Starmer under pressure as Epstein ties sink Mandelson

0:03Hi, it's Rachel Abbott and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, make sure you head over to standard.co.uk. Coming up, we join The Standard's chief theatre critic, Nick Curtis, for cow deer at London's Royal Court. This is all basically a foley routine designed to take you into the lives of a cow and a deer during a day on a rural farm. They break down vegetation with their fingers to make the sound of the animals sort of gnawing at vegetation. They scrape cloth and possibly gravel. With no speech and just sound effects.

0:45Will this be a hit or a miss?

0:54But first, Lord Peter Mandelson has been sacked as the UK's ambassador to the US. Mandelson was sacked on Thursday after emails emerged in which the peer offered support to Jeffrey Epstein, even as he faced jail for sex offences against minors. Despite the Prime Minister being aware of his relations with Epstein, a Cabinet Minister has insisted that if the full extent of their relationship were understood, Mandelson wouldn't have been appointed. Critics have also turned their fire on the PM's Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, who was instrumental in the appointment. To walk us through everything, we're joined by The Standard's Chief Political Correspondent, Rachel Burford.

1:37Rachel, let's go back to the start. For anyone who doesn't know, could you walk us through the details of his sacking in a bit more detail? Yes, sure. The Prime Minister sacked Peter Mandelson from his role as US ambassador yesterday. This follows multiple revelations about Mandelson's relationship with the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein. Basically, there's been a lot of questions in the last week or so about how appropriate Peter Mandelson is for that job as US ambassador, which is the most senior diplomat, British diplomat position in Washington. And it comes after lots of emails were unearthed by The Sun and Bloomberg that show Lord Mandelson had supported Epstein when the banker was being investigated for sexual offences and that he continued his friendship with Epstein for quite a long period of time, even after he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution.

2:38There was a lot of questions about this at PMQs on Wednesday. Keir Starmer stood up and said he had confidence in his US ambassador. But less than 24 hours later, it came out that he'd actually been removed from the position and he was no longer the US ambassador in Washington. And what has Downing Street said? Peter Mandelson's relationship with Epstein had been known about before he was appointed to that role. But the prime minister's spokesman said yesterday that this sort of big cache of emails showed that, you know, Keir Starmer was not aware of the sort of the extent of the relationship.

3:17And these emails, the Prime Minister found reprehensible was the word his spokesman used. And he said that the depth and extent of the relationship was new information. And that is why he had essentially fired his ambassador. Why was Mandelson good for relations? He had a good relationship with Donald Trump, didn't he? Yeah, so I think when Peter Mandelson was, you know, announced the new US ambassador, he was always going to be a kind of controversial figure. You know, he has this, the Prince of Darkness reputation is what people used to call him. When he was a government minister, he had been sacked on a couple of occasions because of his, you know, relationships and dealings with extremely wealthy individuals and the fallout from those.

4:00He is a figure that has been marred in scandals throughout his political career. But, you know, He was also seen as a very effective political operator. He's always courted relationships with extremely wealthy individuals like Epstein and actually like Donald Trump, who also has been battling rumours about his own relationship with Epstein. What sort of government ministers and MPs have said at the time was that his appointment was a political judgment, that he was an unconventional ambassador and an unconventional figure was needed to deal with an unconventional presidential administration under Donald Trump.

4:40His departure follows several high-profile resignations from Sir Keir Starmer's government, including his deputy, Angela Rayner, who quit last week over a tax scandal. This must add fuel to the fire over the PM's political judgment. Yes, it definitely does. And there has been a lot of people out on the media around today sort of sticking the knife in and saying that this does not paint the prime minister in a particularly good light. Over the summer, we had Roshanara Ali, who was the homelessness minister, have to resign after it was revealed that she'd effectively made tenants living in one of her homes homeless and then hiked the rent.

5:17We had the housing secretary just last week resign over avoiding a housing tax, essentially, which she said she did inadvertently. But it still was a sort of terrible set of headlines for the government. And now you've got the US ambassador being sacked, you know, a week after the deputy prime minister resigned over his relationship with an extremely well-known sex offender. These are not good headlines for the government. And it comes in just a week before Donald Trump is set to have his big state visit to Britain next week. So it's all a bit of a mess at the moment. And there have certainly been some figures out on the media around this morning.

5:54the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, sort of slammed Keir Starmer's appalling judgment, he said, of appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. It's called into question the vetting process and how much the Prime Minister really did know about Epstein's relationship with Peter Mandelson before he appointed him. His vacancy has been filled in the interim by the deputy head of the British Embassy in Washington, James Roscoe. But the official post remains a mystery. Who will replace him, Rachel? That is a mystery at the moment. There are obviously a few candidate names that have been bandied around.

6:30People like perhaps David Miliband, Ed Miliband's brother, even former big political figures in the Conservative administration like George Osborne or David Cameron. On Thursday, Number 10 was suggesting that James Roscoe would oversee Donald Trump's state visit next week as interim ambassador. But there have been some suggestions this morning that Donald Trump was a little bit put out by the fact he wasn't told first about Lord Mandelson's sacking and that there was some pressure from the United States to select a new ambassador before the state visit. But I think, you know, after all of the, you know, all of the problems that Sakhir Starmer has faced and all of the questioning about his political judgment in the last few weeks and days, he'll want someone who's properly vetted, who is uncontroversial and who's not going to be creating, you know, these big headlines that we've seen.

7:26Let's go to a break. Coming up in part two. I think part of the message is to get us thinking about the world as more than human-centric and beyond that to think about the climate crisis that has been brought about by the human centricity of the way that we live our lives these days. The Standard's Chief Theatre Critic Nick Curtis on Cow, Deer at the Royal Court. Welcome back. An experimental show titled Cow, Deer is now on at the Royal Court. From Katie Mitchell, Nina Seagull and Melanie Wilson, it's running until October 11th. Featuring a quartet of performers and foley artists who portray the lives of a cow and a deer, Could this be London's strangest performance?

8:15To tell us all about it, we're joined by chief theatre critic Nick Curtis, who has reviewed the show for The Standard. He's also the co-host of podcast The London Theatre Review. So Nick, tell us about Cowdeer. It is a live Foley art show. Foley is the art of adding sound effects, originally into radio, TV and film, but it has been used in theatre before, I think most significantly in Barbarian Sound Studio, the adaptation of the film. But this is all basically a Foley routine designed to take you into the lives of a cow and a deer. So you basically have four performers on stage. Two of them are actors and Foley artists in their own right and the two other actors, I think, have been sort of trained up to do Foley by them.

9:02But basically they are creating the sound of the animals moving through the landscape, rain falling around them, them cropping and chewing grass and vegetables and leaves and so on. The way they react to recorded sound effects of cars going by and planes going by, and also to the humans who are also created by the furry artists in a booth at the back of the stage. But what's actually the message that it's trying to portray? Well, there are multiple layers of it. I should say it's been co-created by the director Katie Mitchell for about 20, 30 years possibly, has been at the very cutting edge of the avant-garde and is constantly pushing the sort of possibilities and boundaries of the medium of theatre, writer, Nina Siegel, and sound designer, Melanie Wilson.

9:46So it's the three of them working on it together. And I think part of the message is to get us thinking about the world as more than human-centric. And beyond that, to think about the climate crisis that has been brought about, the creators argue, by the human centricity of the way that we live our lives these days. Does that message of climate change get through, though? Have they been successful? It does quite a good job of sort of making the human world feel distant and making you feel close to these animals. There are recorded sound effects of particularly the cow lowing and snorting, particularly when she's giving birth, which is a very, very vivid moment.

10:27You get a very real sense of them, as I say, moving through the landscape of the atmosphere around them, of them sort of pausing apprehensively whenever humans are nearby. What you don't get is any sense of their interior life. And how could you? Because who knows how a cow thinks. So all you really get is the sense of the sort of impulses to eat, to defecate and to run away. You mentioned Katie Mitchell earlier. Has this show done her any justice? I think she is, to my knowledge, the theatre maker who is thinking most sharply about climate and the environment and the future of the planet. And she has done so for over 10 years and has tried to sort of address that in theatre, despite the fact that the climate crisis is generally just too big and too sort of existential for any of us to grapple with.

11:20I don't think she succeeded with that here, but I think if you look at it as her attempts to always, as I say, broaden and explore the possibilities of theatre, I think it's great. It's a totally unique show. As I say, Foley Alt has been done before but only as a component. This is the first time it's been centre stage in a theatrical production. Do you think it's worth people getting down to see? Yeah, I mean, another critic I saw sort of said, it's not Mamma Mia, so if you want Mamma Mia, don't go and see this, which is a fairly blunt way of putting it, but not everyone will enjoy it because it's only an hour long.

11:53As I say, there's no words in it. There is a script, but it's basically just all stage directions about what the cow and the deer are doing. And the deer is largely silent apart from breathing for most of the time. So, you know, there's not a lot of action, but it is a fascinating thing watching the Foley artists at work. They're incredibly focused as they create these environments. You know, you do sense, and the two of them, the two lead ones, Tom Espiner and Ruth Sullivan, effectively sort of play the cow and the deer each. And they're really invested in playing them. You know, you can tell they really think they are these elements of how they're on stage.

12:27You mentioned in your article that the stage manager actually speaks to you before the show begins. Yeah, a stage manager came on and said, if you want to shut your eyes, you can and just immerse yourself in the sort of auditory landscape. But I think that's denying yourself half of the experience, because watching the creation of the sound effects is in itself a piece of theatre. They use lots of things like they break down vegetation with their fingers to make the sound of the animals sort of gnawing at vegetation. They scrape cloth and possibly gravel. It's quite dimly lit, so you can't always see what the techniques they're using are.

13:00And they use things to recreate the sound of the animals' hooves. They flap flannels, which sounds like birds flying away as the animals pass. So, I mean, watching all this happening in front of your eyes is quite magical. Definitely. Nick, you've also got a live recording of your theatre podcast, the London Theatre Review, at the Royal Court. Will you also be bringing out some sound effects? I don't think we'll be doing sound effects in that one. We're really excited, very sort of energised about it, and slightly nervous because we've all done live events before. We've never done a live version of our podcast before.

13:32This is myself, Nancy Durrington, Nick Clark, with our producer, Tim Banno. So we're going to be on the stage of the Royal Court at 12 noon on Saturday the 20th for an hour, reviewing Born With Teeth and The Lady From The Sea, two of the hottest shows around at the moment. And I'm going to be talking to David Byrne, the artistic director of the Royal Court. He's about 18 months in post there about how that job's going and how his sort of regime fits in with the history of this very radical, very important theatre that's slap bang in the middle of posh Chelsea. It's part of the Chelsea Arts Festival, so it's going to be a really interesting event.

14:09And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head on over to standard.co.uk. If you'd like to drop us a line, please do at podcasts at standard.co.uk. This show returns on Monday at 4pm. We'll see you then.