Welcome to our bonus edition of The State of It on the Mandelson Files,
which have rocked government and left further questions about Keir Starmer's fundamental judgment,
and they're going to have a long tail and go on for some time.
We're going to discuss the consequences of those files and their release yesterday with me,
Stephen Swinford.
Me, Pasha Bigwine.
And me, Gabriel Povrand.
Excellent.
So we want to just take you inside where the government is on this and how they're trying to deal with it.
And frankly.
It is very,
very difficult for them
because what this does once again is it shows the catastrophic mistake that Keir Starmer made in appointing Lord Mandelson.
It is there, writ large, in black and white, the many red flags about appointing him.
There was the reputational risk about his friendship with Epstein.
There was the fact that he stayed at his apartment in New York.
Everything we knew is out there.
and then there's more.
On top of that we now know that the National Security Advisor,
Jonathan Powell, was very explicit in warning against appointing Mandelson.