The Day Today

To the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, not only has Morgan McSweeney confirmed that the runner up to Peter Mandelson for appointment as Ambassador to the United States had been George Osborne, but McSweeney has claimed to have thought that Mandelson was only passingly acquainted with Jeffrey Epstein. He could not possibly have laboured under any such misapprehension. The Prime Minister’s recent Chief of Staff has lied to Parliament even before mentioning his claim to have known Mandelson only since 2021.

Mandelson was appointed by a meeting of which no record exists, yet Keir Starmer had told the House of Commons that proper procedures had been followed. If that is not a matter for the Privileges Committee, then why have it? Whipping House Business is bad enough, but the growing habit of suspending the whip simply for having voted against a three-line whip is a sign of people whose paranoia, and I know whereof I speak, was in need of urgent medical intervention.

Meanwhile, there are probably always reporting restrictions on something at the Old Bailey on any day that the Central Criminal Court was sitting, but the onus is on reporters to ask which case was subject to them. That inquiry has been made, and it has been confirmed that there are no such restrictions on the trial of Roman Lavrynovych, Petro Pochynok and Stanislav Carpiuc, none of whom had any previous history of trouble with the law, for arson against Starmer’s private home, his former home, and his former car, all of which they, or at least someone, could identify. Have I missed something, or is this a story?

Yet no British equivalent of the people who were invited to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is showing the slightest interest. What are their outlets’ court reporters doing instead this week? It has been case management today, but the business of Court 2 will start tomorrow morning with the Prosecution’s opening statement. Will anything with a Lobby Correspondent send anyone? Will Guido Fawkes? Will Private Eye? At least there is a livestream from the Court of the Appeal of the Government’s attempt to overturn the High Court’s ruling that the proscription of Palestine Action had been unlawful.