Do you have a reputable source for this quote? Googling, I only see dodgy ones.
No. Sorry, I forgot to add that it was probably a joke.
(I had intended to.)
He is ever so slightly miffed at Putin and Trump for high fuel prices. And at Putin again, who keeps sending Naval flotillas through the English Channel. And at Putin, once again, for what Norway and the UK know Putin is doing messing around near undersea cables.
Knighted for being a great prosecutor. I’m sure once he returns from visiting seemingly every Middle East nation (I think - there are lots of them) Putin will celebrate by sending another flotilla by.
Starmer is currently getting dragged over the coals in the House of Commons over the Mandleson affair, after it came out that the security vetting process advised that Mandleson was as security risk and should not be appointed Ambassador. Starmer’s line is that officials overruled that recommendation without telling him. The trouble is that Starmer had already announced Mandleson’s appointment before the vetting process started so a) either Starmer didn’t care about the vetting, or b) his officials believed he didn’t care and told him what they thought he wanted to know.
Starmer is currently blaming officials, but the big picture is that he lacks any kind of grip on his office and does not want to do anything resembling making a decision for himself.
I’d be willing to accept b) but the fact that Starmer considered Mandelson an appropriate choice in the first place given what was already publicly known about him is a big red flag against his judgement. The Epstein stuff was just another cartload of shit on an already-sizable dungheap.
True.
But even “we’re not corrupt as such, it’s just officials guess what the boss wants and do it without being told regardless of other concerns” is not exactly a great place to be.
“We’re not actually corrupt, we just act like it.”
Reform MP (also one-time Labour MP) Lee Anderson has seized the opportunity afforded by this scandal to do little light theatrics, calling Starmer a liar. This is against the rules, offered the chance to withdraw the remark he refused and repeated it, and was told to leave the chamber.
I suspect that what is really going to drive Labour MPs to defenstrate Starmer, if anything can, is that he is giving low-rent jackanapes like Anderson the chance to grandstand at their expense.
I would think causing Lee Anderson to leave the chamber would be considered a mark in Starmer’s favour.
Two fractured sayings:
- Never attribute to corruption that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
- Any sufficiently “tell the boss what he wants to hear” staffer is indistinguishable from a loose cannon.
Good piece here on what Starmerism means in practice:
https://www.ft.com/content/0f339074-031f-4068-83ec-8547b48c9533?syn-25a6b1a6=1
The man who is still, at the time of writing, Britain’s prime minister and Labour leader, once said that there was “no such thing” as Starmerism, and added that there never would be. He was half-right: he does not have an overarching ideology and he never will. But there is a Starmerite governing style, and that helps to explain why this government spent its first year driving itself into the mire and its second failing to get out of it.
Starmer believes that the combination of the right process and hard work is enough to solve more or less any problem, and that mobilising the right amount of institutional memory will result in a better standard of government. This, then, is Starmerism: the belief that process can, in and of itself, lead to better outcomes. The trouble is that this approach is wrong, and not just because it leads so often to his appointing people whom he then rapidly has to sack. The job of prime minister isn’t to follow process: it is to navigate and advocate for trade-offs.
The result is a premiership on its last legs and a government lacking the leadership and direction that only a prime minister can provide. The failure to navigate trade-offs has derailed its entire agenda, not just when picking diplomats.
Yesterday Starmer put his side of the story, which is that officials, specifically then Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office Olly Robbins, over-rode the vetting without his knowledge or involvement.
Today is Robbins turn, as he appears before the Foreign Affairs Committee to be questioned. His line is that there was pressure from No 10 to get this over the line, and he is not beating about the bush:
Robbins says No 10 wanted Mandelson in US ‘as quickly as humanly possible’ before security vetting started
Robbins starts by saying that when he started as permanent secretary, the Mandelson appointment was well under way. He says:
I wasn’t walking into a vacuum. I arrived to a situation in which a due diligence report had been undertaken into Mandelson by the Cabinet Office, assessing the reputational risks and his fitness for office.
The prime minister had then presumably taken advice on his fitness for office.
The name had been submitted to the king as ministers’ recommendation.
The prime minister had made an announcement that Mandelson was his nominee without caveats.
The British government had sought agreement, the formal diplomatic process for a host government accepting a nominee from the US government, and that had been obtained before I arrived in post.
He’d been given access to the building. You’ve been given access to low classification [information]. And, from time to time for case specific issues, he was being given access to higher classification briefing.
So I’m afraid I walked into a situation in which, there was already a very, very strong expectation [that the appointment would go through].
Robbins also said that “coming from No 10” there was an expectation that “he needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible”.
It’s amusing, watching politicians struggling to throw each other under the bus. A civilized successor to earlier times’ death sports, with political survival the only stakes.
One wonders a bit why Starmer tried so hard to become PM when he seems not to want to do any of the normal parts of the job. Taking big decisions, leaving his mark on policy, etc.
At least he’s seemingly not in it to vandalize / steal everything in sight like certain other politicians in benighted shithole other countries do.
My primary source on matters political in ye old Dart is “The Rest is Politics” podcast with Rory Stewart and Alister Campbell.
On their most recent show, leading with the Starmer/Mandelson affair was the comment at that following usual protocols the UK government advised the US of their intention to nominate Mandelson to the post of US Ambassador. However the then 47’s Transitional team, unusually, chose to push back against the appointment. Indicating they were aware that his past relationships inc Epstein could prove problematic.
Problematic to who? The only thing the trump team cared about was keeping all things Epstein out of the public eye, lest they shine a light in trump’s sex crimes.
For Starmer and his administration and to 45/47 and his administration, an examination of Mandelson’s career & affairs being a conduit to shine all manner of light into some rather shady places and “colourful” characters, Epstein arguably being the most toxic.
The function of an ambassador is to singularly and unambiguously represent the interests of their country and be in lock-step with the views and policy positions of their government.
It seems that when Starmer considered his options for the Washington diplomatic post, then held by Dame Karen Pierce, his thinking was British interests would be best served by a political rather than career appointment.
While there were several viable alternatives, Milleband for one, Mandelson could be viewed as a raffish, rakish, self-promoting glad-hander and liable to be a loose cannon which might be both dangerous and advantageous in the zeitgeist of the court of 45/47, replete as it is with chancers and charlatans.
Pierce is an accomplished career diplomat and not fitting with the Mar-a-Largo blonde image.