OV9

Good timing that this all came out just after PMQ's!

Non-exec until 2017 of a Russian conglomerate which includes a major defence technology manufacturer with an ex-Ruskie PM as Chair (annexation of Crimea 2014) also highlights a questionable decision.. maybe no one at that level is “really” clean? What a sorry state of affairs.. OV9 political party can’t come soon enough!

https://news.sky.com/story/politics-lat ... eblog-body

Alex88 wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2026 2:57 pm Not looking good for Starmer. At all.

He said he wasn't aware of the extent of Mandelson's relationship with Epstein, but it's increasingly looking like that wasn't true..

I dunno, so far the release doesn't really tell me much of anything. Starmer’s Director of Communications at the time said to Starmer something like he was satisfied with Peter Mandelson’s responses when questioned about his contact with Epstein.

If you're the PM (or indeed anyone in a senior leadership role) you've got enough on your plate that you have to take information from your advisors and make a call. I can well see how the decision making process might have happened in terms of the benefits of Madleson's links to big dogs in the US if he'd been told broadly that the Epstein links weren't significant. Starmer was foolish to take the risk given the potential dirt on him, but we already knew that.

I still don't see any evidence that Starmer acted in a dishonest way, or without integrity.

Maybe that will come out, but as far as I can tell so far, this is nothing new.

There’s a fair amount being hung on someone being “friends with someone who broke the law*” that gets ignored in plenty of other situations.

(*yes, it was some pretty disgusting breaks.)

Everyone is being pretty coy about it - yes, there was a risk hiring Mandy, but we needed someone in the same billionaire pedo circles as the people he was dealing with, so we dragged him out of multiple sackings to do the dirty work.

The Russian Non-executive stuff and the sharing financial details with Epstein is obviously an issue.