Sir Olly Robbins, the official who allegedly ignored the independent vetting of Mandelson, has said that it was a done deal — already announced to the public and the wider world. Crucially, he claims No. 10 was dismissive towards any vetting in the first place, and that his job, as a civil servant, was simply to accede to the wishes of the Prime Minister. Downing Street, for its part, is claiming that it did not lie; it was just unaware of the vetting outcome. It didn’t ask, didn’t inquire, and therefore didn’t know.

The truth is that the Prime Minister’s excuse for this Mandelson scandal is neither an aberration, nor evidence that the machinery of government requires a small tweak. It is the entirely predictable product of a broken political class, which has spent decades diffusing accountability, and blaming anyone but themselves.

The Conservatives, for they were no different, won four consecutive general elections, held office for 14 years, and cycled through five different prime ministers, yet spent far too much of that time explaining to the British public why they were unable to deliver the commitments on which they were elected. “The system” was blocking them, they said; it was the fault of “the Blob”. They were right, in part, but the blame is misplaced. And if this lesson is not learned, we will continue to spiral into decline.

“The Blob” is a metaphor for the inner workings of the British state. It is deployed by ministers to describe the feeling when they repeatedly pull a lever in government — only to find that nothing happens. This sometimes manifests itself as simple inaction on ministerial priorities by unelected officials; at other times as direct, insidious opposition from within the ranks of officialdom.

“The Blob” was once considered something of a conspiracy theory — the failing Tory government was blaming the Rolls-Royce civil service for its own failings. This view was so strongly held in some quarters that when it came into power, the Labour government of 2024 essentially prostrated itself before Whitehall. There would be no more “gaslighting” of the civil service. Now, finally, “the adults were back in the room”, and officials would be free to work their magic.

Starmer appointed Sue Gray as Chief of Staff to reset relationships between ministers and officials, and create a “positive” culture of “collaboration”. Indeed, her initial words in No. 10 to the elite ranks of the Civil Service were: “Thank you so much for welcoming us into your house… [w]e are really mindful that we are guests here, and this is where you work.” Elected officials and their government, according to Gray, were guests in the house of the Civil Service.

Within months, it fell apart. Gray was forced out in October 2024 by which time it had become clear that Labour had no plan for government beyond letting the civil service choose what it should do. By early December the same year, Labour had begun briefing that Dominic Cummings’ criticisms of the system were correct. A timeline many wouldn’t have expected.

Later, as relations between the Blob and No. 10 hit new lows, Starmer claimed too many in Whitehall were comfortable in the “tepid bath of managed decline”. The response from the civil service was extraordinary. The following day, Robert Peston reported that one official had told him there was “a mood that we [the civil service] should pull the plug on him” — a remarkable threat to make to the Prime Minister, and leader of the party with the largest electoral majority this century.

But rather than pointing out the extraordinary nature of such a claim, with unelected bureaucrats openly threatening an elected government, Peston summarized the news as “another unforced error” by Downing Street. This same pattern holds today. We now read that the civil service has “turned against” Starmer, and that there is a serious crisis in “ministerial-civil service relations”. The Government’s route out, it is argued, should be to work “to rebuild some of the trust lost by the events of the past week”, by treating officials more positively, and leaving the foundations well alone.

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Should we pity civil servants?

By Josiah Gogarty

Given all this, it should be obvious that the Blob exists. We hear the same stories over and over again from ex-ministers. The Blob can delay ministerial priorities until the point they’re shuffled out; it can direct policy by briefing in particular directions; and it can slow or kill off priorities it wants to. What’s worse is that some senior officials are extremely happy for this to happen (such as those who leak to journalists their praise or condemnation of a particular government).

In the end, though, blame for its existence lies firmly with our politicians. They choose the re-shuffles, they choose to shy away from fundamental changes to the system, they form governments without any plan or direction, they build quango after quango, and appoint unelected officials to positions of power.

But the Blob allows ministers to deny accountability for outcomes, prevent parliamentary debates about trade-offs, and claim that their hands are tied should a decision prove unpopular. The Blob has stepped into the vacuum — making choices, or simply avoiding actions, delaying what they dislike or taking decisions that should have been reserved for our elected representatives. In short, it has provided politicians with the ability to shirk responsibility, to come in without plans, to re-shuffle ministers regularly, and to avoid the hard work of deep state reform.

The Mandelson scandal is a clear example of this: the Prime Minister is able to play on the murky role of the civil service to avoid the fact that he was ultimately responsible for appointing Mandelson. No one denies that No. 10 wanted him as Ambassador. No one denies that they had announced it publicly. The problem isn’t in process, and it isn’t in Downing Street having a preference for a candidate. The problem, in the end, is that the Prime Minister appointed a terrible candidate, and is now reaping the whirlwind of that bad decision.

Today’s system — a labyrinth of bodies, independent panels and commissions, officials, and politicians — ensures that no single individual is ever clearly responsible for a decision, let alone an outcome. In many cases, nobody truly knows who is responsible, if anyone actually is. Every hard choice is outsourced to a wider web; every politically controversial decision is delayed and shifted away from ministers; and every major failure is subject to an inquiry that takes years, whose recommendations are accepted in full, and then forgotten entirely.

Westminster is now moving to insulate itself from any real change. There will be reviews, new safeguards, and rehashed protocols for appointments. Each will be presented as a necessary correction, yet each will fail to solve the fundamental problem. It is no exaggeration to say that finally ending this system is one of the most important pieces of work to be done right now. The future of our nation hangs upon it.

We know, after all, that this system does not work. Low wages, a broken healthcare system, broken borders, a dwindling number of taxpayers, a continuous cost of living crisis, economic stagnation, and declining living standards. The system has lurched us from crisis to crisis and never presented a vision to build a positive outcome for our nation. The best it has achieved is managed decline.

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Keir Starmer: last of the technocrats

By Aris Roussinos

But contrary to popular Westminster opinion, the web can be disentangled. Institutions can be reformed, replaced, or entirely abolished; responsibility for decisions can be given back to our elected representatives. Politicians can take charge by leading and making decisions, rather than accepting the current system.

We must not forget — as our political class has done for decades — that our Parliament is awe-inspiringly powerful. There is no court that presides over it, there is no law that limits it; Parliament is sovereign and supreme. All Acts can be re-written, all laws remade. There is nothing, but the incapacity of our politicians, to prevent dramatic and wholesale change. Leadership, in the end, is simple. You make choices, you take decisions, and you carry the consequences.

Politicians can choose to lead once more. They can reassert where power lies, and to accept the risks that come with it. They can ensure single-person owners of projects. If a minister takes a decision, they must own it in full. If it succeeds, the credit is theirs; if it fails, the blame is theirs. This is the way of the world outside Westminster. Only useless kings get to blame their endless advisers; elected leaders have no one but themselves to blame. No new process can substitute for this principle.

This is not radical, nor is it novel. Ministers should be responsible for their departments. The system should do what a democracy is supposed to — connect decisions to consequences. Only a political system grounded in this principle can reverse our decline and invent a new future. But such an aspiration would require our politicians to take accountability and to act boldly.

I fear, though, that Starmer and Westminster will draw the wrong lessons from this crisis. I fear Starmer will think “if only procedures had been properly followed, or if only we had better procedures, this never would have happened”. He should instead ask himself: “Why did I appoint this man? Why didn’t I just apologise for a bad decision? Why is leadership so difficult?”

I suspect that line of questioning, because it puts responsibility where it should actually lie, is not one he would like to take — nor would other politicians. For ultimately it leads to the most fundamental question of all: “Am I good enough to do this job?” And many, I suspect, will not much like the answer.

How else can you explain three extraordinary scandals in a single day? By Monday morning, it was clear that Peter Mandelson’s behavior, specifically while serving in the Brown government, could warrant a criminal investigation. Here was a man who reputedly received tens of thousands of pounds from Jeffrey Epstein, and who later sent the pedophile financier internal government memos and market-sensitive information. Even more troubling, Mandelson, through Epstein, advised JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon to subtly “threaten” the then-chancellor in an effort to stop a tax on bankers bonuses. This chancellor, of course, was Alistair Darling, Mandelson’s colleague in government. By Wednesday, the Prime Minister said Mandelson had lied to him “repeatedly”, though one wonders why he chose to believe a man who resigned twice from cabinet in disgrace. Accompanying that claim was a promise to publish documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment, by Starmer, as the Ambassador in Washington.

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Why Starmer won't survive 2026

By Aaron Bastani

Meanwhile, with the media scrambling to comprehend the scale of the debacle, two other stories were breaking which, under usual circumstances, would lead headlines. The first concerned Dan Norris, elected as Labour MP to North East Somerset and Hanham in 2024. Norris was arrested last April for a string of offenses including the rape and abduction of a child. This week, he was arrested for a second time. Though previous investigations relating to minors were dropped, it emerged that a second rape investigation had begun, as well as one concerning the potential sexual assault of a third woman. Norris may also stand accused of voyeurism and upskirting.

Then there was Tulip Siddiq, the Government’s anti-corruption minister until last January. In November, she was sentenced to two years in absentia by a Dhaka court for her role in a scandal centering on her aunt, the former prime minister of Bangladesh. On Monday afternoon, as the Mandelson revelations grew increasingly salacious, Siddiq’s sentence was upgraded to six years. The assertion that Labour are less prone to scandal than the Tories suddenly feels as dated as the Metaverse.

None of this is bad luck. Indeed such stories reveal something deeper, specifically about the modus operandi of the Labour Right. Mandelson, a decades-long tribune for that political tendency, was open to briefing an investment banker about developments from within government precisely because, for him and his comrades, the truth is always defined by the contingencies of the moment — whether it was “sexing up”’ the pretext for war in Iraq or exchanging cash for honors. It’s easy to forget now, but the highest law during the New Labour years, particularly for its staunchest advocates, generally revolved around status and personal advantage. This was politics, at its worst, at the end of history.

Philip Gould, New Labour’s polling supremo, wrote that the aspirations of the post-industrial working class had significantly shifted, now revolving around things like buying a new washing machine. Ideals and utopias were a thing of the past, he contended, replaced by consumerism, Pareto optimality and public management speak. But discarded alongside the ideological refuse of the Twentieth Century — by many of Gould’s fellow travelers at least — was any belief in an ethical life. For the faction’s most senior figures that intensified into a veneration of power for its own sake. It’s no accident that Jonathan Powell, formerly Blair’s chief of staff, and now Starmer’s national security adviser, wrote a book titled The New Machiavelli.

Rather than politics being an instrument to achieve a particular good, such as social democracy, national renewal or a flourishing free market, it became an end in itself. That would, in time, give rise to some of the ugliest pathologies in public life: if politics was about technique, and not morality, then how one behaved didn’t matter — and one certainly shouldn’t be concerned about the consequences. Understand this and suddenly the actions of not only Mandelson, but Blair and Alastair Campbell, become easier to comprehend. An obsession with making money, a vice typically ascribed to the Conservatives, is far more intuitive to the common man.

To grasp how insidious this particular mindset goes, consider the case of Andrew Gwynne, whose recent resignation triggered the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. Gwynne officially stood down for “health reasons”. In reality, though, it was a series of nasty posts — written in a secret WhatsApp group — that ended his political career. They included Gwynne wishing that a 72-year-old constituent would die: simply because she had the audacity to write to a local councilor about bin collections. Elsewhere, his wife, also a councilor, joked about local children playing in sewage. The story’s toxic postscript, with Andy Burnham blocked from standing for Labour’s nomination in the seat thanks to NEC fiat, just adds to the episode’s squalor. An ugly cliqueish culture and a presumption of impunity – combined with an instinctive aversion to popular democracy. In one small story you have distilled the outstanding features of the Labour Right.

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Jeffrey Epstein's corrupt overclass

By Mary Harrington

Similar skulduggery is evident in the case of Matthew Doyle, who became a peer after serving as the Downing Street head of communications. Almost a decade ago, however, he campaigned for a councilor to be re-elected, despite the individual in question being one Sean Morton — who had been charged with possession of sexual images of children. Such was the severity of the charge that Morton, who maintained his innocence, stood as an independent after being dropped by Labour (at that time controlled by the Corbyn faction). But that didn’t stop Doyle from joining his friend on the campaign trail, and even at the election count. Morton was later found guilty of possessing indecent images of girls as young as 10.

Why does the Labour Right receive a comparatively easy ride on stories like this? One potential answer is political sympathies. While the country’s press undoubtedly leans towards the Tories, the orientation of most in broadcast media is instinctively New Labour (hence they didn’t mind Cameron). It’s no coincidence that Mandelson himself worked in television before leading on Labour’s comms in the 1987 election. The new worlds of public affairs, political consultancy and satellite TV all emerged at the same time, as the embryo of Blairism began to grow. A snapshot of that can be found on Sky News every Sunday morning: not only did Trevor Philips know Mandelson from their time at Carlton Television, but Mandelson was also the best man at Philips’ first wedding. Adam Boulton, another iconic face on Sky in the decades since its inception in 1989, is married to Anji Hunter — a former Blair spin doctor. Derek Draper, who died in 2024, and who was central in the rise of New Labour’s ‘innovative’ PR strategies, was married to ITV’s Kate Garraway. TV news and New Labour go together like the sun and shadow. Perhaps that helps explain Starmer’s ongoing struggles. In an era of social media, and GB News, the old rules are changing.

While in opposition, Starmer tried to cast Labour as the party of public probity — a foil to a bungling, contemptible government. But glance at the party’s roll call of shame, from Gwynne to Morton, and the claim looks downright absurd. And now, with the revelations of Epstein and Mandelson, which could be the country’s most seismic political scandal since the Profumo Affair, Labour faces a tainted brand for decades to come.

Why are the two major parties like this? Why is the electorate constantly forced to choose between the Tories, whose parliamentarians included a man who took pictures of himself with cocaine, and a Labour party which appears more at ease with child abuse than a Gary Glitter garden soirée? Whatever Britain’s wider problems — its widening infrastructure deficit, the increased tolerance by the state of low-level anti-social behavior, and a lack of economic vitality — nobody would claim such degeneracy reflects the general public.

The blame must certainly include our electoral system. The point of first-past-the-post, indeed some argue its advantage, is that it generally guarantees the stability of a system resting on two major parties: a government and an opposition. If you are unhappy with one side there is always a strong, albeit limited, alternative. Yet beyond its many failings, not least an inability to generate original thinking in areas such as foreign and industrial policy, FPTP means a deliberate, systematic foreclosure of the political marketplace. This inevitably gives rise to venal, self-serving cultures across the spectrum — not least because whatever happens, and no matter how poorly your party does, it will still access the accoutrements of opposition. The public now grasps this, which is why both Labour and the Tories — if polls are to be believed — face an existential challenge.

But even if one or both were replaced, by Reform and the Greens say, the electoral system would, in time, give rise to the same pathologies. FPTP, especially without primaries, as in the United States, encourages an insular culture that is hostile to the wider public, as Andrew Gwynne’s messages — however trivial — reveal. Instead, the political process is captured by individuals who excel at factionalism, undermining opponents and learning how to gerrymander bureaucracy: none of which is particularly useful in administering the state, building houses or having a police force that actually solves crime. In short, our system selects for politicians who can’t meet the challenges that matter to voters, and who prefer to obsess over internal power struggles.

Yes, the American system is plutocratic, indeed more so than our own. But primaries permit an openness — to new ideas, actors and policies — that ours does not. Without primaries there would be no Mamdani, Trump, Obama, Ocasio-Cortez or Marjorie Taylor Greene, and by extension there would be no challenge, or possibility of renewal, for public life. When Labour activists in this country called for something similar during the Corbyn years, and the mandatory re-selection of all party MPs, it led to a ferocious backlash from the political and media class. Why? Because it would take power away from Westminster elites, and re-distribute it — however imperfectly — to ordinary people. These political pressures, and the impossibility of internal regeneration within the Westminster system, are what gave rise to Brexit. Had Conservative associations been able to choose prospective parliamentarians in a manner that registered Republicans can select candidates for Congress, then Brexit might have been a more serene, efficient affair.

Such systemic dysfunction is only compounded by the second chamber. “Need a Lord on the board?” Mandelson cheerily asked Epstein in one email from 2010, a pithy distillation of what the upper house is really about: creating sinecures for has-beens and bag-carriers, who can subsequently leverage their status for personal gain. All the evidence suggests that the reforms to the Lords under Blair have been a disaster. And yet nobody with power seems capable of acknowledging that fact, let alone offering an alternative.

Of course corruption is inherent to political life. We all desire status, and mostly want money. Inevitably some people will pursue such things to the detriment of the public good. Yet our present electoral system incentivizes such appetites, rather than seeking to mitigate them. It is ridiculous to presume that only two parties might have a monopoly on good ideas, or people. The same applies to moral conduct.

It’s worth recalling that this scandal would never have surfaced were it not for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, an unthinkable piece of legislation in this country. That should raise questions about how we do politics in Britain and, I hope, prompt a conversation about an electoral system that only generates more than two plausible parties of government at a time. If we are to retain this status quo then, at the very least, it should require primaries and mandatory reselection. During the Corbyn years the media often described such proposals as Stalinist, despite their being the default across the Atlantic. I would simply say they keep politicians honest. In the context of SW1 that increasingly feels like a revolutionary demand.

Where exactly is home for Labour? The answer was decisively revealed this week by the leader’s conference speech: home is an Islington townhouse in the year 1996. What a time to be British! Hugh Grant is shagging Liz Hurley. Princess Diana is sparklingly alive. Football means Skinner and Baddiel, not Heysel and Hillsborough. Damon and Noel are the new Mick and John. Somehow, Ian Hislop is actually quite funny.

Bonkers, barmy, grotesque Tories in pin-stripe suits dusted with dandruff are going mental over Europe. But on the telly, inspiring Tony and pragmatic Gordon are preparing, as smoothly professional as stockbrokers, for power. Things can only get… better.

Starmer did not have to mention Blair on Wednesday. The spirit of Tone was lurking underneath every word, dressed in greasy overalls, wrenching every rhetorical bolt into place. Tough on crime? Absolutely. Education? Say it three times baby.

More important than anything Starmer said was Peter Mandelson’s remark to Seumas Milne: “We’re back in control.”

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Twilight of the centrist dads

By Will Lloyd

Speaking of figures from the past who consistently ruin the breakfasts of Daily Mail readers, Gina Miller is back too. New New Labour was not the only centre party to stagger on to the scene in the last few days.

“The True & Fair Party” is her new political vehicle. Miller said: “This government needs to be held to account. Voters deserve better than the current politics of incompetence and self-interest.”

The party’s policies are yet to be announced, but they will be a homecoming for Miller as well. You have to imagine that they will be Rejoin-ishly pro-EU and described everywhere as “centrist”. Like every middle-aged product of British centrism, whether it is a political party, or a newspaper columnist, True & Fair would be better named: Let Down & Fed Up & Really Quite Tired.

Miller is, at least, about a thousand times more interesting than Sir Keir. In the long 2016 era, when the British middle-class were lost in a prolonged and anxious freak out, she was easily the most charismatic and exciting Remainer personality.

The others were lame. Elsewhere there was only terrible hair (A.C. Grayling), or needling over-familiarity (Alastair Campbell, Andrew Adonis), or sad, sullen machismo (Bob Geldof, James O’Brien, David Aaronovitch), or… Femi.

Miller was their antidote and foil. She intrigued in all senses. She was a cigar-smoking sports racer, and a parachutist. Her background was pure 1980s, pure Thatcherite graft. After her family lost its fortune, she chewed her way back through the class system, from hard-luck indigence to a £7 million Chelsea villa, by way of the City. She was serious and respected. A lawyerly battle axe. Joan of Arc to Remainers; the Terminator to Brexiteers.

She took flak, both of the legitimate and grimly racist sort. Her most intelligent profilers wondered whether her high-wire legal challenges to Brexit were motivated by “an extreme sense of civic duty” or the chance of another adrenaline rush.

The same question hovers over her new party. In a sense though the answer doesn’t matter. Like Starmer’s zombie centrism, True & Fair will fail, because there is no market for this politics anymore. Barely months have passed since the last attempts to rebuild the centre.

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The speech Starmer should have given

By Ian Martin

During the Brexit years, centrist fever dreams rolled above the land like rain clouds. In 2017, a Twitter-famous tax lawyer called Jolyon Maugham wanted to launch a new party called “Spring”. His plans were big, massively big. According to the Guardian: “He would hold a 28-day festival at the football stadium in Maidenhead, [Theresa] May’s constituency. Each day would be dedicated to the national dress and cuisine of a different EU member state. For the finale, Maugham planned to announce that he was standing in Maidenhead as a Spring candidate.” That sounds like satire written after a long, drunken seance with the hooting spirit of Auberon Waugh, but apparently it’s true. In the end Maugham “decided he didn’t have enough time to go ahead with it”. A wise choice!

There were smaller, but no less Partridge-into-a-dictaphone visions that year. Former George Osborne aide James Chapman called for an anti-Brexit party called ‘The Democrats’ in a Twitter meltdown, which only ended after he’d demanded — sad machismo again — that Theresa May personally debate him outside parliament. Even PR Week (not exactly Guido Fawkes) was moved to call this “an extraordinary rant”. A few months later, the then Economist writer Jeremy Cliffe proposed setting up a party called “The Radicals” — pro-tech, pro-Europe, social-liberal — and ultimately, anti-ever amounting to anything.

The biggest centrist bubble blown and pricked was Change UK. Or was it The Independent Group for Change? Or the UK’s Independently Grouped Change? Or the UK Group’s Independent Change? Nobody — not even lead member Anna Soubry, who called the party “Change.org” in the Commons — was very sure. (The only Change UK question anybody really wanted to know the answer to was what moisturiser Chuka Umunna used. Sadly, he never told us.)

Formed by 11 MPs fleeing Labour and the Tories, and born in Nando’s, Change UK died in bathos when every single member lost their seat at the last general election. But for me, Change.Independence.UK only really expired for good when its former MEP candidate Gavin Esler was booted off Celebrity Masterchef this summer after serving a dessert condemned as “incomplete” by John Torrode. The judge’s cruel reception of this pudding, which was also compared to “soup”, exactly mirrored the British public’s reaction to Change UK, namely: “WTF is this supposed to be lads.”

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The war on Martin Amis

By Will Lloyd

Anyway, by 2019 the public was done with soup. They wanted cake. At least Esler reached the Masterchef quarter finals — Change UK didn’t make it past two elections.

How many centrist parties have to get Hindenburged before this all stops? The strangest thing about Miller, and Starmer-Mandelson is that they can’t locate the centre ground at all. If there is a centre ground today in England, it is enormously unpalatable to those who self-identify as centrists. They would not vote for the “Hang the nonces, fund the NHS party”, but that’s where the centre is now.

The centre wants nationalised railways and birched criminals. It wants its borders closed and its healthcare free at the point of access. It is fear and loathing, and charity and kindliness; a truly mutant hybrid of Paul Dacre and Jeremy Corbyn. Pundits would love the English to be the stout and sensible strivers described in Orwell’s The Lion and The Unicorn; sadly, I fear the reality is that they are more like the suspicious and cruel folk described in Chesterton’s The Secret People.

And they’re getting stranger all the time. England is weirding. David Icke has never been so adored. Football fans descended on Nuneaton to defend a half-forgotten statue of George Eliot from BLM; no, they had not read Middlemarch. Parents style their children as Captain Tom. Sports mascots become ultra-large poppies every November. Jackie Weaver publishes books. There are candlelit vigils or protests on a seemingly daily basis.

The mood is jittery, not only in the petrol queues. The writer Clive Martin calls it “Radical Normal”. Gina Miller and Keir Starmer probably don’t know much about Radical Normal, but it has more to do with the future of British politics than they do.