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Starmer’s challenge is to convince us that when he was pissing down our leg he himself genuinely believed it was raining.

Quite the spot from @SamCoatesSky Sir Keir Starmer ignored advice from the head of the civil service to ensure that Lord Mandelson’s national security vetting was carried out before appointing him as ambassador to the US Lord Case, who was the cabinet secretary at the time, told the prime minister in November 2024 that he should inform officials of the name of his preferred candidate so they could “acquire the necessary security clearances” and conduct due diligence on potential conflicts of interest The prime minister did not take the advice and instead pressed ahead with Mandelson’s appointment, announcing it on December 20, 2024. Senior allies of the prime minister including Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser, raised concerns at the time that the appointment had been rushed Starmer pressed ahead with Mandelson's appointment despite being told about Mandelson's long-standing friendship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including the fact that it continued after he was jailed for child sex offences. The was also warned by officials about Mandelson's links to Russia and China UK Security Vetting, the small body in the Cabinet Office that vets public appointments, subsequently concluded that Mandelson should be denied clearance on January 25, 2025. It is understood to have raised concerns about Mandelson's business links to China and Russia rather than Epstein Sir Olly Robbins, the permanent secretary at the foreign office, considered the report from UK Security Vetting and decided that the security risk could be managed. He gave Mandelson's appointment the green light, and the peer became Britain's ambassador to the US in February. He was given the highest level of security clearance Robbins did not inform the prime minister or anyone in Number 10. The prime minister went on to make a series of public statements insisting that "due process" had been followed and, in February, stating categorically that Mandelson had passed his security vetting. That claim was false thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…

"Why should I care about privacy? I have nothing to hide". We hear it every week. Today, the company that builds software for law enforcement by mining your medical records just published a 22-point manifesto about "freedom" and "democracy". This is why you should care.

@temitope_temi3 ox.ac.uk/news/2015-03-1…

I was born for this and I’m making history with patriots 🔥

@PippaCrerar x.com/msjenniferjame…

EXCL: Keir Starmer would have blocked Peter Mandelson from serving as the UK’s ambassador to Washington had he known he failed security vetting, David Lammy tells me. The deputy PM also says: - it was “inexplicable” that Oliver Robbins opted to leave Downing Street in dark over outcome. - he was “shocked and surprised” when he first learned on Thursday what had happened. - neither he nor his advisers at time he was foreign sec had known about – or asked for information on – vetting process or its conclusions

@affleckquine Starmer told the House he saw the official security vetting report. Was he lying then or is he lying now?

@zatzi Your 95% is not the correct comparator and you know that Is there any dissonance or are you quite happy to lie?

Keir’s EU “reset” has always meant “rejoin by the back door”. 95% of British businesses do not do any trade with the EU but they will have to abide by rules set in Brussels with no say from our own elected representatives. Labour’s manifesto specifically ruled out rejoining the Single Market. But it would seem Starmer lied yet again. He is a stranger to the truth.

@usernamefen @turnipdodger @affleckquine @suziegeewizz After they'd told the head of state that it was all cool

@turnipdodger @affleckquine @suziegeewizz Can you think of any other public service or industry where the head of it could just say "well nobody told me" or "sorry this didn't come across my desk" with regards to major safeguarding or security breeches?

Keir Starmer as DPP & PM. Horizon: "I didn't know" records destroyed Savile: "I didn't know" records destroyed Assange: 'I didn't know" records of his Washington trips destroyed. Jean Charles de Menezes review: "No evidence" Epstein: "None of us knew" Mandelson: "I didn't know"

@BBCNews If my Auntie had balls she'd be my uncle

Starmer would have blocked Mandelson over vetting failure, ministers say bbc.in/4vCWNtl

1/ May 10, 2010. The day Gordon Brown resigned as Labour leader. A sitting UK Cabinet minister (Mandelson) wrote to a convicted sex offender's personal Gmail account: "Including the underground walk from no10 to the Ministry of Defence with GB for secret late night talk with Libs.." EFTA02425523. justice.gov/epstein. Parliament meets Monday.

Richard Tice is really nice, though he's a little bit lax about paying tax.

1/🚨A UK visa, for most people, takes weeks or months. An expedite request from a convicted sex offender would not, in any normal world, help. In December 2012, a British investor emailed Jeffrey Epstein: "I've heard back from No. 10 — the Paris embassy isn't able to sort this out." The Prime Minister's office then expedited the visa in 3–4 days. 🧵👇

@TheCPDiary @paulmasonnews @Keir_Starmer Safe from whom?

@paulmasonnews Absolutely agree. @Keir_Starmer is keeping the UK safe. Difficult to comprehend the mentality.

Why calls for No Confidence against Keir Starmer are for the birds ... #SMTP

@paulmasonnews Why is this fucking liar lying to me? In the hope of a Labour nomination?

@PalantirTech Point 1 Fuck off from the UK then

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com

@Keir_Starmer Have you decided on charge and verdict? Bit premature from a former DPP Due process? CPS defines charges, not the PM

I am appalled by recent attempted antisemitic arson attacks in North London.  This is abhorrent and it will not be tolerated. Attacks on our Jewish community are attacks on Britain.  We are increasing visible policing and those responsible will be found and brought to justice. We will not rest in the pursuit of perpetrators.

🚨NEW: * Vetting led to Mandelson agreeing ‘mitigations’ to deal with security concerns * He was not allowed unsupervised access to former clients * All this was agreed and known about by Downing Street = no need for Robbins to block security clearance spectator.com/article/mandel…

@sundersays @bbcnickrobinson If only they'd employ an actual journalist that would push back on this at the time Someone who actually knew the subject matter An online correction is too late Imagine what Brian Walden, Robin Day, or even Paxman would do with this lying turd

The BBC have today corrected the false claim made by Nigel Farage to @bbcnickrobinson that net migration was falling because of rising emigration, not falling immigration (which is 90% of the fall). bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedbac…

This government seems to believe the gambling lobby speaks for the working class while their sector exploits and extracts from it. To make the assumption ordinary working people somehow don’t care about the welfare of dogs is a form of class prejudice theguardian.com/politics/2026/…

@johnmcdonnellMP You're too principled for them It's not the Labour party any more

Starmer/Mandelson crisis is just symptom of toxic factionalism in Labour created by the dominance of the McSweeney/Mandelson Labour Together faction. Unless there is a total clean up of the party Starmer may be replaced but the same toxic culture will control No 10, NEC & PLP.