Why Mandelson’s Epstein mea culpa won’t cut it

0:03Camilla: The Telegraph.

0:09Camilla: Peter Mandelson, the UK's ambassador to the US in hot water over his relationship with his best pal, Jeffrey Epstein. Yum yum. Our chief reporter Rob Mendick joins us with the latest. And Kemi Badenot gave her best ever performance at PMQs. is this the week that the Conservatives became competitive again? Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:44Camilla: So the Telegraph, Tim, appears to be about to secure its second scalp in as many weeks. Fingers crossed. The reporting of this great newspaper cost Angela Rayner her job, let's be honest. And now it looks as if Peter Mandelson may be preparing his P-45. Probably the best way to explain this story is actually to listen to Prime Minister's questions, which you were at. Kemi Badenok, I think we both agree, played a blinder at last. This was Kemi Badenok's best performance in PMQs by far. A NATO country has just had to defend itself against Russian drones. Now, more than ever, we need our ambassador to Washington fully focused on this issue and liaising closely with America.

1:29Does the Prime Minister have full confidence in Peter Mandelson? Mr Speaker, let me start by saying the victims of Epstein are the forefront of our minds. He was a despicable criminal who committed the most heinous crimes and destroyed the lives of so many women and girls. The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for his association with him. He's right to do so. I have confidence in him and he's playing an important role in the UK-US relationship. This is interesting, Mr Speaker. He says the ambassador has expressed full regret, but the victims of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have called for Lord Mandelson to be sacked.

2:13And just so the House is aware, in 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of child prostitution and sex trafficking that took place between 2002 and 2005. That is the precise period which Lord Mandelson called Jeffrey Epstein his best pal. Was the Prime Minister aware of this intimate relationship when he appointed Lord Mandelson to be our ambassador in Washington? Mr Speaker, as she and the House would expect, full due process was followed during this appointment, as it is with all ambassadors. The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret, his right to do so. He's now playing an important part in the US-UK relationship.

2:58Importantly, Kemi Badenock directly quoted the Telegraph story that morning. Mr Speaker, I asked the Prime Minister if he knew. The fact that he didn't answer indicates that he probably did know. I wasn't asking a question about process. I was asking a question about his judgment. The Daily Telegraph reports today that while Lord Mandelson was business secretary, he brokered a deal with Jeffrey Epstein while he was business secretary, and that this occurred after Epstein had been convicted of child sex offences. Given this new information, does the Prime Minister really think it is tenable for our ambassador to remain in post?

3:39Mr Speaker, the relationship between the US and the UK is one of our foremost relationships, and I have confidence in the ambassador in the role that he is doing. Mr Speaker, I think it is embarrassing that the Prime Minister is still saying that he has confidence in a man who was brokering deals with convicted child sex offenders while sitting in government. That is a disgrace. This government has repeatedly, repeatedly refused to declare Lord Mandelson's full interests. And as part of the appointment, there will have been extensive government vetting, including details and timings of Peter Mandelson's dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

4:17So will the Prime Minister publish all these documents, including those about his interests? Well, Mr Speaker, as I say, A full due process was gone through in relation to this appointment, as would be expected. As for the publication of documents, as she well knows, that's subject to a procedure which includes an independent element. Be subject to the usual procedure. The Prime Minister cannot answer any questions. That is not the behaviour of someone who has full confidence. Why was this so good? We'll compare it to the previous weeks, which was Angela Rayner. Then, despite having the details, she asked just one and a half questions about it and then moved on to tax.

4:59So she took the specific issue and then went general. What she did this time around was she devoted five and a half questions to the specific issue and then went general. And the result was that each question was like an attritional barrage, punch, punch, punch. each time you could sense that Keir Starmer was expecting her to move on, but she wouldn't. And the effective thing about that was he only had one answer, which was procedure had been followed. And as a result, it was like a court appearance, but where it's turned around, where it's the lawyer in the stand, because he had to keep saying in each case, but procedure, but procedure.

5:42And of course, politics is not just about procedure. It's about judgment.

5:49Camilla: Judgment and morals. Now, Rob Mendick, our chief reporter, joins us in the studio. What couple of weeks you're having, Rob. You spearheaded the Angela Rayner tax scoop. And now you've got an interesting element to this story. And let me ask you this, because in my mind, there are two different parts of this. There's the part where we have Mandelson's contributions to a 2003 birthday book featuring four critical words in my mind. Best pal, he says Epstein is his best pal. And then he makes a reference to staying with him and uses the words yum yum. We don't know exactly what the context of these comments are, Rob, but just to clarify.

6:33Camilla: So there's a photograph of Mandelson dressed in a bathrobe, alongside Epstein, who he described as his best pal. He's written the message that Epstein would, quote, leave you with some interesting friends to entertain and spoke of his, quote, glorious homes he likes to share with his friends, brackets, yum, yum. The context of those comments could be quite damning if you look at the whole book in itself, which is an odd thing. It's a very odd thing, this birthday tribute, because it's kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink. We know Epstein is intersex. Photographs of Epstein naked in a bath. Photographs of Ghislaine Maxwell with her breasts out.

7:22Camilla: There's this kind of tone to it that those who were associated with Epstein sort of knew what he was up to, but that's just Geoffrey being Geoffrey, which in a way suggests a degree of complicity. Of course, all of these people would deny it. But Rob, what have you revealed about his business dealings with Epstein, crucially after he was convicted for procuring a child for prostitution? Well, we spent or I spent quite a lot of time going through lots of emails and things that are in the public domain, actually, and just putting lots of things together. So it's not rocket science stuff in a way, but no one had seemed to do it.

8:01And that seemed very odd to me, given that Peter Mandelson was now our ambassador in Washington. and no one had properly scrutinized his links to Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, as we now know, best pals, his great friendship. And that's what I suspected when I first started looking at this stuff. And it really becomes clear that there's an awful lot of communication between the two. And there's a lot of stuff that talks about business. You know, as I wrote today in this newsletter that we put out, so Peter Mandelson, what attracted you to the multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein? And in a way, that answers everything.

8:35They are both of them terrific networkers. They are both terrifically well-connected. They both have context books that go all over the world, actually. And in the case of Mandelson, lots of dealings in Russia. There were dealings in China. In fact, before he leaves office in 2009, he's already chatting to Epstein about deals that the government are doing. That seemed extraordinary to me. And that is post his first arrest and conviction. Yeah. Well, we can see from timings and so on and so forth that Peter Mandelson stays in Jeffrey Epstein's house in New York at a time when Jeffrey Epstein is in jail for soliciting underage girls.

9:11That's just basic and problematic. And in terms of politics, it's not politics, it's just court of public opinion stuff.

9:18Camilla: Hold on a minute, OK? It's unbelievable that, first of all, Mandelson got this appointment as the UK's ambassador to the US with this knowledge in mind. And let's be honest, as Badenock pointed out in the House of Commons earlier, this must have all come out in vetting. Second of all, sorry, with my other hat on, not my political one, but my royal one, this was precisely what the Duke of York's entire career was ruined upon. Yes, we have the Virginia Giffray allegations, and I understand that. And there's a sexual element to Prince Andrew's alleged involvement with Epstein that transcends what we have on Mandelson and Epstein so far.

10:00Camilla: I appreciate that. But this idea of an error of judgment in maintaining a friendship with a convicted paedophile after conviction is what brought the Duke of New York down. And it's the photo of him with Epstein in New York. Yeah, in Central Park. And you're saying we knew it was a matter of public knowledge that Mandelson stayed at his house after his conviction. Yeah. And carries on being friends and carries on exchanging correspondence up until I think the last time I saw an email between the two of them or referencing the two of them, I think was 2015. Do we know how they first met, how their friendship began?

10:38Well, my investigation suggests that Peter Mandelson was working for Robert Maxwell as a consultant in Mirror Group newspapers back in the 1990s. And that Ian Maxwell tells me that that's pretty sure how he came across Ghislaine Maxwell, who was working in the same building at the time. And they were terrifically well connected. And that carried on from there is what I was told.

11:00Camilla: And Ghislaine Maxwell, to explain, one of Jeffrey Epstein's closest confidants currently serving prison for effectively being his pimp over the course of many years. Yeah, I mean, she was his ex-girlfriend. And what evidence after that initial contact, however it took place, what evidence do we have for the nature of their friendship? I mean, do we know they're attending things together? Are they seen at things together? I mean, clearly we can see them doing bits and bobs, can't we? So we can see, for instance, Peter Mandelson goes to buy or look at a very expensive belt on a Caribbean island with Epstein on a shopping trip in 2005.

11:35We can see Peter Mandelson with a birthday cake with Jeffrey Epstein in Jeffrey Epstein's Paris house celebrating his birthday. Obviously, we've got the 50th birthday messages. But we see the tip of the iceberg. I mean, that's kind of where the problem lies for Keir Starmer and others in this. All of that must have been vetted. I mean, Kemi, you're right, asked about vetting and said, can we see the vetting? Can we see the details?

11:59Camilla: Yes. And he said no because of procedure. Can we see all of the paperwork relating to any business dealings or correspondence between Mandelson and Epstein while he was in the cabinet? This is the other thing we do have to stress, Rob. Well, there's more things than that as well because, of course, with Peter Mandelson, it isn't just about Jeffrey Epstein in terms of his friends. He's got friends who are oligarchs. I mean, he spent a lot of time on Oleg Deripaska's yacht. He's someone now under sanction. I spoke to an oligarch two days ago and I phoned him. He's also under sanction and has had to leave the country.

12:33And I spoke to him and said, you know, did you know Peter Mandelson? And he said, oh, yeah, of course, I used to meet Peter Mandelson regularly. All of that would be subject to enormous vetting if Peter Mandelson had gone through proper vetting procedures. Just to put it in particular, because I do a bit of security reporting from time to time, it's about a year to pass security to become an MI5 officer. So, for instance, the idea that someone becomes ambassador in the space of a couple of months through proper vetting, given Peter Mandelson's past and all the people he comes across and has come across in his business dealings, political life, etc., etc., all the various scandals that have been linked to him when he was forced to resign twice from government and so on, that seems pretty speedy vetting.

13:16Before now, Mandelson obviously wouldn't deny knowing him, but he has, am I right, given the impression that it was not really a friendship and that he regrets being introduced to him as if they had met at a party and unfortunately been photographed by a paparazzo. So there are all manner of celebrities who regret and say they didn't really know Geoffrey Epstein. I think of your Prince Andrew, Duke of York point earlier is that he sat there now stuck in his Windsor house unable to go anywhere because he's the most hated man in the country thinking, God, I didn't know him nearly as well as I think.

13:53Peter Mandelson, Jeffrey Epstein. And I can't help but think that poor Prince Andrew is thinking there going, God, if no one had ever taken that photo of me with Virginia Roberts, I would have got away with it. And I don't sweat, obviously. So it's all outrageous.

14:04Camilla: Also, by the way, he's not in the 2003 birthday book. And he didn't even bother sending him a birthday card. Boo hoo. So, I mean, Prince Andrew must be steaming, I think. And so, yes, I mean, clearly Peter Mandelson knows him very well. And as I say, I can see the tip of the iceberg in the emails and the exchanges. there will be a ton of this material that's somewhere. And that's risky stuff. Well, and Mandelson has effectively acknowledged that more will come out in an interview he did with The Sun's Harry Cole Saves the West, which we can hear now. I don't believe I'm named in Epstein files.

14:39I have no doubt at all that there's a lot of traffic, correspondence, exchanges between us. Absolutely. and we know those are going to surface, we know they're going to come out, we know they're going to be very embarrassing and they know that I'm going profoundly to regret ever having met him and been introduced to him in the first place. But I can't rewrite history. What I can do, what I can do is express my profound sympathy for those who were badly treated by him and secondly, I can accept, yes I can accept that I continued my association with him for too long. It struck me in his interview with Harry Cole where he says, I sought assurances from Jeffrey Epstein and then I carried on staying in his house and carried on talking to him.

15:27And it struck me, what assurances do you get from someone who's just been convicted of soliciting prostitution with a minor that makes that all OK? That's the bit that struck me is I sought assurances. And obviously, unfortunately, what was never then asked was what were these assurances and what made it OK?

15:43Camilla: Sorry, on that, it was a plea bargain as well. Dershowitz got a hell of a lot of allegations and condensed them down in a plea deal. So let's not also forget Epstein was accused of a lot more than he ended up being convicted of. But the light sentence might have been one of the assurances. Well, look, I was allowed to go to an open prison. I hardly spent any time in it. But at the time, Peter Mandelson was business secretary and effectively deputy prime minister. He was first Secretary of State. He got this elevated title, hadn't he, from Gordon Brown. So he was the second most important man in the country, in the UK, that is, and was obviously travelling quite a lot to America.

16:24So I find it baffling that an astute politician, as Peter Mandelson is, thought there were assurances you could seek that were fine. And of course, what he means is, I didn't think it would come out. That's all that means. Just as when Prince Andrew goes to see Epstein in Central Park and says it was to say goodbye, and Emily Maitley says, couldn't you have just phoned him? I mean, the reason he went to say goodbye is because, A, it wasn't goodbye, B, he was borrowing some money from him to pay off Fergie's debts, if memory serves me right, and C, he just didn't think it would come out. Well, it's not right.

16:54It ain't right, is it?

16:56Camilla: Well, we really very much look forward to a lengthy BBC interview with Mandelson in which he can give his own justifications for his own behaviour, which I'm sure probably won't be coming. Well, as long as he doesn't sweat, he'll be fine. Can I just ask, because this is a question that Tucker Carlson once asked someone on his show when discussing Epstein, are you personally friends with any convicted paedophiles? Not that I know of, no. Neither am I. Yes. I don't think most people are. And we are not in a position of public authority in which it's really important, it's even more important that you're careful about your personal relationships with someone.

17:32How is it that so many famous people knew and consorted with a convicted paedophile? And didn't think twice about it. It's just in and of itself really strange.

17:46Camilla: But how was it that Epstein managed to cultivate this extraordinary network of influential high rollers, Well, I wonder actually... Political big beasts, financial titans, retail giants. What did he have on them? I mean, again, I go back to our interview with his brother, Mark, which was fascinating, Rob, because again, it does lay bare how many secrets Epstein had to reveal about such a great many people. When he unexpectedly died in prison, they say suicide, the brother says homicide. this is this can of worms that will never be closed I think Rob I mean you've been working on this for decades I was saying to Tim yesterday I remember when I first got into Fleet Street going through the Epstein Rolodex circa 2000 Yeah I mean it isn't for a journalist it's the story that keeps giving and it won't go away of course it won't go away because even if the files were ever released people would wonder what's not in there it's an odd one isn't it because people don't seem to have ever seen anything I mean, we spoke to the butler in the Paris house that we tracked down the other week.

18:55I spoke to the housekeepers on his Paradise Island in the US Virgin Islands who said to me, you know, girls would come on and disappear with Jeffrey Epstein. But they always came out happy and smiling and all the rest of it. But no guest ever saw anything. Epstein just keeps popping up. And for Peter Mandelson, I think it's very difficult to keep going as ambassador in that situation. I have no idea what the mechanism is for removing him, but it isn't going to go away and more can come out. And that's the problem Keir Starmer is going to have. If he claims he knows all about this and he's well aware of it and he was fully appraised, that's a ticking time bomb, right?

19:32Because then if stuff does come out that's even more problematic than what we've already found, where does Keir Starmer go from there? So unless you jettison him now, that's a difficult thing coming down the track. And in another four years, he's got to serve as prime minister. That could happen at any minute, right? Well, either they fully vetted him and they missed this, in which case they're incompetent, or they fully vetted him and they knew this and were okay with it, in which case that's deeply dodgy. I think there's probably a third way, which is they didn't fully vet him. They say they vetted him.

20:01It's not a full vetting. For someone like Peter Mandelson, with all the contacts he has and all the places he's been and all the people he's ever met, having spoken to people who do vetting and have done vetting for MI6 and MI5 and others, that's a years-long process. There is someone else in the birthday book, which is Trump, although he denies that it's him. Might the government be uncomfortable about sacking an ambassador over his relationship to Epstein when the president is also accused of having a relationship with Epstein?

20:32Camilla: And he's due to visit the UK in a few days. Good point. The great thing with Donald Trump is he falls out. Lucky for Donald Trump, he falls out with Jeffrey Epstein. So pre him being convicted, he falls out with him. It's the greatest thing that probably ever happened to Donald Trump was, A, his ability to fall out with everyone, and B, his timing of falling out with Jeffrey Epstein was manna from heaven, as it turns out. Trump didn't supply a 10-page letter, did he? He just did a quick drawing. Which he denies doing. If it's him. And secondly, there weren't a whole load of photos of Donald Trump on the island in his bathrobe or whatever it was, you know, having his breakfast served on the balcony.

21:06I mean, I think, funnily enough, as it looks from what I've ever seen, Trump has a little bit of distance. And Trump's unbeaten strategy, almost unbeaten, is to deny and sue. Yeah. And that way it doesn't stick.

21:21Camilla: Well, let's see if it does stick on the Prime Minister, who we'll be discussing next. Rob, we're going to let you go back to your keyboard because we've got more coverage to come on the Telegraph website and in the paper tomorrow. And we're going to be discussing whether this is the Prime Minister's worst week since, well, Tim, last week.

21:49Camilla: Before we get into how bad is this for the Prime Minister after Angela Raynergate last week, I just wanted to look up on my phone an incident that I reported on involving Peter Mandelson and when it was in the context of why Keir Starmer appointed him. Go for it. So Mandelson kind of was out of the limelight really, post the Blair years, doing his own thing. and then as Keir Starmer assumed the Labour leadership, he kept on popping up at stuff. And I'm just looking it up now and it was a lecture by Anthony Seldon at a synagogue in North London. I took my daughter along because he was speaking about the best and worst prime ministers in modern history and she loves history.

22:28The list has grown since then.

22:30Camilla: I know. And we're sitting there and somebody in the crowd, a journalist, made a point about how it's all very well speaking about Keir Starmer as a potential prime minister, but we're in a Jewish area. We were in West Hampstead and he should never be forgiven for propping up Jeremy Corbyn for four years, etc. And suddenly the shout came out of the crowd. Shame on you! Shame! Shame! And Mandelson got up and started arguing with this journalist. And me and my daughter were like, oh, my God, it's all kicked off. And naturally, me being a shameless hack, I knocked out a piece of copy and it ran in the Telegraph.

23:10Camilla: I wasn't expecting to write anything on it, but it was just sort of quite startling that suddenly Mandelson jumped to Starmer's defence. And I sort of thought, is there a lot of history between these two guys? Obviously, we associate Mandy with Blair and the Blair era. Starmer's from a very different wing of the party, despite his insistence that he is a socialist in sort of blue clothing and blue Blairite clothing, I should say. And I just sort of clocked it and thought, OK, that's quite interesting. You know, then it comes to, I think, conference or had he previously been front and centre of conference?

23:43Camilla: I think he had been at the Labour Party conference front and centre. Again, he's emerged. And then I'm merely saying that lo and behold, he ends up getting the job. It had been much mooted. He replaces Karen Pearce as the UK's ambassador to the US, even though Pearce was very highly regarded, had apparently cultivated very good relationships with the Republicans as well as the Democrats and all the rest of it. So, reflecting on PMQs, let's be perfectly honest here, and it's a problem for him once again. It's the same problem twice in two weeks. He installs Angela Rayner not in the interests of the country but in his own political interests to keep a certain cabal of the Labour movement happy.

24:24Camilla: For precisely the same reason, he installs Peter Mandelson to keep part of the Labour cabal happy. In this case, the kind of Blairite faction. Favors have been done. In return for favors, you're going to get a Kushti number out in Washington. So his defence of it all, I think, is interesting because it again suggests someone... He's banging on about integrity in the House of Commons and he is meant to be this decent man who is at the helm of a government of service. and once again we're reminded just how self-serving Keir Starmer actually is because it's now about him saying to himself and no doubt being advised, hang on a minute, to lose one senior Labour figure in a week is unfortunate, to lose two is careless.

25:13Camilla: So he's now clinging on, even though this former director of public prosecutions in his heart of hearts must have looked at best pals and yum yum and had his head in his hands more than most people one would imagine. The phenomenon of Keir Starmer is built upon his own sense of integrity. So remember when he became leader, not entirely his fault. Beginnings of lockdown, the government was quite popular. Post-Corbyn, Labour was very unpopular. He was actually doing quite badly in the polls. It's really party gate that makes Keir Starmer. Yes. And it's public revulsion, fairly or unfairly, at Boris Johnson and his glass of wine and a piece of cake.

25:59So for Keir Starmer to then have this list of people who have to leave his administration over ethics issues, don't forget Louise Hague over fraud regarding a stolen item. Angela Rayner over tax avoidance.

26:20Camilla: Yes. And now we're discussing whether or not he should keep Peter Mandelson. For him to keep insisting this government's all about integrity and the highest standards, when he seems to draw to himself people who inevitably screw up on some ethics issue, that really damages his brand. In the case of Peter Mandelson, this is one thing about the establishment I can't get my head around, is they have this cast of characters who they regard as indispensable to the life of the nation. You've got to have Peter. You can't have a Labour government without Peter because Peter built new Labour. Peter was part of the negotiations in 2010 with the coalition that didn't come through.

27:03Peter was then fighting Corbyn behind the scenes. Peter was then part of Starmer's return. We need Peter because only Peter can build an alliance between us and the United States. Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe you don't need Peter Mandelson?

27:21Camilla: Maybe anyone with a modicum of political wit and wisdom would be able to build alliances with the United States. Yes. That anyone with an ability to communicate on a... Keir Starmer has done it. David Lammy is friends with the vice president. He is not our essential link, our human hotline between us and the White House. But he's very good at persuading people that he's indispensable. And people in Westminster always fall for it. Now, who does that remind you of? Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey. We keep coming back to why did people stay friends with Jeffrey Epstein? Yes. And there is one dark answer, which is blackmail.

28:04Camilla: Yes. Might be true. Might not be true. I think there's an alternative because we've interviewed a number of guests on the show. And I almost always ask the question about Epstein, how did he do it? And some of them have said, like, Dershowitz, actually just very charming, very funny, a good person to be around. But it's not just that, is it? How did Epstein make his money? He made deals happen. He was a middleman. If you wanted to make a project that was stalled and was global take place, you went to Jeffrey. he was an indispensable person. Peter Mandelson, this is not a comment on his personal morality, but Peter Mandelson is the same kind of international indispensable figure.

28:49And so the fact that the two of them are aligned, if you can put yum yum aside, actually makes perfect sense because they belong to that strange class of people who flit about the globe making things happen.

29:04Camilla: I've just realised that yum yum is the English description for what the Americans would regard to be called a Twinkie. It could be even more innocent than that. They could have been having a Gilbert and Sullivan night and someone put on the Mikado at his house, and that's what it was referring to. Possibly. But what you're also getting to there with regard to Epstein and indeed Mandelson, and Mandelson used to revel in his reputation as the master of the dark arts, is that there's a sense that both know where the bodies are buried. They do. Both have dirt on others, which has put them in the past in a powerful position.

29:38Yes, but they're also not very good at the dark arts because the whole point of the dark arts is no one knows you're there. That's what an eminence grise is. You're shadowy, you have no personality, you still allow the leader to shine. Part of the problem with these indispensable figures like Epstein and Mandy, we know all about them. Yes. So they're not that good at it. And Mandy was booted out of government twice. Yes. So it's... Yeah, that's right.

30:04Camilla: That's why spies have no charisma. I mean, we can't have masters of the dark arts going on public stages and telling everyone how great they are at being a Machiavelli. Isn't he an amateur of the dark arts? If he's appearing on a podcast and saying, well, even more stuff might come out. Yes. That's not very subtle or clandestine, is it? Can we talk about somebody who isn't a master of the dark arts or any arts or any political arts at all? And that's the Prime Minister. Yes. So we were discussing the... Totally artless. Totally artless. Artless and heartless. We were talking about the deputy leadership race yesterday and we were saying that the rank outsider is Bel Ribeiro Addy.

30:40Yes.

30:41Camilla: She's come forward, Tim. And said, Mandy must go. She's emerged from the left flank, the hard left flank, and she said, nope, there's no way he can remain the UK's ambassador to the US, which will play to her hard left fan base. Kim Johnson has agreed too, and she's also a Corbynite Liverpool MP. They all hate Mandelson and Blair, so that makes sense. And they hate Trump. And they see Mandy as being about keeping Trump on side. One wonders will other contenders make similar statements. The update on the race is it's very sad. I don't think Thornberry is going to make the final. Oh, your girl Thornberry.

31:17Camilla: What's happened? Why has she fallen by the wayside? Because although we in the press are talking about her because we think she's great fun, if you look at the current nominations, she's way behind. And the two who have already steamed quite far ahead are Lucy Powell and Bridget Philipson. Can we talk about my girl Bridget's recent photo shoot? Yeah. Have you seen it? They put her in a wind tunnel, didn't they? Her hair is... Something's going on because she has almost got like a kind of resolute bob. Yes. A little bit like Anna Wintour. It looks bulletproof. It's treasure-made. Yes. It's Lego'd.

31:54Camilla: Yes. It's a bit like my hair. It's designed to deflect an assassin's bullet. Literally, if there is a tornado, this hair doesn't shift. And yet suddenly, she's actually done a bit of a, if Celia doesn't mind me saying this, she's done a Walden. And I refer to our Telegraph colleague, Celia, whose byline photo has been done in some sort of wind tunnel. I asked for the same for mine and got laughed out of this newsroom. But she's looking quite sexy. Yes, this is a photo shoot for a newspaper, which we will not name, but it has a habit. No, because it's a rival, but we have got friends there. I have to say it has a habit of interviewing top line female politicians who in the interview will say things like I'm doing this for the girls.

32:31Yes. And then they always photo them in a push up bra on a wind tunnel. Yes. And it totally undermines the feminist message of the interview. But she looks good. She does look good.

32:39Camilla: So she goes to the top of the rankings of the kind of like the most glamorous at this stage candidate to be deputy leader of the party. and, you know, this could cap off a bad couple of weeks and make it a good week for Starmer if he pulls this off. If he pulls off his ally being in the post... Yes, and no, because I think, again, Labour always does this. It's the party of control freakery and it very often backfires. If the members don't get a real choice and it's Powell versus Philipson, it might encourage left-wing people to say, I've actually had it with this party and there is an alternative now, the Greens or Jeremy Corbyn.

33:17Right. There is an argument for saying it's a short campaign. It's a matter of weeks. The job doesn't really matter. Why not let the membership kick it around for a bit? I know people will just say I'm saying that because I'm a journalist because I want the fight. But actually, yeah, we do. We do want the fight. But I see it from a democratic point of view. Is it really fair to put up two candidates who we know are supported by Starmer? Shouldn't there be a real battle of ideas? The interesting question will be where they position themselves on Gaza. Bridget Phillipson, as you mentioned yesterday, is actually quite right wing as Labour goes.

33:51I believe she's a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel. Yes. The Israelis have just blown up Doha. They are in town. The president is in town. There has been a debate in the House about that. The left is saying, in the comments yesterday, one Labour MP suggested the Israeli president might be arrested by the British police for war crimes. So how will they play this if it's Powell versus Philipson? Will Powell be tempted to be critical on Gaza? That could be interesting. I'm not sure it's super relevant to the direction of the country, but that's what the left is really excited about at the moment is Gaza.

34:27Camilla: Also, isn't Starmer desperate to reassert his kind of international statesman in a happy place? Yes. In a way, this disastrous situation for foreign affairs and indeed the world has landed at a good time for him. He can be talking about the possible outbreak of World War III with Poland and Russia now at odds, the Ukrainian situation heating up again this week. He's had that meeting with Abbas on the Palestinian side. He's now meeting with Isaac Herzog. He is massively hoping that his coalition of the willing will overshadow. People will go, well, look, Mandy's a big story, but I tell you what.

35:10Camilla: The current parlour state of our global situation is even bigger. And thank goodness Prime Minister Starmer is here to shepherd the West through this. That's what he'll be hoping. My theory is the tectonic plates have already shifted. I wrote in a column on Monday that this was the most significant week in British politics since the election of Labour. I think now we can be specific about the dates. It was last Thursday to today to Wednesday. It's a period in which Angela Rayner was forced to go. He had a reshuffle forced on him that he did not want to have and that's left him greatly weakened and opened us up to a deputy leadership contest.

35:46And now he's got Mandy as well. At the same time, things have moved slightly in the favor of the Conservatives. Reform held a conference over the weekend. We enjoyed it. But I think in retrospect, it was probably the high watermark of the Reform Party. It was a little too self-congratulatory. as William Atkinson said, very good journalist, it felt like a party of people high on their own supply. They were celebrating themselves and everything that gets them excited. They weren't talking to the country. They were not projecting here is a government, here are our policies. Instead, they brought on people who much of the country will go, oh, that's a red line I don't cross.

36:26Vaccine denial, Lucy Connolly. So reform we may have witnessed in this past week, the peak of. By contrast, Kemi began that week with a disastrous PMQ's performance about Angela Rayner. She ended on a high with a really good performance, which has really excited her backbenchers and which the Labour backbenchers just was silent throughout, looking very uncomfortable. But also, we met her yesterday to discuss her new welfare strategy. I've slept on it. I think that might be cleverer than I first thought. The Tories do not have good poll numbers, but they do have MPs. The country is drowning in debt.

37:01they are saying to Labour, you cannot get welfare reform through because of the left, but if you work with us, we can get it through. And that forces the government to confront them in the one area where the Tories do have strength, and that's the number of MPs. And if they can play a role or if their great offer is turned down, it sort of drags the Tories back into the political limelight.

37:22Camilla: It strikes me that Kemi Badenock and Harry Kane have had similar fortnights. Last week, a lacklustre performance by England. Oh, you're not up to much. The formation's terrible. What's wrong with you? This week, in fact, last night, they beat Serbia 5-0. Yes. And I think we can safely conclude that if it's Kemi versus Kier today, she is 5-0 up because the bang, bang, question, question, question, question, it won today. She's had the best day of her career as leader of the opposition so far. The Tories have been waiting for two things to happen. One, for reform to start to look silly. And two, for the Labour government to get so bad that its poor reputation eclipses that of the Tories.

38:11And I think this is the week in which that happened.

38:13Camilla: We may have crossed that Rubicon. Before we go, let's just give a plug to Ukraine, the latest that is going to be covering everything that we just mentioned about. To be renamed Ukraine and Poland. The latest, indeed, about that Polish intervention. and also check out Battle Lines, which will be covering the conflict in the Middle East as well as other foreign affairs matters. And we'll be back, no doubt, with a bit more Keir Starmer misery tomorrow at 5pm.

39:24Camilla: We'll see you next time. always possible. That's healthy optimism. That's Optum. Visit Optum.com to learn more.