Starmer is facing his judgment day over Mandelson missteps
Keir Starmer has spent much of the last 24 hours working on a plan for what senior government figures are already describing as his “judgment day”: his showdown with MPs on Monday over the latest Peter Mandelson revelations.That the prime minister was apparently not told of Mandelson’s vetting failure has provoked incredulity across Westminster and accusations he sacked a senior civil servant to save his premiership.It has also shone a spotlight again on what many feel is Starmer’s biggest failing: his political judgment.Even though some proclaimed Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s latest “Trump whisperer” a stroke of genius at the time, the risks were always clear.It was common knowledge Starmer’s pick for UK ambassador to Washington had been sacked from cabinet twice, had an ongoing relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and had business links with China.
It did not need the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team to raise red flags and warn the prime minister of the reputational risk of appointing him (though it did).Had Starmer been aware that Mandelson had failed his vetting, allies say, he would have blocked the appointment.Of course, had he been aware and it had gone ahead, he would be in an even messier predicament than he is now.Instead, the prime minister looks like a man who is not really in control, incurious and uninterested in what is really going on inside his government.While he says he was “staggered” not to have been told, it is hard to escape the impression that, if he had asked a few questions, he may have been able to find out.
So one of the things puzzling MPs right now is why, at no point, did the prime minister or his political aides think to ask about Mandelson’s deep security vetting,Or indeed, that the system was not – until last week – able to tell him,When Starmer was told by officials on Tuesday night that Mandelson had failed his vetting, he immediately – we’re told – demanded they establish all the facts so he could update parliament,He will no doubt be asked on Monday why he did not think it was worth sharing even just the headline fact with parliament at PMQs last Wednesday,Ministers are expected to correct the record as soon as they realise they have made a mistake – inadvertently or otherwise.
Instead, MPs learned from the Guardian, with cabinet ministers sharing stories of finding out while in mid-air, on trains, out door-knocking – all taken by surprise and adding to the sense of disarray gripping the government.Starmer promised to restore stability and order when he came to power after years of Tory chaos.There were high hopes this former lawyer – “Mr Rules” as one cabinet minister described him at the time – would bring back propriety.It is not just his MPs who have been left disappointed by the Mandelson saga, but the wider public as well.What could be regarded as a story about Westminster process is, in fact, a much more significant one that goes to the heart of what sort of man the prime minister is, and what sort of government he leads.
Starmer was already facing a difficult few weeks, with Labour bracing for a rout in May’s local and devolved elections, and further economic fallout expected at home from the Iran crisis.The prime minister’s team had carefully prepared how they were going to get him through it, and were taking some succour from the quiet in the Labour ranks as he navigated his way through a difficult international picture.Labour MPs, many of whom have been agitating for change at the top for months, stepped back from the brink when actually presented with an opportunity: the party’s Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, calling for him to go back in February.Downing Street aides allowed themselves a sigh of relief.But Labour MPs will be watching closely – waiting to be convinced – when Starmer appears before them on Monday.
And again when that sacked civil servant, Oliver Robbins, answers questions of the foreign affairs committee on Tuesday.They know the public has been losing faith in the political system for years.Every twist and turn of the Mandelson scandal accelerates that.So when another opportunity presents itself to change leadership, they may take it.
Winners and judges out of pocket as £20,000 writing awards appear to have closed
A competition for new writers that promised a £20,000 prize fund appears to have shut down, leaving winners and judges, including a Booker prize-winning novelist, out of pocket.Established in 2022, the Plaza Prizes last year offered 10 awards that were judged by the “finest poets and writers in the world”.However, some of the judges for the 2025 competition say they were not paid, and a number of winners say they had their entries withdrawn after being accused of using AI to create their work – allegations they strenuously denied.One judge, the 2021 Booker prize winner Damon Galgut, described the competition as a “scam” after he did not get paid for his work judging a fiction section of the annual competition.Anthony Joseph, who won the 2022 TS Eliot poetry prize, also says he was not paid for his work
Zelda taught me the importance of play – and has helped me deal with work, parenting and grief
I initially dismissed the Wind Waker’s cartoonish visuals as juvenile. But now I try to carry the game’s sense of joy into all aspects of my lifeI had a complicated relationship with video games when I was a teenager. I had straightforwardly, wholeheartedly loved the Nintendo games that I’d grown up with, tumbling around primary-coloured dreamscapes in Super Mario 64 and having the time of my life. But as I grew into a pretentious young adult in the early 00s, I started to want more from games, and I wasn’t finding it. So many of them were mindless, or juvenile, or needlessly violent
From Lee Cronin’s The Mummy to Zayn: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Lee Cronin’s The MummyOut now You probably know what The Mummy is, but do you know what a Lee Cronin is? Allow us to assist: he’s the Irish director responsible for effective indie horror The Hole in the Ground and the highest grossing entry in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rises. His version of this classic horror sees a journalist (Jack Reynor) and his wife (Laia Costa) reunited with their child who went missing in the desert eight years ago, with nightmarish consequences.The Wizard of the KremlinOut now Jude Law is, wait for it, Vladimir Putin, with Paul Dano as fictional spin doctor Vadim Baranov in a new thriller from Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper). Based on the l’Académie française prize-winning debut novel from Giuliano da Empoli.Miroirs No 3Out now German director Christian Petzold returns with a new film (the title refers to the piano solo by Ravel) starring his regular collaborator Paula Beer as a classical piano student recuperating in rural idyll afrer a dramatic car crash
Lost Federico García Lorca verse discovered 93 years after it was written
A previously unknown verse attributed to Federico García Lorca has been discovered 93 years after the celebrated Spanish poet and playwright is believed to have jotted it on the back of one of his manuscripts.Lorca is thought to have written the eight-line poem in 1933 while working on the collection Diván del Tamarit, a homage to the Arab poets of his native Granada.The newly discovered verse was found on the reverse of a manuscript of one of the Tamarit poems – Gacela de la raíz amarga – which the flamenco singer and Lorca enthusiast Miguel Poveda bought from a German antiquarian.It has since been verified by the Lorca expert Pepa Merlo and will feature in a forthcoming book.The brief verse, composed three years before Lorca was murdered in the early days of the Spanish civil war, reveals the poet’s familiar preoccupation with the passing of time: “The clock sings / I count the hours mechanically / Seven o’clock; twelve o’clock / It’s all the same / I am not here / It is the mark of flesh / That I left behind when I departed / So as to know my place / Upon my return
Stephen Colbert on Trump’s Vatican feud: ‘Damn, the pope just read you for filth’
On Thursday night, late-night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s tense back and forth with the pope over the war in Iran, high gas prices and outlandish details from a new biography of Robert F Kennedy Jr.On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert focused on Maga’s escalating feud with the pope. Reacting to comments by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, that Pope Leo XIV misunderstood the concept of the just war doctrine, Colbert said incredulously:“Correcting the pope on Catholic theology is a little like going into the woods and saying: ‘Excuse me Mr Bear, do you really think this is the appropriate place for you to be pooping? Who’s going to clean that up?”Colbert went on to explain that the “just war” is a concept of Catholic doctrine that goes back to the earliest days of the church. “It must be in self-defense once all peace efforts have failed,” said the host. “Only then can the war can be said to have ‘just cause’
‘Packaging evil into something funny’: is making fun of Trump now just ‘clownwashing’?
During Donald Trump’s first term, as his lies distorted reality and gaslighted Americans, Stephen Colbert said his goal was to remind his audience: “Hey, you’re not crazy.”But watching political comedy during Trump’s second term – be it a deranged Saturday Night Live impression of a cabinet member, or a rapid-fire late-night monologue full of ICE jokes – it’s hard not to wonder: are we placating ourselves from the enormity of Trump-induced horror?It’s not a new concern, of course. Weak mockery of Nazi leaders may have allowed Germans to “let off steam” while the regime solidified its power. Decades later, as The Daily Show was taking off, some pundits feared it encouraged apathy by rolling its eyes at the political sphere. As the US inches closer to autocracy, how can comedy work against repression, rather than sanitizing its targets – call it “clownwashing”?“We are in a hyper-individualistic, transactional, consumerist kind of culture
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