Mandelson vs the Met: What the hell just happened?

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0:35I actually think, you know, if I was advising Peter Mandelson, I think a period of silence whilst the investigation takes place might be wise.

0:43Jon Sopel:So Peter Mandelson, shut up. Yeah, shut up, not least because it's important that the investigation happens. And if there are criminal charges to be brought, they should be brought. That is Sarah Sackman, the Justice Minister, telling Peter Mandelson to shut his mouth. This comes after we revealed on the newsagents yesterday that at four o 'clock in the morning he had been texting people saying he'd been wrongly arrested because there was an agreement in place. And it was all the fault of the Lord Speaker, the Speaker of the House of Lords. Well, the Lord Speaker's Office vehemently denied his involvement to us.

1:23But mid-morning, the plot thickened when the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, admitted he had tipped off police. So, what the hell is going on here? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:43Jon Sopel:It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And you'll hear more of Sarah Sackman, who we heard in that clip at the beginning, later in the podcast, talking about some of the justice changes to the courts that the government is hoping it can make if it can see off backbench rebellions on that. we've got to start though with what I want to call a bonkers 24 hours where at four o 'clock in the morning after Peter Mandelson has been driven home from the police station he contacts friends as you revealed Emily yesterday and says this whole arrest was unnecessary it was going to be an interview under caution but someone somewhere said I was a flight risk and mandelson fingered the speaker of the house of lords as being responsible and with a kind of cryptic conspiratorial who or what is going on at the end of it right and we heard a very vehement denial from the speaker of the house of lords this morning and we had reported this text message that he'd sent to one person since then i have to say i've heard from others who got something similar, if not identical.

2:57I'm assuming it was exactly the same message. One person said they got it at 3am. So I don't know if Peter Mandelson was sort of sending it from 3am to 4am or if people were seeing it at different times. And the sense that he was trying to convey was that he had understood a kind of informal deal or an understanding with the police about an interview that he would go to willingly next week. Peter Mandelson was under the impression that he was not going to be arrested on Monday around four o 'clock. He blamed the Speaker's Office, the Lord Speaker's Office. He got that wrong because presumably Lindsay Hoyle felt he had to come out today to correct the record because it was the wrong speaker.

3:45Lindsay Hoyle is the Speaker of the Commons, who we now understand, and this all makes a little bit more sense, was in the British Virgin Islands on official business last week for sort of February half term parliamentary recess, where he was meeting officials there, including the Attorney General, including members of the administration. And he has said he got a tip off from a source from somebody he spoke to then. And we can hear him mid morning explaining his own role.

4:18Jon Sopel:Members will be aware of comments in the media regarding the arrest of Lord Mandelson. To prevent any inaccurate speculation, I'd like to confirm that upon receipt of information that I felt it was relevant, I passed this on to the Metropolitan Police in good faith, as is my duty and responsibility. It is regrettable this rapidly ended in the media. As this is a live investigation, members will understand that it would not be appropriate to make any further comment. This whole thing is bonkers, isn't it? I mean, it is so rare for someone like Peter Mandelson to get arrested. Then to have a sort of briefing war going on post-arrest over the terms of the arrest.

5:10Jon Sopel:this ain't normal and it's involving the lord speaker of the house of lords and then the common speaker and the common speaker saying yeah i did happen to be in the virgin islands at the time and i told the relevant authorities that the people in the virgin islands thought that peter mandelson might try and do a runner it was my duty and it was my duty to do so i mean i've lost all magnetic north here of what is what is right i also think that there's um it sort of speaks as well to the nature of of this story right which is you know as we've been talking about for weeks and weeks and weeks now this is i mean if we're going right back to the beginning the epstein files what it basically is about is a kind of living history a living grim history kind of chronicle of the way very rich very powerful elites at the very top of different societies around the world the west united states uk others kind of live and how in a way opposite it is that the House of Commons Speaker ends up involved having been to, of all places, the British Virgin Islands in half term, as Emily, as you say, on official business.

6:14Not entirely that clear what the official business was, but the Speaker certainly has a... Are you arching your eyebrow? Well, the Speaker has a penchant, I think it's fair to say, for international travel, but nonetheless, he was at the British Virgin Islands. What was it that first attracted you to a mid-20 degrees winter break in the February half term in the Caribbean? Yeah, they don't call him Long Haul Lindsay for nothing, but anyway, the The Speaker of the House of Commons in the British Virgin Island, apparently receiving a tip off in this tax haven, British overseas territory, about the fact that Peter Mandelson was allegedly going to go there.

6:44I mean, this is, as you were both saying yesterday, but has been reaffirmed again. Mandelson himself is dismissing all of this as baseless, saying it's all nonsense. But for kind of like the tentacles of this story, in a sense, to now reach the House of Commons Speaker's chair itself, I think just speaks to the weirdness of it all, if nothing else. OK, so just to try and fill in some of these jigsaw pieces, and I have to say genuinely, as we sit here today, as has become clear, we are none the wiser. I think we can confirm that Peter Mandelson did send that message to at least two people. Presumably there were others.

7:18I asked one of my sources what they'd done when they got the message. You know, you didn't break the story. What did you do with it? And this person said, I felt I couldn't ignore it. So I remained neutral, saying sorry to hear this. Now, again, it speaks to the whole sort of questions of these tentacles of power, how we're how we're carrying this information, how we're dealing with this information, what we as journalists even do when we sort of, you know, come into contact with this kind of of message. and presumably Peter Mandelson felt that Lindsay Hoyle had got things utterly wrong. He says in that message it was a complete fiction that he was a flight risk.

8:03He talked about his husband, his home, his dog jock, right? He wasn't about to leave the country. So what is somebody in the British Virgin Islands doing, tipping off Lindsay Hoyle, that this is about to happen? What knowledge do they have that Peter Mandelson is about to come and reside in the BVI? Do they have anything? Was it spurious? Was it gossip? If this really is the sort of sequence of events, then I think to say, I mean, look, there are very few people, I think, entirely legitimately and rightly defending Mandelson right now. But if he has been arrested partly on the basis of this, and it is baseless.

8:38And I have to say, I know you talked about this on the show yesterday. It is so weird. It doesn't make sense because we were just, if he had fled there. Don't go to the place with British in its name. Well, quite. It's a British overseas territory. We would be able to extradite him back to the UK. So it is... I mean, look, there's many, many curious, weird, often disturbing things about this story. This is definitely one of the curious elements to it. But I would say, just to get the big picture on this, you know, we thought we would be starting the episode today talking about the Gorton and Denton by-election, which is pretty critical right now for Labour, you could say for the other parties too, to prove that they have made the gains at Labour's expense.

9:17But the fact that somehow today and the whole really week so far has been dominated by the Mandelson news cycle and that we, admittedly, we have become part of that Mandelson news cycle. He is now directing journalists as to his innermost thoughts because he thinks it will help him if he makes his own position known. Yes, you're right. You know, if it was a complete fiction that he was going to flee, of course he wants to get that out. He wants to make that absolutely known. But was it also OK for Lindsay Hoyle to hear this and think, well, I'm now in possession of knowledge that might be useful to a police arrest.

9:56Of course, I've got to act on it. He's saying he's duty bound to reform the police. Everyone is feeling, you know, duty bound at this point. but once again it is sucking all the oxygen towards mandelson epstein and this kind of complicity of secrecy right that most people don't know about it just kind of shows of another world

10:17Jon Sopel:in which these people live as you were saying lewis earlier that you've got lizzie hall who calls up the police because he's just come back from the bvi and someone on the beach there told him that you know well i'm hearing that mandelson may be coming to move well someone on the beach or somebody in the administration who had seen something maybe that they thought it was important to pass on. Again, we still don't know. Right. Sure. But I think that, again, as you say, Emily, you know, here is a government that wants to be talking about today energy prices. It wants to be getting its ducks in a row for the, you know, Gordon and Denton by-election, which is a pretty important one and what is already got outsized importance.

10:50Jon Sopel:And yet again, it is the psychodrama around various appointments that just continue to dog them. And you're right, we're paying our part. But I mean, you know, we talk about what is interesting and what we think will drive audience and what we think is important. And the way this is unfolding, I think the Epstein files is massively important. I think what is absolutely certain as well is that the last few weeks have kind of mutated politics and sort of changed the tenor in a way that I don't think we've ever seen before. And I think that was absolutely on display at Prime Minister's Questions today, which is generally a kind of quite bellicose, sort of ill-tempered exchange on every side, which is actually, I think, how we like it.

11:30But anyway, and I mean, Kemi Badenoch, who again had a pretty decent run of questions, Stam wasn't bad either. But putting a question and then using a phrase which I've looked up, I think it's fair to say had never been heard at Prime Minister's Questions before or throughout Parliament's whole history. Listen to this. I'm amazed that while we're trying to talk about student loans, the prime minister has the cheek to talk about my party being smaller. His party is smaller too, including one MP who was arrested for child sex offences. So perhaps before he gets on his high horse, he should ask why his backbenchers are saying that they're being called the paedo defenders party.

12:07Yes, yes. So why don't we get back? So if he... So Kevi Bainot there is talking about another story, But when she's talking about pedo defenders party, that is a phrase which is said to have been uttered at a meeting of the parliamentary Women's Labour Party. And again, I think extraordinary that that is the kind of direction that politics is now going in that, you know, we've got on the floor of the House of Commons, prime minister's questions. Even the word pedo being banded around. Again, not normal, not something that you hear a prime minister's question.

12:35Jon Sopel:I mean, what's interesting about that is that I thought that, you know, I'd heard it from various people that Kemi Badenock had been told by some of the Tory grandees of yesteryear who'd had significant experience in government and fighting elections to get off culture war stuff, stick to the economic message about Labour is taxing too much and spending too much and that you need smaller government, all the rest of it. That is the route to victory. And so to kind of have the ad hominem, the pedo protectors party. I don't think that is a cultural issue, funnily enough, because I think it goes to the heart of where we started, which is somehow the Epstein files, the Epstein story tells us about the vast majority of the population being locked out of this conversation that one percent of the world is having less than one percent.

13:24But I get that she is tapping into something, which is trust. Do you want to try and push forward the idea that actually anyone who's in government now cannot be trusted because they're all part of this massive cover up?

13:38Jon Sopel:But I think that that damages Baden-Ock as well. If you sow cynicism, it affects all parties. And the main losers from this are going to be Labour and Conservative. And you're going to have reform say, look, we're different. You're going to have the Green Party saying, look, we're different. We're not sullied by being in power in the way that these two old main parties are. Honestly, I don't think it damages Labour so much as it damages the brand of politics as a whole and two established parties who are struggling. And I have to say that Gordon and Denton by-election, which happens tomorrow, was sort of ever present throughout PMQs today.

14:14And you heard Keir Starmer addressing first Nigel Farage directly and then what he perceives to be a threat from the Greens.

14:22Jon Sopel:Green Party's policy isn't just irresponsible, it's reprehensible. Legalising, Mr Speaker, cocaine, heroin, ketamine and the rape drug GHB, a drug which we know is used to spike drinks for women. Now whilst we're making that an offence, the Green Party's proposals would shatter lives, increase antisocial behaviour and see drugs use running rife. And I have to say, as the father of a 17 and a half year old son, the idea that the argument is being made by the Greens, that when he turns 18 in just a few months, it would be lawful to provide him with heroin and crack cocaine is absolutely disgusting.

15:06Yeah, as we've been saying, it was quite an ugly Prime Minister's question, not least when Keir Starmer referring to comments from a Reform UK councillor who shared in a Facebook post which said that the Labour MP for Bolsover, Natalie Fleet, she was on the show a couple of weeks ago, should be shot. I think Keir Starmer knew that Nigel Farage had a question before he got up. This is what Keir Starmer said.

15:28Jon Sopel:A death threat was shared by Reform's deputy council leader in Lancashire. against the brilliant member for Bolsover. It said she should be shot. When death threats were made against the member for Clacton, I stood at this dispatch box and condemned them outright. If he has any decency or backbone, he will stand up, apologise, condemn the comments and sack the individual in his parties. Nigel Farage didn't reference the Prime Minister's question at all. He just made a point about the Chagos Islands. This picture was a picture posted of Natalie Fleet, who, of course, as listeners will know, has spoken previously about being groomed and raped as a teenager.

16:23And it was accompanied by a fake quote misattributed to her, which read, I voted against the grooming gang inquiry. That Facebook post was shared by Simon Evans, the deputy leader of Lancashire Council for Reform, cabinet member there as well, and he also re-shared a text accompanying the picture which said, you dozy cow, you should be shot.

16:41Jon Sopel:I think Starmer landed a blow, and yet he was landing a blow just ahead of the by-election tomorrow, but that was deliberately aimed, and I think that Farage has to respond to something. I mean, Evans, the person in question, has apologised to Natalie Fleet. A reform spokesperson said, after investigating the post, the party considers it an honest mistake and will not be taking any action. We accept Councillor Avent's apology and version of events. I mean, of course, as the Prime Minister himself was sort of referring to there, Nigel Farage himself has been the victim of threats of violence and so on in the past, very, very serious ones.

17:15And those were condemned by the Prime Minister and others, as Keir Starmer said. I mean, this is serious stuff. I have to say, if you're listening to this, and OK, let's be honest, most of the population don't watch PMQs, but this kind of stuff gets into the ether of our politics. If you're thinking this is how politicians treat each other and this is the kind of language that's used and this is the kind of threat that they use against each other, then you do end up in a place that says, a pox on the lot of you. I don't feel the need to respect you if you don't respect each other. If this is what happens on Facebook, on social media, with people, with a woman who's come forward, who's clearly talked about her own abuse, her own rape, and has been so honest and so part of this conversation.

18:00If that's kind of your response, then I don't know whether it just... It makes people think that there is no point in deference. There is no point in having a political class. There is no point in sort of assuming that in these hallowed chambers of the Houses of Parliament are going to sort out the problems that are in your daily life. Why would you think that anymore?

18:21Jon Sopel:But it's even worse than that in some ways. Sure, I agree with you, Emily. People are going to say, yeah, plague on all your houses. You're all a rotten bunch of self-seeking bastards. And I hate that, by the way. And I hate that. So do I. But why would anyone think of going into public life? Well, Natalie Fleet said on this show, and she's referenced this as well, it was exactly these sorts of threats of violence and social media kind of commentary, which made both her husband and her children beg her not to go into politics, and which makes her think every week. I mean, she said on this show, you know, if she could be assured that Labour would win a by-election, that she would quite like to stand down because the life is this sort of like absolute toxin is so ubiquitous and commonplace, particularly towards women.

18:57Jon Sopel:Well, in a moment, we'll be joined by the Justice Minister, Sarah Sackman, talking about reforms for the courts, clearing the backlog of cases. Spoiler alert, it's not going to happen very quickly. And also her thoughts on the state of politics and the state of the Labour Party and the Gorton and Denton by-election.

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20:24Jon Sopel:the news agents well we're joined now in the studio by the minister for courts and legal services sarah sackman labour mp for finchley and golders green sarah thank you very much for coming in there is going to be a blitz a court's blitz or a blitz court explain what and why Well, we inherited a massive backlog when we came into government. At the moment, there are 80 ,000 cases outstanding and behind each and every one of those cases, you've got a victim often waiting years for justice, a defendant maybe trying to clear their name with their lives put on hold. Basically, the justice system has broken down and that backlog is getting longer and longer.

21:07So we've had to come up with a plan to tackle it. We're doing it in three ways. First of all, record investment. So we're allowing our courts to sit as much as they can, hear as many cases as they can, including these blitz courts, to try and, if you like, crack through as many of the cases as you can in as short a time as possible. We're modernising, putting new technology into courts to get through it quicker. and the third thing we're doing is bringing forward a bill today which will introduce reforms to deliver swifter justice for victims.

21:35Jon Sopel:Just on that to crack through as many cases as possible and as you know as fast as possible when people say hang on this is justice this is a defendant facing charges they need whatever time is available for them to defend themselves and for people to decide whether guilt or innocence. Absolutely everyone in our system should be guaranteed a fair trial. But one of the problems we've got is as people are waiting longer and longer for justice, we're denying them a fair trial. You know that old phrase, justice delayed is justice denied. It's true. If somebody reports a case at the minute in London, there are people being told that some of those trials won't get on until 2029, 2030.

22:12By the time they get there, people's memories have faded. Witnesses pull out the process. Sometimes victims say, I'm just walking away from all of this and so you don't get a fair trial at all. What we're talking about with blitz courts just to be absolutely clear is you basically take similar kinds of cases and you list them much more aggressively so you give people a trial date for a couple of months away and what that tends to do is it focuses people's minds. If people are innocent and they want to prove that innocence they'll get a fair trial which takes as long as it takes but if actually they realise you know what my time's up I am going to plead guilty it tends to focus minds and allow you to get through the cases a lot more efficiently.

22:51Given what you're announcing today and given your wider reforms as well which we might talk about to jury trials at what point might we expect the justice system to be moving swiftly i.e let's use as a point of comparison which wasn't that swift but getting back to pre-covid levels of speed. Yeah this is a little it like trying to turn an oil tanker around. For years, the justice system has been starved of money. But it's not just a money issue. It's not just a COVID problem that we inherited. It's also the fact that criminal justice has changed. Criminal trials now take twice as long as they did 20 years ago.