he said he'd take the blame for stuff and as the public see it, he doesn't.

This is a seismic moment in British politics.

It's the first ever by-election victory by the Greens, meaning Labour has been beaten by a party to its left.

The strong performance by the anti-immigration Reform Party confirms the threat posed to Britain's main parties from populists of both left and right.

Although the Greens have promised a new kind of hopeful politics, they have been accused of sectarianism with their emphasis on Gaza in areas of the constituency with large Muslim populations.

America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is The Global Story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Our UK political correspondent is Rob Watson, and he spoke to my colleague Celia Hatton. This is a massive development in British politics. I cannot remember a senior political figure like Lord Peter Mandelson being arrested on the suspicion of criminal offence. I just can't remember anything like it. What has he been arrested for? What has he been questioned over? It's, as you say, it's misconduct in public office. What does that mean in plain English? It means that he was supposed to be doing a job on behalf of the public.

but did something seriously wrong. I mean, specifically, we think it's to do with the time when he was trade minister, so a senior government minister in 2009, after the big financial crash, and that he was passing market-sensitive internal UK government information to his friend Jeffrey Epstein. Give us a little bit more of that context. As we've said, Peter Mandelson has been a public figure here in the UK for years. Remind us how he came to prominence?

He's not some obscure politician that people in the streets of Britain would be saying, Peter who? Not at all. He has been a huge figure really in the last four decades of British politics, partly because he was one of the masterminds of what is known as New Labour. That is the idea of moving the Labour Party more to the right of politics under the leadership of Tony Blair to get it back into office after many years in the wilderness. So he was the architect, one of the architects of the so-called New Labour Project.

He worked for Tony Blair, he was a minister in Gordon Brown's government, he was a commissioner for the European Union, and of course most recently, most controversially, the British ambassador to Washington with the hope that somehow, given his past skills, that he could establish a relationship with Donald Trump.

We've seen the arrest, as we said, of the former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and now Peter Mendelssohn. So we've seen arrests in the UK, but not in the US. No, and of course there is pressure now in the United States from congressmen and others to say, hang on, look at what the Brits are doing. I mean, they've arrested a former prince, they've arrested a former senior government minister. We should be doing more of the same. But I guess it's partly a cultural reason. In the UK we do scandals.

Rather differently here, a passion and relish about seeing the rich and the powerful cut down to size.

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Look at the closing words of the Statement of the King.