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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Protein packed meals in 10 minutes. TikTok's got millions of them. Could you whip one up in under eight? Probably. But hey, it's not a race. Grab the recipes on TikTok and start cooking. If you're into tech, you'll love this. TikTok is a live lab where users post instant reviews of the latest trends. Download TikTok and check it out.
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Foreign.
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Hello. Lots of different strands of the Peter Mandelson vetting story converged in Westminster today. Can a strand converge? Well, I guess they can now. At the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Dame Emily Thornbury, we had Philip Barton, who was the predecessor to Sir Ollie Robbins, as the chief civil servant in the Foreign Office, giving evidence and then box office. This Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister's former Chief of Staff and somebody who's eschewed the spotlight, was very much in the spotlight for about two hours. Then we had this vote on whether Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, should be referred to the Privileges Committee, which had been triggered by the opposition parties. And then we got an update on what is happening with all those documents about Peter Mandelson's appointment that are being released as part of the so called humble address, that parliamentary maneuver triggered by the Conservatives a few months ago. So there were lots of things to talk about and it was a very, very interesting day that involved watching hours and hours and hours of what was going on in Parliament. But luckily we had a top team of people doing that for you on this episode of Newscast, Newscast, Newscast from
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the BBC, Humanity's next great voyage begins.
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A
We are in the midst of a rupture.
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B
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order. Six, seven.
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A
Yeah, it's supposed to be me. As a doctor Daddy has has also a special connotation.
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C
Ooh la la. Thinking about it like a panto helped. Do we play music now or what do we do?
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A
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio
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and it's Alex in the Westminster studio.
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B
And it's Joe pike in a different
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A
studio in Westminster, but in the same building on the same floor.
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B
This is true.
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A
Just to add confusion to a very confusing day. So we're recording this episode of Newscast on Tuesday evening at 5 to 7. And as all aficionados of the House of Commons will know, this is prime voting time on a midweek day in the House of Commons. So, Joe, we've just had this vote on the Tory motion to refer Keir Starmer to the Privileges Committee so they could Investigate him for whether he misled Parliament about his statements about the whole Mandelson affair.
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B
And the result was the ayes to the right, 223, the nose to the left, 335. So Labour, the government, have comfortably won that vote. It looks like there are 15 Labour rebels. The size of the Labour rebellion is probably perhaps more interesting than the fact that Keir Starmer and his team have successfully blocked a privileges vote. Privileges investigation. Sorry, that always seemed likely. And I'm told there is real relief in Downing street today. They started the day, I think, really nervous because a lot of this was out of their hands, both those committee appearances from Morgan McSweeney and Philip Barton, but also what could have happened in the the Commons chamber. They pulled out all the stops yesterday and this morning and it seems to have worked, even though, as we discussed yesterday, Adam, something, this makes the PM look a little bit weak and nervous.
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A
And Alex, just in terms of crunching the numbers, I think we are saying there are 14 kind of official Labour rebels.
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C
Yeah, it looks like it, because it looks like. So basically when a vote like this happens, Parliament number crunchers do some crunching of numbers and then it all pops up in a website and you can look the way each MP voted, and on the face of it, as Jo said, initially it looked like 15 Labour MPs had voted against the government, but it now appears one of those Labour MPs voted both ways, which cancels them out. So it's 14 proper rebels from as far as we can tell. And most of those are people who have been critical of the government in the past. But obviously you shouldn't ignore the fact that you have got 14 Labour MPs openly and publicly disagreeing with the government about this issue, which is significant.
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A
And what were some of the arguments that they used for. For why they were going to vote with the Opposition?
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C
Yeah. So, I mean, it's worth just remembering what the Opposition were trying to do, which was get the Prime Minister referred to the Privileges Committee, which is a committee of seven MPs, to look into whether he was totally upfront and honest in everything he said to Parliament about Peter Mandelson's appointment. And when you listen to the debate, there were some interventions from some of those who did end up voting against the government, who were basically saying things like, you know, well, why, if there's nothing to hide, why don't you refer yourself to this committee? One of the mps expressed a bit of anger about the way that Downing street had managed this vote, because Downing street whipped Labour MPs, which basically meant means it told them they had to back the government on this. And I think that caused a bit of anger among some Labour mps who felt that perhaps this should have been one of those votes where they got to choose the way that they voted. So there was that expression coming out, but ultimately that big operation that Joe described, where Downing street was chucking everything at trying to get the Labour MPs to back it, rolling out the big dogs and phoning around the Cabinet and calling people back from Scotland, campaigning to get them on the Labour benches to take part in this vote. Ultimately, that has paid off. And I think part of that might be the fact that this was obviously a motion that was put forward by the Conservatives, but also backed by other opposition parties. So the SNP, the DUP, the Liberal Democrats. And I think that naturally, MPs don't love voting for something that's been put forward by the opposition. So it sort of gave them something to coalesce around. Having said all of that, that doesn't mean that there's still not an awful lot of disquiet, anger and frustration on the Labour benches about where they find
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A
themselves right now to be discussed. And also, Joe, it's worth just pondering the counterfactual here, isn't it, of. Of what would have happened if this vote had gone the other way and Starmer had been referred to Privileges Committee? Because we've got recent history of an example of that and it's Boris Johnson and Partygate. And we all remember the months of wrangling the Prime Minister of the day, having to give evidence, his. Him having to hire a QC at the time to deposit a massive document with the committee. And then of course, the outcome of that committee which found that Boris Johnson had misled Parliament.
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B
Yeah, pick your cliche, Adam. Is it kind of worms? Is it Pandora's box? The problems that Keir Starmer could have faced, I suppose, would coalesce because he believes he's not misled Parliament around the fact that you're just dragging out this malathon saga day by day with more committee appearances, more evidence, more opposition politicians getting a chance to criticize him and highlight that fateful decision to appoint Lord Mandelson in the first place. And I think they just really worried if it went to the next stage and the Privileges Committee, where there is a Labour majority on that committee for to at 3, even though the chair is a Conservative, that he would be out of their hands like so much of this has been. And that they just would never, ever escape him.
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A
And then in terms of other things that are happening today, I hinted at this at the start of the podcast, the blockbuster session of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, where Dame Emily Thornbury and her colleagues are looking into the whole Peter Mandelson vetting thing, which has now been expanded to was it right for the Prime Minister to sack Ollie Robbins? And Alex, this was it ended up being about four and a bit hours, wasn't it?
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C
I love that you say blockbuster. I think blockbuster, if you're into that kind of thing, like maybe blockbuster in kind of Westminster terms. But, yeah, there were two different sessions. So the first one up was Sir Philip Barton. Now he was the boss at the Foreign Office at the time Downing street announced that Peter Mandelson was going to be made U.S. ambassador, but he left pretty soon after that. So he gave his evidence first, was
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told to leave to be replaced by Ollie Robbins.
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C
Yes, basically. And he said that during the committee hearing, he was up first, and I think that was about an hour and 45 minutes. And then he was by Morgan McSweeney, who is the Prime Minister's former Chief of staff. And I think while lots of people were interested in what Sir Philip Barton had to say, I would suggest maybe Morgan McSweeney was the one that a lot of people were looking out for. And part of the reason for that is because, you know, he's been absolutely instrumental into getting Keir Starmer into Downing street. And then he was by the Prime Minister's side for, you know, that kind of initial period in government. This really, really key figure who often isn't seen or heard from publicly. You know, so a lot has been written about him. A lot has been out there describing him as this sort of softly spoken Irishman, but not many people have actually heard him speak. So I think a lot of people were tuning in to see that and of course, to see his take on this whole process around Peter Mandelson. And I'm sure we'll get into the detail of what both of them said.
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A
Well, yeah, let's do it in reverse order from what happened in real life then. And we'll start with at Morgan McSweeney, because, yeah, that was the kind of more exciting kind of viewing opportunity, if I could put it that way. And he started off with a big apology, for which he's kind of done already in print. When he announced his resignation as the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, he said that appointing Peter Mandelson, one of the reasons it happened was because he'd advised the Prime Minister to do it and he was taking responsibility for that error of judgment. And then a bit later on in the hearing, MPs were sort of getting to what his reaction was in September last year when Bloomberg, the news agency uncovered those emails that basically led to Peter Mandelson sacking as the ambassador in Washington. And this is what Morgan McSweeney said in a quite sort of emotional sounding bit of his testimony to the committee. The nature of the relationship that I understood he had with Epstein was not a close friendship. How I understood it at the time was a passing acquaintance that he regretted having and that he apologised for. What has emerged since then was way, way, way worse than I'd expected at the time. And it was when I saw the pictures, when I saw the Bloomberg questions in September 2025, I have to say it was like a knife through my soul. I did not expect that level of connection that he was talking about there. And yeah, Alex, it's just worth going through the timeline of that again. So there was the decision in Downing street to appoint Peter Mandelson as the ambassador. So a political appointment rather than somebody from the diplomatic. Then there was the, the fact that there was the due diligence report. But then Morgan McSweeney made his own inquiries with Lord Mandelson about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and that was him there saying that by the time the, the new Epstein files came out in September, he realized that Mandelson's relationship with Epstein was very different from the one that he'd been presented with.
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C
Yeah, and the timeline is important because it's worth remembering that in that due diligence report which was shown to the Prime Minister and Morgan McSweeney said he'd seen it set out in that as part of a series of reputational risks that were listed about Peter Mandelson. The fact that he had a relationship with Epstein, who at the time had been convicted of child sex offenses. So that was known. But the Morgan McSweeney argument of today was very similar to the argument that we've heard from Sig Sir Keir Starmer is that they didn't, he didn't know the extent of that relationship with Peter between Peter Manderson and Jeffrey Epstein. And you're right, Morgan McSweeney referred to the fact that when that due diligence was going on and they were considering Peter Mandelson for this job as U. S. Ambassador, he asked a series of in writing follow up questions to Peter Mandelson about that relationship. Now, Morgan McSweeney said at the committee today, and we, we knew this already, but he said he couldn't tell us the detail of those questions or the responses because that was now part of the police investigation that's going on. And he'd effectively said that when he was in government, he was advised not to share it. But the central argument he was making is the one the Prime Minister's made, which was that they claim they didn't know just how far this relationship between Mandelson and Epstein went. And when they found out, well, you heard what Morgan McSweeney said. It was like a knife through his soul, in his words, which was probably one of the standout moments from this committee. But of course, the question that persists, the question that's really at the heart of all this for so many critics of what has happened, is that question of judgment in making that appointment in the first place.
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A
And, Joe, the other thing that Morgan McSweeney really wanted the committee to get was that he hadn't put pressure on whoever was in charge in the Foreign Office at the time to kind of wave through the vetting process. He said he wanted it to be done within a timeframe because in an ideal world, they would have got Mandelson sent out to Washington in time for the inauguration and Trump becoming president for the second time. But he wanted to stress that he had not been meaning that there should be any kind of shortcuts taken or any blind eyes turned to things.
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B
Exactly, Adam. And that did fit with what Philip Barton also said. There was no pressure on the substance of the security vetting. The result of what those security teams were doing did not change. But he did concede, as others have, that there was a bit of a rush in trying to get a lot of this sorted. That, though, he argued, was about the fact they didn't want to make a decision over which ambassador to put in that lovely residents in Washington before they knew who had been elected president in November of that year. And they, as you say, wanted it sorted and wanted the person in post by inauguration. Now, Peter Mandelson was not in post by inauguration. It was two to three weeks after that he arrived in the States. And therefore, I suppose that backs up Morgan Mitzwini at least argued it backs up the claim that the Foreign Office didn't move too fast because they didn't actually meet the deadline that ideally number 10 would have wanted. I think that particular part over pressure, because pressure was mentioned in the Privileges Committee motion later. Pressure is something that Kemi Badenok and other opposition leaders have mentioned. That I think was a useful bit of evidence alongside what Philip Barton said for number 10. You talk about it being a blockbuster set of appearances. I do think it was. But there were no bombshell revelations. And in fact, one thing that provoked humour and laughter. A rare bit of laughter in the committee room with Morgan McSweeney was when he was asked by Conservative John Whittingdale whether he'd come up with the idea of appointing Peter Mandelson ambassador. And in fact, to guffaws from MPs and others there, he said no. The first person to suggest Lord Mandelson was Lord Mandelson.
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A
I think I've been using the word blockbuster incorrectly today, because I think what I really mean is, like, it was. It was long, so it was like. It was like. Like Lawrence of Arabia, rather than, like, I don't know, an actual.
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C
Like Jurassic park or like Bohemian Rhapsody when it hit the cinema or whatever it was.
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A
How do you mean?
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Like, you know, like one of those movies that, like, lands and gets, like, big takings in the box off. Is that, to me, is a blockbuster.
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A
Yeah, I think that is a huge
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Hollywood movie that kind of lands and everyone rushes off to go and see it. I don't even know if that was true of Bohemian Raptors.
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A
I also did. Well, we can. We can do a fact check on that later, get BBC verify onto that. Also. I did just check and actually this morning's hearing at the Foreign Affairs Committee was actually longer than Lawrence of Arabia.
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C
Well, there you go.
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The film is three and a half hours long.
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It was about four and a half hours all up, by my reckoning. And I was trying to listen to the first bit on the train, which meant kept losing signal, having to go back to listen again. So my watching was even longer.
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B
I'm not sure we'll be talking about this, though, in decades, as a great work of sort of parliamentary art. Certainly it was no Ollie Robbins.
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A
The prequel was better.
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B
Well, you could definitely argue that. Talking to allies, friends of Morgan McSweeney, they seemed pretty pleased with how he'd done, partly because, as Alex said, he's never really appeared in public before. He did speak last week at this security conference in Kyiv in Ukraine, but before that, it was impossible for us to even find a recording, Adam. And of this man's voice. That is how low profile he has kept his position. And it's not just the fact he was chief of staff to the Prime Minister, but he also was running this election campaign successfully for Labor. Such an influential figure, arguably, who picked Keir Starmer for the job as a candidate for Labour leader rather than the other way around. So strange that we suddenly hear that voice and see his style of communication and his allies say, look, he was detailed, he was calm and he was consistent. And with this story, which has been so dangerous for the government, I think the consistency was one thing that they seemed pleased with.
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C
What was really interesting to note was that he did also use his performance at the Select Committee, or appearance, I should say, at the Select Committee, to try and sort of set out the. Or distance himself and the Labour Party from Peter Mandelson's influence, you know, because it's sort of. He's often was described as a sort of. Peter Mandelson was his mentor and that was how it was written up. And he was saying, no, no, actually, look, he was a confident. I did seek his advice, but there were lots of other people I spoke to. So it was. I mean, he was asked about this and he was responding. It's not like he naturally volunteered it, to be fair to him, but he took that opportunity to try and suggest that the influence that Peter Mandelson has had over Keir Starmer's Labour Party perhaps isn't as great as it's been portrayed in some quarters of the media, which I just thought was interesting in and of itself.
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A
And also, Emily Thornbury went back to as far as 2001, when Morgan McSweeney was, I think, an intern in the Labour Party. So you can tell there's been beef that's been going on for a long time inside that party that was kind of on display here. Also, just in terms of other episodes of Morgan McSweeney's life, we learned more, or we got a little bit more insight into when his phone was snatched in Westminster in October last year. We learned about what sort of parties he went to with Labour grandees. And also, Joe, we got a sort of slightly cringe insight into what it must have been like for him when he was having to sack Matthew Doyle, his colleague, who was director of communications in Downing Street.
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B
Yeah, this was the controversy revealed last week by Ollie Robbins about the fact that Matthew Doyle, who was being shoved out, moved out delicately, some might say. Eased out. Sorry, that's a better way of putting it.
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A
Exited was what he said, wasn't it?
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B
Exited. What a verb is exited? He also used the verb adrenalise. He said he was adrenalized around when his phone was stolen. All the interesting sort of corporate verbs used by Morgan McSweeney. But effectively Matthew Dore was on his way out of number 10 and Morgan McSweeney was the one who had to have that probably quite awkward conversation. We think you need to go now, Matthew. And what he also revealed was that there was discussion seemingly between him and Keir Starmer, maybe about what job in government, a different sort of less influential job Matthew Dore could do. The possibility, of course, of some sort of mid level ambassadorial post. Morgan McSweeney, wanting to stress that he did discuss this, mentioned it to the Foreign Office. The reason he didn't want the then Foreign Secretary to know about it. And he told officials, please don't tell the Foreign Secretary. It's because he argues, it was a sensitive HR matter. Matthew Doyle wasn't, he said, interested in that sort of job. So it wasn't perceived. And he said that if he had been interested, he still would have needed to apply for the job as a civil servant would have done. But of course it is a bit awkward getting an insight to those conversations where you're taking someone to aside who has worked for many years on the Starmer project, saying, you know what, we don't think your work is up to scratch, we want someone else to do it. How can we help you leave in a positive way as possible? Of course. Ultimately, Matthew Doyle did get a peerage. Questions over him keeping that peerage because of further revelations about his conduct and relationships before he was involved in Team Starmer.
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A
I think I thought two big things about Morgan McSweeney's appearance, one specific to this story and one a bit more general about politics. The specific thing was he was obviously thinking that the vetting process, this famous DV done by UKsv, should have turned up Peter Mandelson's associations with Epstein or kind of got to a greater truth about who Peter Mandelson was than he or the civil servant in the Cabinet Office or Kirstar had been able to. And I wonder, is that, is that a sort of psychological response to if you've made a massive error of judgment, you then look around for sort of sliding doors, moments where you might have been saved from your own decision making or actually, is there a real issue with the extent to which we do vetting of people like Peter Mandelson? And then my more general points was the sadness of the hatchet man, Alex. I thought he talked a few times about just the number of times in his career he's had to fire people or not give people jobs. And it just Seemed like actually that takes a bit of like a, like a psychic toll on a person.
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C
Yeah. And I think he says something like, you know, that's politics or that's the nature of politics. But he did speak about it at some length, that that kind of what you sometimes have to do, all the decisions that you have to take when you get to the position that he's in. And on your former point, I, I actually think that was really interesting because what he did say also was that he regretted that when he was asking follow up questions to Peter Mandelson that he had done that. He wished it had been the, what is called the Pet Teams, the propriety and ethics team, so a sort of official government process instead of him doing it. And we've also, of course had the Prime Minister say that he thinks that the vetting process needs to be looked at again and changes made to it. Now, of course, critics of the Prime Minister and all of the things that have happened with the appointment of Peter Mandelson would suggest, suggest that is, you know, looking for somewhere else to park some of the blame for all of this. And it is interesting to note that there's still this ongoing discrepancy between some of the senior civil servants who've given evidence that talked about that developed vetting should have been done before the appointment was announced of Peter Mandelson. Whereas people like Morgan McSweeney today, who said it didn't jump out to him, that it hadn't been done before, he thought it was sort of okay, that it was done after, because that had happened in other situations. So I think there are still some questions about that, that kind of the detail of the process. And I guess if you're watching all of this, it might feel a little bit at this stage like people are sort of dancing on the head of a political procedural pin around some of the detail. But the point is, I think to Parliament the detail can really matter. And that is why we're seeing a continuation of the examination of the process. I think the real question that sits behind that is that going to really change the verdict of people out there in the real world, voters, the public who might have already decided what they make of this whole Peter Mandelson appointment and all the consequences. And crucially, is it really going to change the verdict of Labour MPs who again, many of them have probably already reached a conclusion about where this leaves Keir Starmer.
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A
I do think it's interesting though that this whole process seems to have now become. Was Keir Starmer right and justified and fair in sacking Ollie Robbins. When this story about the vetting first emerged in the Guardian Thursday of the week before last. Now, I don't know if that's an original thought or actually just Henry Zephman said that on the radio at lunchtime and I've just copied it. Well, it's called Henry, but I think he's definitely. Well, Henry's definitely onto something, I think, with that thesis that does sort of feel how it felt today.
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C
And also from a Prime minister that, you know, by his own admission leans quite heavily on process and this idea that a very senior civil servant was sacked kind of on the spot. I think there's a sort of question that kicks around about that for some in Parliament as well.
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A
Also, we now have, Joe, the sort of, to some people, quite bizarre spectacle of a lifelong Labour man, Morgan McSweeney, saying, actually, they were quite tempted to hire the architect of Tory austerity, one of their biggest bogeymen, George Osborne, as the ambassador, because he was the second person on the shortlist of two.
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B
He was the second person on the shortlist and not developed vetting, but the earlier Cabinet Office sort of smaller probe into him had taken place. So they were clearly quite serious about George Osborne being a possibility. Also fascinating that Philip Barton of said he was never consulted about Mandelson's appointment. And also this strange situation, I know you've touched on it, that Morgan McSweeney was the one sending emails to Mandelson, checking things out, and obviously doesn't believe that those responses were honest. I think if you do step back with all of this, we can't get away from the fact, and Keir Starmer can't get away from the fact that the point of appointing Lord Mandelson, he knew, as all of us did, that Peter Mandelson had had a seemingly quite significant relationship over a number of years with a convicted paedophile and there were photos of them hanging out together. And on your earlier point, Adam, about the difficulty of sacking people, obviously, I suppose it's not just what Morgan McSweeney has done, but also what Keir Starmer did with Ollie Robbins. And also, of course, Emily Thornberry must have got a call soon after Labour got into power, not giving her the Attorney General job. I think we can't get away from it. In the atmosphere in that committee room this morning, the fact that it didn't seem like Emily Thornbury was a huge fan of Morgan McSweeney. She'd been through with her clerk Seemingly sort of cuttings library on him, wanted to ask him a lot of things about his earlier life. So this sort of underlying beef in different parts of this.
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A
No, I feel we've underestimated Philip Barton's contribution. But then I think he'd probably be quite pleased with that because he sort of didn't really want to make any massive waves. He was happy to make a few little ripples. One of the ripples he did make was clearing up something that went a bit viral and became a bit of a meme last week, which was when the committee were questioning Ollie Robbins about the nature of this so called pressure from number 10 Downing street on the foreign Office and whether there'd been a sweary phone call from somebody in number 10, perhaps Morgan McSweeney, to somebody at the Foreign Office like Philip Barton. And then here is Philip Barton giving his version of what did not actually happen in the end.
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B
This story, or versions of it has been in the media persistently or floating around the media since last September. There's different versions, sometimes involving the swear word, sometimes not. And I've really racked my brains and I cannot recall Morgan with Sweeney swearing in a meeting at me or indeed just in, in general.
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A
And so my takeaway from that, Alex, is that this, this Select Committee process can look very, very forensic, but actually sometimes it's not as forensic as it might look.
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C
Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe there's
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A
some people in a room.
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C
Yes, yes, I guess ultimately MPs on the select Committee, like, might, might like to think that they're very forensic and some might argue that they are. But yeah, quite a. Some of what was put to some of the people who appeared before the Morgan McSweeney and Philip Barton was about kind of stuff that had been reported in the newspapers or on, you know, blogs or political news websites. And, you know, that was the nature of some of the questioning. And not only did Philip Barton knock that sweary phone call thing down, but then Morgan McSweeney said, I'm so grateful for Philip Barton for knocking that sweary phone call thing down later. So, yeah, I mean, I guess, look, the thing about these Select Committees is what they do do is a, they have the power to summon the key people who are involved at the heart of some of this decision making that won't necessarily pick up the phone to journalists or want to do an interview for the 6 o' clock news, but they do go and appear before Parliament because a lot of them respect the process, the parliamentary process and authority and the Other thing about it is the time, you know, so they do allow time. I mean, we were saying that this all in all was about, like, four and a half hours that these two people today, Philip Barton and Morgan McSweeney, spent in front of the committee. And you don't get kind of in public, that kind of time to go over the real minutiae and detail of parts of process. Now, some people might think, what's the point in doing that? But, you know, what it is, is a kind of insight and a chance and an opportunity to examine in detail, slowly a lot of the stuff that there wouldn't otherwise be opportunities to do. And, of course, it is televised, so people can watch it and reach their own judgments on what is or isn't said.
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A
But, yeah, yeah, or you can watch Lawrence of Arabia on ITV4.
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C
Talking of sliding doors moments, it just struck me that what if George Osborne had been appointed U.S. ambassador? We could, for good or ill, be in a very different place right now having a very different conversation.
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A
Joe, the other significant thing I thought Philip Barton said, or in fact didn't say, was when he was asked, do you think due process was followed in all of this? And that's important because that is the line that Keir Starmer has repeated in the House of Commons, which was then the subject of the Privileges Committee motion that we started this episode talking about. And Philip Barton was asked that, and he swerved the question and he even said, I'm swerving this question, which is not super helpful for Downing Street.
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B
Absolutely, yeah, he said. I said, I'm gonna dodge that question. But he did go later into raising, saying that he had his own concerns about Mandelson because of the Epstein links. So he said at the time the appointment was announced, or he found out the appointment was happening, the decision had been made that he had concerns about Epstein. I suppose, Awkward. Yes. That he didn't say, yes, I do believe due process was followed. I think he just didn't want to seemingly make a call either way. But clearly there are many of those in Parliament who think it wasn't, because if it had been, we wouldn't have necessarily been in this mess. I suppose the other thing to think about is, in terms of how number 10 may be viewing this, they've pulled a lot of levers, They've used a lot of sort of trump cards. As Alex said at the start of this conversation, mainly yesterday, in terms of wheeling out Brown and Blunket and Alan Johnson and the Cabinet ring round and the surprise PLP meeting, I Suppose the issue and the problem for Prime Minister is that if there is to be a moment maybe on the horizon when he needs to get MPs onside soon, maybe after the May elections, or indeed maybe on a sort of a policy area of difference, he can't necessarily do all of that again, certainly I'm not sure that.
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A
Call him Harold Wilson's ghost.
- [31:22]
B
Yeah, I mean, like how. I mean, I had to actually put this to someone at number 10, like, who's next? Who's the next person you bring out here? And maybe if Gordon Brown does it a second time, or David Blunkett, I mean, are they going to listen next time? I don't know, let's see. But they have used a lot of trump cards or pulled a lot of leverage quite early considering what could be coming in the next few weeks.
- [31:43]
A
And then, Alex, you wait ages for a story about an American ambassador to come along. Actually, no, you don't, because they're every day. But then today there was another one about the current one.
- [31:51]
C
Yeah. So, Christian Turner. I know, I was just about to say Christian Fraser because that came up on the Millbank Group earlier, but I
- [31:58]
A
won't on our WhatsApp. Yes, one of our colleagues called the American ambassador Christian Fraser, who's our colleague who reads the news.
- [32:03]
C
Yes, absolutely not. Christian Fraser, to be abundantly clear, Christian Turner, who is the fairly recently appointed U. S Ambassador. The Financial Times has obtained a recording of him. I think I'm right in saying he was speaking to some students, school children. School children in Washington and being recorded, and this was a couple of months ago, but according to the FT has only just been passed to them this week. And make what you will about the timing, but the FT says it didn't sit on it, it received it, it looked at it and then it published it. But yeah, some of the comments that he has made are language that you wouldn't necessarily expect from a US ambassador, Certainly a US ambassador fairly recently in post. And to be fair, you might assume he didn't know he was being recorded, but then others might say, well, you should always assume that you are. So some of the stuff he said, he told these students that Keir Starmer had been on the ropes earlier this year over all of this to do with Peter Mandelson the Labour Party could remove after the local elections in May. So sort of talking about the Prime Minister's political vulnerability and another of his reported comments is that, you know, this phrase that we often use to describe the relationship between the UK and the US the special relationship that people kind of lean on and refer to quite heavily, talking about the long standing, you know, military security, defense, diplomatic links between the two countries. Christian Turner apparently said that America's special relationship is probably Israel. So that has emerged in reporting from the ft that these recorded comments have been passed to do this week.
- [33:32]
A
I was gonna say back in my day on Newsround when we did the press packers, it would be things like I like girls football or here's how we could stop doing cyberbullying. This is like Woodward and Bernstein levels press packer. But I've now seen that apparently it was sixth form students. Okay, so it wasn't like news round aged children leaking private comments to the ft. No.
- [33:51]
C
And we don't know who leaked them, obviously we don't know exactly who was there.
- [33:53]
A
They shouldn't blame the children or the sick formers.
- [33:56]
C
Yeah, but yes, yeah, I mean it's kind of not what. What anybody would in government would want right now when there has been so much focus on a previous U.S. ambassador to have now renewed focus on the latest one.
- [34:09]
A
And in terms of actual ambassadorial action in Washington D.C. the King and the Queen are continuing their state visit. They've exchanged the gifts with the Trumps. Apparently the King presented Donald Trump with a framed facsimile of the 1879 design plans for the Resolute desk, which is the desk in the Oval Office. Made with timbers. Never knew you needed from the ship. Either of you actually seen the Resolute desk in real life?
- [34:33]
C
No.
- [34:33]
B
Yes, I have.
- [34:34]
A
Is it a nice desk, a nice piece of furniture?
- [34:37]
B
Yeah, I suppose. I mean, I suppose the history of it is fascinating, even though it's maybe not. You know, it doesn't work as a standing desk, Adam. You know, it's sort of probably limited in its uses. In 2026 I've seen a replica of
- [34:50]
A
it and that was very impressive. And then for the King, the President gifted a custom facsimile of a letter written from John Adams, John Jay in 1785. Not an expert on who John Jay was. I mean, he's one of the founding fathers, wasn't he?
- [35:05]
C
And a lot of my John Adams knowledge comes from Hamilton, which is not
- [35:09]
A
a necessarily reliable historical.
- [35:11]
C
Don't base your US political history.
- [35:15]
A
What would have. What would they been. What would they writing about? Well, I know what they've been writing about. Leaving. Leaving Britain. Oh. John Jay negotiated the jay treaty of 1794, which settled major grievances with Great Britain and promoted commercial prosperity. So basically kind of settling things down after the War of Independence.
- [35:34]
C
Well, there's some meaning in that right now, right?
- [35:38]
A
Alex, thank you very much.
- [35:39]
C
Pleasure as ever, Joe.
- [35:40]
A
Great to catch up with you too.
- [35:42]
B
Thanks Alex.
- [35:52]
A
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- [36:22]
B
to save what's Actually Happening Inside Iran? I'm Tristan Redman, host of the Global Story Podcast from the BBC. Iranians have been under a near total Internet blackout for several months. Few Western journalists have been permitted to operate in the country. But in recent weeks, the BBC's chief international correspondent, Lis Du Said, has been reporting on the ground in Tehran. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [36:55]
A
And that's all for this episode of Newscast. Although I'm sure because you've got better knowledge of US Politics than I do, you will be flooding the newscast inbox and WhatsApp number with trivia about John Jay, which will put me to shame. And please do. I'm all ears. Thank you very much for listening to this episode. We'll be back with another one very soon.
- [37:15]
B
Bye bye.
- [37:15]
C
Newscast Newscast from the BBC.
- [37:18]
B
Well, thank you for making it to the end of another Newscast. You clearly ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? And then, without having to do anything else, our meandering chat will miraculously make its way to your phone.
- [37:37]
A
Foreign.
- [37:45]
B
What's Actually Happening Inside Iran? I'm Tristan Redman, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Iranians have been under a near total Internet blackout for several months. Few Western journalists have been permitted to operate in the country. But in recent weeks, the BBC's chief international correspondent, Lis Du Said has been reporting on the ground in Tehran. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.