Hello, I'm Peter Mandelson,
and I'm proud to serve as His Majesty's British Ambassador to the United States of America.
Many people love him.
Others love to hate him.
But to us, he's just Peter.
Had I known then, what I know now, I'd have never appointed him.
Welcome to The State of It, the podcast that promises to take you inside the room where it happens.
I'm Stephen Swinford, the political editor of The Times.
I'm Caroline Wheeler, the political editor of The Sunday Times.
And I'm Patrick McGuire, chief political commentator for The Times, sadly not joined.
On my right side by Gabriel Pogran from The Sunday Times this week.
This week.
There is only one topic, one topic to rule them all, and that topic is Lord Mandelson.
So I'm going to open listeners with a small anecdote from the trip to China.
So Caroline and I were with the Prime Minister,
we accompanied him to China, and we were flying back on Saturday.
And it's fair to say Stammer was in a pretty good mood,
and we did a lobby huddle, which is where all of the press gather around him.
In this case, next to a toilet, it was very cramped, not a lot of space.
And I asked him two questions in that huddle.