Thread 42 Starmer : Du drikker en kop te, og så tænker du lidt over alting

[DuncinToffee]

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Interesting old piece from 2011 in the Telegraph about a potential meeting in December 2009 between Epstein and a mystery senior minister from Gordon Brown's cabinet - Epstein was still under house arrest and wasn't given permission to meet
Not clear what the intended meeting was about - ?UK universities and Epstein's links w Silicon Valley group

''Records of the movements of Ministers in the Labour Government have been transferred to the National Archive at Kew and will not be available for public inspection for many years.

Officials at the British Embassy in Washington could find no trace of any Labour Ministers who were due to have been in the US that weekend.

Intriguingly Lord (Digby) Jones, a former trade minister and one-time business adviser to the Duke of York, was engaged on a speaking tour of Washington, Pittsburgh and Boston on Dec 14, 15 and 16 which had been arranged by UK Trade & Investment, the Government’s business promotion arm.

His spokeswoman said Lord Jones had no knowledge of Epstein prior to recent reports and pointed out the cross-bencher had resigned as a minister in 2008, more than a year before Epstein applied for his meeting. He quit as the Duke’s business adviser in 2007 after being appointed a minister for trade''

Mystery over Jeffrey Epstein’s meeting with a Labour minister

A senior Minister in Gordon Brown’s Government arranged a meeting with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein while he was being held under house arrest at the end of an 18-month jail term.

Mystery over Jeffrey Epstein’s meeting with a Labour minister

Back atcha

He was salivating over it with Peter Thiel

https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1qteytm/peter_thiel_celebrating_brexit_with_jeffrey/
,

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeffrey-epstein-brexit-peter-thiel-b2912853.html

Maybe democracy is overrated and we need a return to the days where political intrigues risks were actually commensurate with the rewards ?

And Bannon. He told JE he could get Johnson elected, met with BJ, NF, JRM, wanted May (and Macron) gone

Does it amuse anyone else that Bannon probably charged millions to "get Boris elected" when it was obviously to all that 2019 was his for the taking ?

Grifters gonna grift.

That’s odd. Just being in the wrong lobby shouldn’t trigger your vote. There are card readers they have to check in with for their vote to count (did the tour a year or so ago). Confusion about Reform’s position seems more likely…

It’s not like the Tory years. There are lots of Tory types who probably should be investigated but they never were because the Tories never pushed it. I mean, Johnson should definitely be investigated for possibly passing on state secrets when he slipped his security detail to party with oligarchs, don’t you think? you can’t use action against dodgy people as evidence Labour are worse than a party that didn’t act against dodgy people on the grounds there was no action…

And yes, Mandelson has always been a bit dodgy, but it was considered he’d deal well with Trump (possibly because of it) and there was no evidence of any illegality.

As for public perception about Burnham and Mandelson you might be right - it flies in the face of facts though and what can anyone do about that? It’s the media again.

Something to "plop" into any Reformista threads

PMQs interesting. Starmer answering well on the inevitable Mandelson questions and actually Badenoch’s doing better than usual (though with a bit of her trademark focus on a detail after it’s answered). Huge self restraint being shown in not wondering whether Johnson was also leaking secrets…

Posted on another thread that the Derbyshire Times (quite right focussed) is reporting that a reform councillor says they never said they’d reduce council tax - lots of comments about the promised freezing, cut of SEN provision, which is unusual as in there’s normally a lot of Reformistas excusing such stuff or saying ‘but labour’ - maybe poor council stuff will cut through before May elections, hope so anyway.

I agree with you @cardibach that this is not like the Tory years.
Need to look at the other names in the files ........... and think about the damage Brexit has done to this country and who benefited most from it?
I was not at all in favour of Mandelson being appointed as Ambassador but I am just able to see why in the fear of what USA might do to trade the decision was made.
David Miliband could have been a much better appointment in my opinion.

If Badenoch was in power she'd be relying on Google for intel. "It was on Google", she said.

Partying with Oligarchs is bad and yes Bojo should have been investigated, though no evidence he told the Russians anything but surely we hold our side of politics & K.S, to a slightly higher standard than Boris Johnson? a man totally unsuited to high office, in fact any public office.

Mandelson was passing confidential information to a US financier during one of the worst financial crashes in history.

Starmer knew Mandelson was in contact with Epstein but still appointed him as Ambassador, remember too, Mandelson said previously some pretty scathing things about Trump....

Its quite honestly unbelievable, i'm pretty certain if this was a Tory PM/Govt, we'd all be calling for him to resign.....

I don't think i've been more shocked, i expected what happened over Brexit and Covid from the Tories, i had naively hoped for better.

I don't think anyone on this thread has said anything other than that Starmer bears responsibility for appointing Mandelson?

McSweeney should be out.

We have been calling for that for quite a while.

I think Starmer is toast, I'm afraid.

I'm beginning to think the same

For all the (justified) political angst about how and why Peter Mandelson got the Washington job, Kemi Badenoch's spokesman admitted that he can't recall the Tories raising the Epstein link at the time, and doesn't think they formally opposed the move either.

My flabber was well and truly gasted at the appointment of Mendelson. There's no doubt he should be investigated. However Starmer saying in defence that it's now delicate because of ongoing investigations by the police is a weak response. There's files released and that cannot be undone.

Trump just wants it all to go away.

Only in the heads of people like the celebrated C'n'P artist known to other threads.

I can't see how this won't take him down. I'm so bloody disappointed.

I know. It is also scary as I think all this is going to work in Farage's favour.

My prediction is that McSweeney will go. Then Starmer. Mandelson will probably get off scot-free.

This is (of course) a magic moment missed

It's a moment where a genius leader would engineer the situation to their advantage and craft a deal across the despatch box for the Tories to name one of thier number named in the disclosure to be subject to the same scrutiny.

"One in: all in" would be the slogan you'd put on the lectern for the waiting world.

It's now you realise how mediocre politics has become.