Rupert

Damning.

@ACSPARTAN1 He really must stay pal. The Labour Party might just survive if he goes and is then replaced (possibly) Much better he stays and continues his death by a thousand cuts strategy. With starmer in place the Labour Party will be obliterated, the electorate will see to that.

Thought Starmer would be gone yesterday ? He’s going nowhere he fucking despises us why would he do anything decent like fucking off ???

@MsPurpleX He’s beyond help.

Prime example of suicidal empathy and bringing 'Palestine' into everything. What does 'Palestine' have to do with his son's murder? His son was stabbed, and instead of blaming the people who murdered him, he blames the police and media. Mr Sullivan added: “We have to look after our teenagers, they’ve just been thrown on the garbage heap. They can’t get houses, they can’t get work, can’t go to university, they’ve got no aspirations, and we’ve got a government that sanctions the killing of thousands and thousands of children [in Palestine]. Mr Sullivan is an artist, writer and DJ who founded Soho’s famous Wag Club in 1982 and more recently set up Artists for Gaza, fundraising concerts featuring performers like Paul Weller and Suggs from Madness. The next event, expected in May, will be in Finbar’s memory. He said: “I really blame the media for a lot of what’s happened to this country. If these revolting newspapers keep on saying ‘knife crime, knife crime, knife crime’, kids are going to carry knives. Imagine what it’s like when you’re 20 and you can’t walk down the street without looking over your shoulder. He added: “The worst thing was somebody else was stabbed there a few years ago and they hadn’t installed CCTV and they didn’t have any security. “Why are they still arresting pensioners peacefully protesting a genocide? Why aren’t those policemen on the streets of Camden? “If there had been a policeman doing the rounds this wouldn’t have happened.” Mr Sullivan told how his son was very political, never leaving home without his Palestine badge. Three men –Oliuwadamilola Ogunyankinnu, 27; Alexis Bidace, 25; and Ernest Boateng, 25, have been charged with murder. Khalid Abdulqadir, 18, is charged with grievous bodily harm with intent, violent disorder and possession of a knife. camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/dont-l…

@ArchRose90 Thoughts are with O’Brien, Maguire & Stadlen at this most difficult time.

Brutal front page for Keir Starmer. The fact that it’s the Labour-supporting Independent just makes it better. 🔥

@FrancisToole @SamCoatesSky @NickCohen4 Yeah, you wouldn’t be banging the drum of dismissal if it were a Tory or Reform prime minister performing like this would you? You pass it off as nonsense wouldn’t you?

@SamCoatesSky @NickCohen4 This is why Keir Starmer will not and should not resign. The only people getting worked up about it are journalists whose job it is to drum this nonsense up when it makes literally no difference to the lives of the general public who have way too much to worry about as it is

What do I think really happened with Mandelson and vetting? In October, November and December 2024, No10 indicated it wanted to appoint Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington. It was presented with an array of people telling them not to: Cabinet ministers, spooks, officials in a vetting report. All raised major red flags. Starmer and McSweeny made clear they weren’t interested in any objection, and this must go ahead at all costs. So Mandelson’s appointment was announced mid December 2024. The vetting we are focussed on today came later, in January 2025. Vetting of ambassadors is the responsibility of the FCDO and Olly Robbins. One bit of the system said no - the UKSV agency said don’t appoint Mandelson. We don’t know on what grounds, but probably the grounds No10 had seen and rejected as a reason to block. Olly Robbins cleared Mandelson. Very quietly, Mandelson didn’t get the very highest level of clearance when he got the job, but he got the overall OK because of Robbins. Robbins did No10 a favour. This is because Olly Robbbins knew that going to No10 post announcement, and saying the Mandelson appointment can’t happen, was politically impossible. And civil servants want to deliver for their political masters. So Olly fixed it for Keir: and is now paying a price. Olly Robbins has - incidentally - done No10 a second massive political favour. The really really toxic claim doing the rounds last night was that surely someone - anyone - in No10 DID know the UKSV agency turned down the vetting Olly Robbins is making clear he didn’t tell people the UKSV verdict because that would be inappropriate as part of the process he followed. It’s not even clear he saw it. No10 don’t seem to realise he’s done them a favour, and are releasing documents to challenge alternative versions of events. Let’s see how it plays out. The bottom line is No10 wanted Mandelson come what may. They rammed it through. One quango; post appointment announcement, was never realistically going to be allowed to stop Mandelson taking the job because the top of Government had publicly committed to it. They hadn’t wanted to heed the warnings earlier; and were in too deep That’s where I think we are

@JChimirie66677 @Darth_Trader1 Might we argue it’s actually the behaviour of a narcissistic sociopath?

The leadership rules change was a telling move. A man confident in his own authority does not need to make himself harder to remove. And the general election threat, if true, is the most revealing detail of all. He knows he would lose one. Which means he is willing to take the entire Labour Party down with him rather than surrender his own position. That is not the calculation of a leader. It is the calculation of a man who has placed himself above the party he leads, above the MPs who depend on him, and above the voters who trusted him. It will not hold indefinitely. It never does.

Starmer Sacked the Man Who Followed the Rules. Keir Starmer did not sack Sir Olly Robbins because he did something wrong. He sacked him because he did something inconvenient. That distinction matters more than anything else that has happened this week, and this has been a week of considerable consequence. Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre and a man with direct professional knowledge of how the vetting system operates, went on the record yesterday to say that Robbins had not only no duty to inform Downing Street of Mandelson's vetting failure, he had a positive duty not to. The system is designed that way deliberately. Security vetting exists at arm's length from political authority precisely to prevent ministers from interfering in assessments that should be made on security grounds alone. Robbins followed the rules. Starmer dismissed him anyway. What Starmer has done is construct a causal chain that does not exist. The argument being assembled in Downing Street runs as follows: Robbins overruled the security services, Robbins did not tell us, and therefore we bear no responsibility for what followed. Every part of that argument is false. The decision to appoint Mandelson was Starmer's. He made it before vetting was complete. He made it in full knowledge of the Epstein connection. He made it because his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, a protégé of Mandelson, pushed for it despite institutional warnings. The vetting failure did not cause the appointment. The appointment came first. Starmer signed it off and the vetting process, working exactly as designed, subsequently said no. The sacrifice of Robbins also destroys what remains of Starmer's own defence. He has spent months insisting that process failed him, that he was deceived, that the system let him down. A former head of the National Cyber Security Centre has now said publicly that there was no process failure. The system worked. Which means the problem was never process. The problem was judgment. Starmer's judgment, exercised before the process had even concluded. Consider what the dismissal means for Whitehall. Every senior civil servant in every department now understands the lesson. Following established procedure will not protect you if the political consequences prove embarrassing. Correct conduct is no defence against a Prime Minister who needs a fall guy. The chilling effect on institutional independence will outlast this government and this scandal. Starmer has not just sacrificed one official. He has sent a message to the entire senior civil service about what loyalty to process is actually worth. Meanwhile the documents withheld from Parliament grow more suspicious by the day. The government will not say how many it is concealing. It will not describe their general type. It will not explain why their release would prejudice any future prosecution beyond asserting that it would. Sir Michael Ellis, a former Attorney General and criminal barrister of seventeen years standing, has said publicly that the prosecution argument is nonsense, that the test for contempt requires a substantial risk of serious prejudice that the existing wall of media coverage has already made effectively impossible to meet. A government with nothing to hide does not hide things it cannot explain. A Prime Minister with clean hands does not sack the civil servant whose hands were cleanest. Robbins told friends he would not be the fall guy. He was made one regardless. Starmer called the vetting failure a failing of the state. The man who followed the state's rules lost his job the same day. The public can see what that is. They have a word for it. So does the Ministerial Code. Keir Starmer and Olly Robbins

@JChimirie66677 Peerless with your observations as per. 👌

Rupert, you are right on both counts. He will not go voluntarily. That has been clear from the beginning. A man who can look the country in the eye and say he beats himself up more than anyone else does not possess the instinct for self-sacrifice that resignation requires. But the irony you identify is the most powerful political dynamic in this story. Every day he stays, the questions compound. Every document release adds another layer. Every withheld file adds another suspicion. Every sacked official adds another potential witness. The Robbins dismissal alone has created an enemy with direct knowledge, no remaining obligations and every personal incentive to talk. A resignation in February would have been painful but survivable for Labour. What is happening now is structural. The party is being defined by this scandal in the run up to local elections, with a leader who has exhausted his stock of defences and is now reduced to blaming failing of the state while the state's most senior officials line up to contradict him. He is not governing. He is enduring. And the longer he endures, the deeper the damage runs.

@Zero_4 He's never going to resign, no matter what and what's wonderfully ironic is he is doing so much more damage to the current labour government simply by staying than he ever would by going!

A lot of right wingers seem to think Starmer resigning will somehow bring down the entire govt & a GE will be called for next week They’re the same right wingers who cheered on a Tory govt that went through 3 PM’s in less than 2 months whilst insisting a GE was an impossibility

@MatthewStadlen He’s never going to resign, no matter what and what’s wonderfully ironic is he is doing so much more damage to the current labour government simply by staying than he ever would by going!

As I tweeted yesterday - to much derision - it looks like Starmer is in the clear.

@spikedonline He’s never going to resign, no matter what and what’s wonderfully ironic is he is doing so much more damage to the current labour government simply by staying than he ever would by going!

Keir Starmer is the most dishonest and inept politician of his generation. The Mandelson saga isn’t even half of it. He believes in nothing, can’t really do anything, and is willing to say anything to save his skin. What a mess, says Tom Slater buff.ly/vbwE32t

@CamillaTominey Who the fuck are the 16%????

YouGov: Only 16% of Britons think Starmer has been honest about Mandelson appointment

@Keir_Starmer Which probably means it’s still shut.

It’s good news that the Strait of Hormuz has now reopened. This must be a long lasting and workable solution, without tolls or restrictions on routes. Today we announced our joint plan with France and other international partners to protect freedom of navigation. We need to see a return to peace and stability, and a permanent ceasefire.

@obviousenigma1 @SkyNews Any ideas why he was so keen to appoint him in the first place? You know, considering he had to resign from previous governments twice before?

@SkyNews How bad is she? So condescending in her attitude to everything - I’ve just watched a former head of cybersecurity at GCHQ with knowledge of these issues state that there is no vetting process to “pass” and that the decision is for the HO. Why does she not know this?

BREAKING: Kemi Badenoch says Keir Starmer's position has become untenable, accusing the PM of "lying" or being "incompetent" over the appointment of Peter Mandelson and the transparency of the vetting process. trib.al/wopNjij 📺 Sky 501 and YouTube

@LBC @AndrewMarr9 Yes, he should stay as long as possible. He’s the best advert for the opposition parties that money didn’t buy.

'Take the punishment yourself, absorb it.' @AndrewMarr9 explains why Starmer is better off staying in power... at least for now.

I’m not going to make predictions on when or whether Starmer will go. It’s crystal clear that he is incredibly disingenuous and even clearer that he has a mission to conclude before he departs. What I will predict is that Starmer’s unprecedented level of deception will shake the publics faith in his ilk for a generation. He, his party and the believers of this type of politics will be viewed with suspicion and distain for years to come.

@SkyNews Or has he? You can never really tell with this fella.

BREAKING: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has arrived in Paris to co-host talks with Emmanuel Macron on reopening the Strait of Hormuz trib.al/Rx0iR33 📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube

@LBC What next? Kevin Maguire saying Starmer has been telling fibs? Stadlen conceding that the PM may have been a tad economical with the truth? He truly is finished.

'It's a potentially premiership ending revelation.' James O'Brien reacts to the latest Peter Mandelson scandal.