David Vance SubstackRead More
You might remember a legendary scene in Fawlty Towers where Basil has secretly backed a horse and won, and is desperate that his wife Sybil does not find out. Manuel the waiter misunderstands Basil’s frantic instructions to “know nothing” about the horse, and later stubbornly insists “I know nothing, I forget everything, I know nothing, I am from Barcelona,” which became one of his best‑known catchphrases.
Well, that seems to be the Labour Leadership response to this week’s Lord Mandelson revelations. All of a sudden, many at the top of Labour leadership are desperately pretending they had little to do with Peter Mandelson and were completely unaware of his character. Presumably nicknames afforded him like “The Prince of darkness” and “the Dark Lord” triggered zero curiosity?
The two WORST offenders from my point of view are Gordon Brown and Keir Starmer. Let’s not kid ourselves, they knew EVERYTHING and for a very long time. Mandelson, along with Blair and Brown, was central to the creation of New Labour. So he’s been around for decades and we are being asked to believe it is all a big shock that no one saw coming. Brown put Mandelson in the Lords, Starmer put him in Washington and now these two scoundrels insist that THEY are the victims because he “lied” to them!!!!
No, they all went with Mandelson and it is only the release of these Epstein files that have brought Mandelson down and potentially the Prime Minister with him.
It’s panic mode in Downing Street and we ALL know it. Starmer is on the way out the door and I think the plan now is to stop the Government from collapsing. They know that a General Election is fatal for them so they wish to avoid that at all costs. I believe Morgan McSweeny will be thrown overboard first, and then Starmer. This will take weeks – maybe a few months. But by the summer. we will have a new Prime Minister and Starmer will be but a bad memory.
The only problem is that whoever follows him will most likely be worse!
