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The Peter Mandelson Files (Again)
00:31:29
More than 1000 documents on Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador published.
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- [00:00]
Adam Fleming
Chris, what a treat for you after your half term break to return to, what was it, 340 emails, 56 separate WhatsApp conversations, 15 letters and notes of 26 meetings.
- [00:10]
Chris Mason
Yeah, it's just by inbox. Yeah.
- [00:11]
Adam Fleming
As I was reading that, I was like, oh, yeah, I bet you've probably actually got more unready.
- [00:14]
Chris Mason
I thought you were about to say the treat that you come down to see us.
- [00:17]
Joe Pike
Well, that's it.
- [00:17]
Adam Fleming
Of course it is.
- [00:18]
Chris Mason
Of course it is.
- [00:18]
Adam Fleming
Andrew pike is here as well.
- [00:19]
Joe Pike
Hello, Joe. Hi.
- [00:21]
Adam Fleming
Anyway, this tranche of documents I'm referring to is not Chris Mason's holiday inbox. It is the latest response by the government to the so called humble address from Parliament, where, prompted by the Tories, they've had to release all the details and correspondence, although not all about Lord Mandelson's time as the Ambassador in Washington. So we had the first lot, this is the second lot.
- [00:41]
Chris Mason
Yeah.
- [00:41]
Adam Fleming
And it's big.
- [00:42]
Chris Mason
It is big. In fact, earlier on, the Cabinet Office, the kind of central government department that was charged with sort of pulling all of this together and was responsible for its publication, they were wandering round with all of these documents in a rucksack because I was looking for, in order to kind of illustrate on the television the kind of scale of this, because a big part of this is the scale of it, you know, biggest government sort of document drop since the publication of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. So I wanted to illustrate that. So I was saying to me in government, are they going to be like printouts and like, you know, it's a lot of trees and all that. But they said, ah, we've got one copy, three volumes, and we'll send someone to the broadcast building opposite Parliament where we are doing newscasts from today. And you can't keep them, but we'll come in and you can do some filming with them. Anyway, this guy comes in with this
- [01:33]
Joe Pike
rupture and I said, can I just,
- [01:35]
Chris Mason
can I, can I feel your rucksack? And it was, it was proper weighty. The three, the three documents, the volumes.
- [01:42]
Adam Fleming
Yeah. Okay. What was in the rucksack? We'll discuss on this episode of Newscast, Newscast, Newscast.
- [01:48]
Chris Mason
From the BBC. Humanity's next great voyage begins.
- [01:51]
Adam Fleming
We are in the midst of a rupture.
- [01:53]
Chris Mason
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order.
- [01:56]
Adam Fleming
Six, seven.
- [01:58]
Chris Mason
Yeah, it's supposed to be me as a doctor. Daddy has.
- [02:00]
Adam Fleming
Has also a special quotation.
- [02:02]
Chris Mason
Ooh la la.
- [02:03]
Adam Fleming
Thinking about it like a panto helped.
- [02:06]
Chris Mason
Do we play music now or what
- [02:07]
Adam Fleming
do we do hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio at Westminster.
- [02:10]
Chris Mason
And it's Chris at Westminster too. Only now realising that that was just the beginning bit. Sorry.
- [02:14]
Joe Pike
And it's Joe pike, also in Westminster,
- [02:16]
Adam Fleming
in the newscast studio. Good to see you don't still have holiday brain, Chris. Right. Oh. So, Joe, last night, on Sunday night, you were sending out emails to us, all going, okay, I've got it on good authority this dump of documents is coming today. Cause actually, or it was then tomorrow, when you were sending the email, but today, now. And some people might be listening to this on Tuesday, but we weren't sure exactly when this was going to happen, were we? But we knew it was sort of imminent.
- [02:39]
Joe Pike
We knew it was sort of imminent. There was pressure because of the humble address process, this parliamentary process which forced release of these documents. The government had to get it done as soon as they could, but it has been a long, complex process. They spent over a million pounds on it. Thousands of civil servant hours have been spent on obtaining, compiling, redacting these documents. And then yesterday, I'm told, various people who are mentioned or whose messages are in these documents got a bit of forewarning. It's coming tomorrow. It's coming tomorrow afternoon. Because it had to be laid in a parliament and a senior Cabinet minister in Darren Jones had to respond and explain the thinking around what they'd included, what they'd not included and what it says about the operation of government.
- [03:25]
Adam Fleming
And also, there's some caveats to what we've got today. This is not every email in complete detail as was sent at the time. There's some important exceptions.
- [03:33]
Chris Mason
Yeah. So firstly, someone was pointing out to me that the reality of what we see in these documents is those MPs who had not turned on disappearing messages in WhatsApp and those who had. Because if you haven't, then it's quite likely then those emails, those texts, sorry, those WhatsApps, are floating around in these documents. If you turned on disappearing messages, then they're not. In addition to that, there is material in here that you might expect to find that isn't there, principally because of the ongoing police investigation that Lord Mandelson is involved in. He denies any wrongdoing. And so, for instance, you'll recall on previous episodes of Newscast, we've kicked around all of the arguments around the vetting process that went on around Lord Mandelson's appointment and what questions were asked and what documents were kept and who said what to whom and who didn't say what to whom, etc. Etc. When you look at this set of documents, as vast as they are, we don't really learn a great deal about all of that and our understanding is the reason for that is because of the ongoing police inquiry.
- [04:45]
Adam Fleming
Also, we talk about whatsapps. There's a big chunk of whatsapps that are not in here and these are the ones that are on Peter Mandelson's personal phone. Because in the forward to the documents today, the Cabinet Office has written, oh, yeah, we asked Peter Mandelson, via his solicitors to provide his whatsapps that were on his personal phone and his solicitor said no.
- [05:05]
Chris Mason
Yeah. And I can tell you that the, the view from Lord Mandelson is that the reason for that is that the legal advice he received is that nothing should be seen to cut across the police investigation and therefore that shouldn't be handed over. The point that was also made to me is that the vast majority of his communications during the job were done on the work phone that he has since obviously lost because he's no longer doing the job. But, yeah, you know, what messages may have been on that device we have not seen is an interesting question.
- [05:40]
Adam Fleming
My main takeaway from reading it or skimming, because I've not read it in minute detail. I skimmed through the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. That would be like, you know that scene From Short Circuit Johnny 5 when
- [05:50]
Chris Mason
he like reads all.
- [05:51]
Adam Fleming
The robot who reads all the books very quickly. It's a classic 80s film. Anyway, is that the government kind of comes out of it unscathed in the sense of there's nothing embarrassing in there about what the British government or ministers or officials really think about Donald Trump.
- [06:05]
Joe Pike
Well, that is the other thing that's missing.
- [06:07]
Chris Mason
Redactions.
- [06:08]
Joe Pike
Where is everything about Donald Trump? We're talking about the man who was.
- [06:10]
Adam Fleming
Well, that's why they've emerged unscathed on that account.
- [06:14]
Joe Pike
Some of the people that Peter Mantlen would have been communicating with will have been people who are deleting messages. But so many of his conversations were about Donald Trump or the policy around Donald Trump. There's one point where he talks to Matthew Doyle, who used to be the number 10 director of communications, and says, oh, I'm worried about Chagos, the Chagos Islands, and policy around that and security. There's been this big fallout in relations between London and Washington over that more recently. And after he says to Matthew Dole, I have worries about Chagos Islands. There are asterisks. Not anymore. Those big black bits of highlighter. It's just asterisks because There are pages and pages of redactions. All of his emails and letters, seemingly to the Defence Secretary, or a lot of them, which of course would contain things with national security elements to them. Those are redacted things to Rachel Reeves about the state of the economy and trade deals. Those are reacted to. And I'm sure amongst them, there must be some bitchy, waspish interactions between different people, because privately, we know so many people in government do have a slightly different view of Donald Trump than they articulate on the airwaves.
- [07:20]
Chris Mason
But we shouldn't be that surprised by all of that, because the argument that was always made in the process, you get a sense with the scale of this, that the industry that this has created within government at considerable expense, as Joe was mentioning, you know, trawling through all of this, compiling all of this, working out what can be legitimately redacted. And one of the arguments, arguments that was always made was that on kind of national security and international relations lines, in other words, a polite way of putting, you know, a relationship with Donald Trump needs to continue beyond the publication of these documents, that there would be some redactions going on. It's rather easier, or rather harder, I should say, to illustrate visually the blanking out when there isn't page after page of black ink. Somehow, compared with asterisks, asterisks don't seem as definitive as black ink, even though the consequence is exactly the same, which is that, you know, we're not seeing, you know, we're not seeing what was really said on a lot of all of this stuff. One other just additional point to quickly make on all of this. Whenever I speak to folk who have worked either in the embassy in Washington or in the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence, they always come back to the point that the real meaning of the quote, unquote, special relationship is not the ongoing relationship between an existing prime minister or president, it's the depth of the security and defense relationship. In other words, right into all of that space, whether it concurrently is about the Chagos Islands and Diego Garcia, or about defence spending, or about intelligence. There's a vast amount of traffic that goes back the whole time on those issues, which I think most reasonable observers would acknowledge is probably in the UK's best interest, does get redacted, even when you have Parliament demanding that, as much as is conceivable should see the light of day.
- [09:07]
Adam Fleming
Kind of the juiciest stuff that's not redacted is WhatsApp messages with current government ministers. And I notice a lot of the newspapers are writing up the conversations with. With Pat McFadden, who's currently the work and Pension Secretary, was on Laura's programme on Sunday talking about youth unemployment, but for a lot of this period was the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. So basically one of the senior ministers in the Cabinet Office, right at the centre of government coordinating lots of things. And he and Peter Madison go a long way back, don't they? Cause of course, Pat McFadden was political secretary to Tony Blair and the Naughties, so they clearly have known each other for a long time. Joe, just give us a flavor of their exchanges and it is a flavour because quite a lot of exchanges.
- [09:43]
Joe Pike
A lot of exchanges. I'm sure Pat McFadden will be regretting not having disappearing messages on. On his what, although we should point out, and Darren Jones nodded to this in the Commons today, is disappearing messages a good thing for transparency in government and for decision making in government. A lot of people have got out of being held to account for their communications because of that. I'm not sure we should paint Pat McFadden as being silly for not doing what some of his colleagues have done
- [10:12]
Chris Mason
necessarily, even though there's definitely politics that we can unpick and there's a longevity to the politics around the particular quote that I think Joe has at his finger fingertips that Pac McFadden tapped out in a message to Peter Mandelson. There's also a consistency, if you like, to what we hear from Pat McFadden in that he later goes on to become the Work and Pension Secretary with an attempt to try and deliver the very thing the Government failed to deliver in its first year, which was significant reform of the benefit system. And he's gone in to do that job because of a sense that Labour MPs needed persuading of the merits of what he argues for and they were not convinced about. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here because I guess you should read the key quote.
- [10:52]
Joe Pike
The key quote is that he was describing conversations he'd had with other Labour politicians, with Labour MPs about the welfare system of public spending. And he said every meeting I have is, quote, who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others? They're asking the wrong questions. He said to Peter Mandelson. And I think that is something that opposition parties are going to leap on. Certainly Kimi Badenoch, the Tories, has saying that Pakman has said in private what he and the Prime Minister deny and public Labour is now, quote, the Welfare Party, we should point out Pat McFadden's team have responded, including saying that publicly. He said many times the question we should ask is not what you are entitled to, but how can we change your life?
- [11:37]
Chris Mason
Yeah, I mean, effectively, he can argue, and I think with some legitimacy, that what he was articulating privately is broadly consistent with what he said publicly and the argument that he's been trying to make to Labour MPs, however, politically, because politics can be pretty cruel around these sort of things, it has a slight comparator. I think this comparison that I'm about to offer is arguably a little bit overdone, but I'll make it anyway. There's a slight comparison, I think, with that Liam Byrne remark from way back in 2010 of that note that he sent that he thought was going to be read by Philip Hammond, the famous,
- [12:09]
Adam Fleming
there's no money left.
- [12:10]
Chris Mason
Exactly. The note, there's no money left, which was meant as a private gag because he assumed, I think I'm right in remembering that, that he thought he could guess who was likely to be his successor after the 2010 election and then because of the coalition, it wasn't the same person, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, there's a slight sort of. It's one of those lines that opponents can forever quote back at you because of that sense that it gets to an essential truth that you were willing to articulate privately, that you'd have said rather more diplomatically, publicly, even if broadly speaking, it's getting at something that is that they can argue is consistent with what they believe.
- [12:47]
Adam Fleming
And also when they're whatsapping each other at all times of day and also arranging to have breakfast and bacon sandwiches together, whatever. Pat McFadden and Peter Mendelsohn are in agreement sometimes that the number 10 operation isn't working very well at that point in time.
- [13:00]
Chris Mason
And there's several riffs, aren't they, from Peter Mandelson along exactly that line from last summer, broadly speaking.
- [13:05]
Joe Pike
And they all really come in the McFadden Mandelson conversations. The number 10 operation is, Mandelson says, quotes, beleaguered and bereft. They don't work as a team, they are not led, and none of them really knows what Keir thinks or wants. In fact, most of them don't think Keir knows what he wants. The other thing that Mandelson claims, Morgan McSweeney, who was the Chief of Staff, thought at the time, was that the Prime Minister's instincts were sort of weak and that he was always on a cycle of, quote, advance, buckle, advance, buckle, now, as you'd expect, We've approached Morgan McSweeney for comment on that. We've not had a response yet. But these private criticisms of the PM are pretty constant.
- [13:49]
Chris Mason
I just think this is an interesting kind of reflection on kind of modern communications in the mid-2020s. The whole disappearing messages question and the argument that you can have, that you were setting out, as Darren Jones had made around, you know, the legitimacy or otherwise of turning on disappearing messages versus the extent to which in reality now, a lot of WhatsApp exchanges are a written down substitute for snatched verbal contemporaneous conversation with all of the caveats that you would attach to a chat in a corridor with a colleague if the equivalent was happening, which might be a bit snatched, a bit off the top of your head, a bit blunt, but intended to be utterly ephemeral. And of course, the reality of messages that aren't disappearing is that they're not ephemeral, that they sit there in all sorts of contexts. And we see this playing out in public life all the time. And there's a story today, isn't they're involving the Southampton manager and the whole business of Spygate and all of that. And WhatsApp messages where. Where something that in a previous era, because of the instantaneous nature of it, not even emails comparable. Is it because they tend to be a bit more sort of, you send it and then you get a reply, you know, two days later or whatever, or never, in my experience, you know. Yeah. What is, you know, that question around the legitimacy of the rise of disappearing messages? One for newscasters to ponder.
- [15:08]
Adam Fleming
Somebody who is scrupulously boring in their WhatsApp messages to Peter Mandelson is Keir Starmer. Because there's a page of messages between the two of them. Just after the election, actually. So not sort of when Mandelson was a government employee. Much later.
- [15:22]
Joe Pike
Imessages as well. Who's using imessage?
- [15:24]
Adam Fleming
Oh, is it imessage?
- [15:25]
Joe Pike
Yeah, that's what it is.
- [15:26]
Adam Fleming
I haven't read page. All right, so like when your grandma texts you. Yeah, and imessage, of course, used by people of all ages. I just find imessages are more. Feels more formal these days on your phone than sending a WhatsApp.
- [15:37]
Joe Pike
And they were talking.
- [15:38]
Adam Fleming
Anyway, enough phone asking. But basically my takeaway from that page of messages from Starmer to Mandelson was it was almost like Mandelson was interacting with a highly realistic Keir Starmer chatbot. Because everything Keir Starmer says is very on message, very careful and Full of things like, oh, I'm just pleased that I'm not in opposition anymore, because you can get more done in government.
- [15:57]
Chris Mason
Which is exactly what he so often said.
- [15:58]
Adam Fleming
Exactly.
- [15:59]
Joe Pike
No, exactly.
- [16:00]
Chris Mason
Maybe to that extent, the sort of instant message, whether WhatsApp or iMessage or, no doubt others are available too, are actually kind of, in their own way, revealing of character that you, you know, when you hear some of Lord Mandelson's contributions, you get a sense of authentic Lord Mandelson. And maybe in those imessages from the Prime Minister, as you say, you're getting an element of. You're getting an element of that. An element of him being fastidious, but also, as his critics might see it,
- [16:27]
Adam Fleming
very cautious, or maybe chatting to somebody he doesn't actually know that well personally.
- [16:32]
Chris Mason
So. So he's perhaps a bit more resilient.
- [16:34]
Joe Pike
Sort of strangeness of this scenario. Maybe there isn't something that's hugely damaging in these documents to Keir Starmer directly, but we're talking about it because he made what he admits is a pretty catastrophic decision to appoint Lord Mandelson as U.S. ambassador. That's because of the links to Jeffrey Epstein, but also he's appointed somebody who is criticizing him relentlessly behind his back throughout this process. That is another thing that we've learned. Okay, this doesn't necessarily show that Keir Starmer has sent something of that tone, but he has appointed somebody who he presumably doesn't realise is spending a lot of his time saying, what a mess of an operation.
- [17:12]
Chris Mason
But I guess the counterargument would be, if you're Lord Mandelson, is that you've been hired because you are political to your fingertips, you've been hired because you're going into a particular circumstance in Washington with the return of Donald Trump and all the rest of it, and that he's seeking privately to, you know, steer the government into a better place.
- [17:32]
Joe Pike
And is there an argument, looking at how he's interacted with so many different people at different levels, that this is somebody, for all of his, well, publicised faults, who is an operator, who did have relationships across government and from the frequency of these messages, was clearly working very hard to try and get something done. And I'm sure he'd argue some of the works around, maybe trade deals or tech deals or visits of top politicians, is evidence for that.
- [18:02]
Chris Mason
The other thing, just sort of taking a bit of a step back on this, that I always think with every kind of news story, there's a kind of arc, isn't there? And a story will reach a crescendo and then it'll have a sort of downward arc. I think on this today, there's two downward arcs. We're on the downward arc of two things. One is, even though the volume of this is far greater than that first drop, what was it, 147 pages, was it last time? Something like that. And this time sort of put a note on the end of that. Since then, we've had that first drop. Then we've had Morgan McSweeney in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Then we've had the sacking of Ollie Robbins and him appearing in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In other words, the Lord Mandelson story. We have had quite a lot of. And then you get this latest tranche. Trange, whatever. Whatever the correct pronunciation of that word is. Maybe we won't have to use that word ever again, which is probably no bad thing. And then the other arc is the arc of the Keir Starmer story, which is, you know, we're looking at all this stuff about, you know, the critique of Keir Starmer's leadership and all the rest of it, but the context is one where we've just been through the last month and there's basically a leadership race underway to replace him. And so we're seeing all of this in the. You know, where the. Where in a different context the dot, dot, dot would be. And where does this leave Keir Starmer? Well, we kind of. Of whatever the longevity or otherwise of Keir Starmer's remaining time in Downing street, we kind of know where he is politically. And so the capacity of any event, including this, to fundamentally change that is probably just limited by circumstance.
- [19:39]
Joe Pike
And in terms of ending different narratives, one thing I have found fascinating is the fact that there are people in government in sort of communications roles who seemingly want to help us find certain things in these documents to ensure what happens today doesn't drip out until tomorrow and later in the week. Now, to be clear, people in government have not been pointing us to that Pat McFadden quote, or indeed, we read
- [20:06]
Adam Fleming
that with our own eyes, or indeed
- [20:08]
Joe Pike
Peter Mandelson's many criticisms of their top boss. But what they have been keen to do is point to different page numbers. Have you seen this? Have you seen that? Wanting to ensure that we get everything, absolutely everything. It doesn't happen tomorrow, next week and day after day.
- [20:26]
Chris Mason
It's more damaging. Three hours before it came saying, keep an eye on page 155 of volume one.
- [20:32]
Adam Fleming
And what was that?
- [20:33]
Chris Mason
What that was was the thing that they were also keen to point to when the documents did eventually drop, which was the handwritten letter from Lord Mandelson to David Lammy, the then Foreign Secretary, which was basically tilting for the job. This was before the process of finding a new ambassador, as the handwritten letter which signed off worse, the effect of, I don't have the verbatim quote in front of me, but you won't regret it if you give me. If you give me the job.
- [21:00]
Adam Fleming
And also, I should just say that in this cache of documents, it is basically just a colour photocopy of this handwritten note on House of Lords, notepaper on Lord Mandelstorp.
- [21:11]
Chris Mason
And it is literally a splash of colour in what is otherwise black and white sort of typed text, because it is a handwritten. With a blue pen. I think it's a handwritten picture pitch for the job. Now that, you know, it's. It's color because, you know, people can pitch for jobs. And he was clearly keen on the job because he wanted the job and he got the job. So in that sense, there's no kind of revelation. But it was interesting that they were seeking to point to that. And as Joe says, I think, because they are, there's an element of. I mean, I was always up for people being sort of vaguely helpful when big documents drop, but they will do that for their own reason, and their own reason is to point towards things that. That they'd quite like there to be a focus on. But also in this context, as Joe says, to manage the news of this, because obviously with documents of this scale, from their perspective. Oh, my goodness, you know, it's Monday, fine. But, you know, there's gonna be people finding stuff on page 493 of volume two a week on Wednesday or whatever, and that's kind of inevitable. But they would obviously, in time, rather talk about anything else.
- [22:15]
Adam Fleming
Talking of splashes of color, the debacle over the red box. Did you see this? So this is this idea that somebody has a brainwave somewhere and I can't remember whose idea is, and maybe it's not clear whose idea it is that President Trump would love a red ministerial box.
- [22:31]
Joe Pike
It would mean the most to the President.
- [22:32]
Adam Fleming
Yeah. With the King's cipher on it and then the President of the United States embossed on it so he could look like he was Transport Secretary in the UK or whatever.
- [22:42]
Joe Pike
Why would he know about that? How is Donald Trump gonna understand?
- [22:45]
Adam Fleming
Quite iconic, though, aren't they?
- [22:46]
Joe Pike
Are they to a US president, somebody who's Is he interested in the sort of minutiae of UK politics? Ollie Robbins did say, though, one of the gifts that would mean the most of the President would be a red dispatch box with the gold crest and lettering mimicking a UK government ministerial box inscribed upon it. And Mandelson quote went tonto and said the saga over getting this went on for far too long. It's like something out of the thick of it.
- [23:10]
Chris Mason
So he clearly. Yeah, he clearly thought this was all a bit bonkers and had taken up far too much time. And it does make you think. Think.
- [23:16]
Adam Fleming
No, no, I think what he was annoyed about was that it taken too long to get the red box made.
- [23:21]
Chris Mason
Right.
- [23:21]
Joe Pike
He was frustrated by that.
- [23:23]
Adam Fleming
I think he was happy for it to be there. To be many, many emails about the red.
- [23:26]
Chris Mason
Sure.
- [23:26]
Joe Pike
But.
- [23:27]
Chris Mason
Right, but then there is that point, isn't there, that you do wonder if the President thought, oh, yeah, this is just like the thing the defer secretary walks. Walks around with or whatever. However, you know, you put yourself in their shoes. And I was on the part of the, you know, reporter pack that went with the Prime Minister when he went out to the White House to meet Donald Trump in office for the first time. And the sheer jeopardy that hu around that was huge. And you're thinking, as they always are, a Prime Minister and a president, but particularly with a president of the character of this one, how do you kind of win that moment? How do you try and win him over? What do you give as gifts? And you'll recall, you know, nerdy newscasters will recall the history that is connected to the kind of exchange of gifts and they remember the whole story about President Obama giving Gordon Brown a load of DVDs that wouldn't work in a UK DVD.
- [24:14]
Adam Fleming
Oh, yeah, and don't worry, I wasn't saying that. I wasn't alleging that it was a bad idea.
- [24:17]
Chris Mason
No, no, no, sure. But it's just an insight, isn't it?
- [24:20]
Adam Fleming
Yeah. It's just interesting that the might of the British state seeking to flatter Donald Trump can't get a red box made in time for the visit because it then ended up not being handed over.
- [24:31]
Joe Pike
And remember, the big coup was the bell from the HMS Trump. Some old bell from.
- [24:36]
Adam Fleming
He must have spent years trying to find that down on this track record.
- [24:39]
Joe Pike
Don't spend too much.
- [24:41]
Adam Fleming
Another thing that I sort of. It sort of chimed for me a bit to use a bell reference is at the start, when there's loads and loads of emails about the vetting and the security clearance and what the difference between that is and the due diligence report, which was the Cabinet Office. And we've gone over that in a lot of detail in previous episodes, but there's a bit where a very presumably junior person in the vetting team emails Lord Mandelson with some follow up stuff saying, oh, can you just update and complete the list of foreign nationals you've been in contact with? And Mandelson then sends that one to another official saying, what on earth does this mean? Every single person I've ever met, ministers, ex ministers whatsoever, and then somebody else then sees this discussion and chips into it going, he knows everybody. And actually that's quite an illuminating little thing about why the system struggled to sort of, kind of categorize him or deal with him appropriately or find the right sort of set of approvals for somebody who'd lived such a big international complicated life.
- [25:42]
Chris Mason
Yeah, and I just think as well, you know, if we step away from the kind of headlines of this, you know, so often for us, you know, reporting on, on government, the very nature of the connections and relationships that political journalists tend to emphasize, because it's those who are politically most important is a relatively thin veneer and temporary veneer on top of the government machine. And of course you try and develop contacts within the civil service and all the rest of it, but for perfectly good reason, a lot of those people in those roles are reluctant to engage with journalists. And this gives you a snapshot of those processes, doesn't it, and those structures. And then in this instance, as you say, Adam, them wrestling with a very atypical appointment to such a marquee diplomatic role and the kind of challenges and the stresses and strains that that puts into. Puts on the system.
- [26:35]
Adam Fleming
I also feel a bit sorry for Karen Pearce, who was the previous inhabitant of the embassy in Washington, because there's a couple of messages from her that sort of give off a little whiff of fomo. I have no idea if she had FOMO or not, but there's one I
- [26:49]
Joe Pike
think she'd like to have stayed on.
- [26:50]
Adam Fleming
Yeah, that's what I sort of got from the messages. And there's one where she's. Because the garden won a prize, the embassy garden won a prize or something like that. And she's replying to Peter Mandelson saying, congratulations on the prize for the garden. I thought maybe I was reading in a bit of wistfulness there, but some of her allies would say, yes, she was wistful.
- [27:08]
Chris Mason
And also she had a nice garden as well. I've had a glass of orange squash.
- [27:12]
Adam Fleming
Humble brag. Oh, at least.
- [27:14]
Joe Pike
Orange squash, yeah. Right. She had, though, put in a lot of time to build relationships with Team Trump. And I think there was some.
- [27:22]
Adam Fleming
And she's very courteous and friendly to them, obviously. Yes.
- [27:24]
Joe Pike
But there were certainly people close to her who were frustrated that those skills weren't really put to use. Even though Lord Mandelstone seemingly had some pretty good relationships with Trump allies, too.
- [27:35]
Adam Fleming
And, Chris, just end on what we think Lord Mandelson thinks about all of this. Cause we haven't seen him in public. Well, he's been seen in public, but he hasn't said anything on the record of. About this.
- [27:45]
Chris Mason
Yeah. So he has certainly been frustrated at some of the reporting in the building up to this. You might have seen the. The Guardian stories around the concerns within the. Within the bowels of Westminster that the Guardian has reported on, claiming there were concerns around security relating to some of Lord Mandelson's connections in. In China, in Russia, in. In Israel. And there's certainly a frustration, I think, from Lord Mandelson about what he sees as a kind of confusion there. Either a confusion within the system or a confusion in how it was briefed to the Guardian. As I said, I don't think we're any the wiser, really, about a lot of all of that, because of what isn't in all of these documents. I mean, I think from the government's perspective, they'll be glad they've got through this. They knew this was coming. This has been hanging over them now for. For months. Of course, it's not quite the end of it because there's the ongoing police investigation and whatever comes out of that. And, you know, obviously that's for the police to decide. There could then still be, I guess, the potential that some things that are currently not seeing the light of day because of that may eventually see the light of day. And I think the bigger picture point is that however long or short the remaining tenure of the Prime Minister is Downing street, as he has publicly acknowledged that the decision to send Lord Mandelson to Washington will be up there in the critiques that others and indeed he will offer of his time as Prime Minister and be a fairly central pillar of that critique. And, you know, we've heard the Prime Minister. It'll pain him. Yeah. And we've heard him very candidly and publicly acknowledge that. That this is this thing that, that throughout the close on two years now that he's been in office has. Well, certainly in the second year of that has been back and back again and again and again.
- [29:46]
Adam Fleming
And in terms of the criminal investigation, Lord Mandelson has repeatedly let it be known that he believes he's not acted criminally, did not act for personal gain, and he says he is cooperating with the police. Right, Chris, good to catch up.
- [29:58]
Chris Mason
Tar.
- [29:58]
Adam Fleming
Joe, good to see you too.
- [29:59]
Joe Pike
Lovely to see you too.
- [30:00]
Adam Fleming
And that's all for this episode of Newscast, apart from to say the last few episodes, I've been saying, go to the Edinburgh Fringe website and you can get tickets for the newscast shows at the Edinburgh Fringe on the week of the 10th of August. They've all sold out, which is an amazing tribute to how enthusiastic some of you are about coming to see us, which is great. Don't worry, though, if you haven't got a ticket, because we were putting all the episodes in the newscast feed so that you can be part of it. And I'll think of ways that we can include you too, even if you haven't been able to get a ticket. Ticket to Edinburgh. And maybe next year we'll book Murrayfield Stadium.
- [30:31]
Joe Pike
Let's do it.
- [30:32]
Adam Fleming
And then we won't be able to sell that out and it'll be really embarrassing anyway. And of course, Chris and Joe, there's a seat for you on the stage any of the days that were there, if you can fit it into your travel plans.
- [30:41]
Chris Mason
Come on.
- [30:42]
Adam Fleming
Right, bye.
- [30:43]
Joe Pike
Bye.
- [30:43]
Adam Fleming
Newscast.
- [30:44]
Newscast Outro Narrator
Newscast from the BBC, from one newscaster to another, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Tell everyone you know and don't forget, you can email us anytime@newscastbc.co.uk or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on +440-330-1239480. Be a short. I promise we listen to everyone.