The Joy of Six 1536

"Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of right-wing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grown ups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured." This seems a good day to air again this Neal Lawson theory.

Prem Sikka on the curse of the finance industry: "Private equity takes over existing businesses with finance from banks, insurance companies, pension funds and wealthy individuals seeking higher returns. It acquires control but injects little share capital. Takeover targets are loaded with the secured debt, often routed through opaque offshore entities, and are expected to pay it off."

Matt Gallagher says the Online Safety Act is forcing us to hand over personal data to unregulated overseas corporations with questionable privacy records.

"Behind every great director ... is a great editor – and as the tributes paid earlier this month to the late Marcia Lucas, Oscar-winning editor of Star Wars: Episodes IV to VI, and former wife of creator George Lucas, reminded us, that editor is often a woman." Bethany Elliott investigates a familiar dynamic in male-dominated Hollywood.

Carrie Marshall goes to see the B52s.

"She grows smaller. Was she approximately human-sized in her wearing-a-pinny-and-doing-the-laundry phase, but then hedgehog-sized at the end? In the final image, she is a completely naturalistic hedgehog4. She looks like a little brown aubergine. So it's possible that at the end of his story – shudder – Samuel Whiskers has grown bigger." Sam Leith is worried: how big are Beatrix Potter's animals?

The fault, dear Mandy, is not in your stars, but in yourself

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Someone once  asked Max Clifford: "Max, if you're so brilliant at public relations, why does everyone think you're a cunt?"

Similarly, I would like to ask Peter Mandelson why, if he's such a master of the dark arts, he's always being found out.

Perhaps the answer is to be found in this character sketch by John Crace:

Betrayal is Mandelson’s lifeblood. It’s there in his treatment of Wes Streeting. Poor trusting Wes. A man more used to stabbing others in the back. Wes looked up to Mandy. Treated him as a mentor. How did Peter repay him? By bitching about him being "pathetic" and going through an "early mid-life crisis". 

Then there’s Pat McFadden. Peter encourages Pat to confide in him. Gets him to say the government is directionless. That Keir is weak. That Labour MPs just go on about what taxes to raise so they can give welfare payments to others. Pat’s reward? To be dismissed in an email to Patrick Vallance as an insignificant lightweight.

Nor is Keir Starmer spared. There’s no sense of gratitude for the prime minister having taken a punt on him for the Washington job. For Peter that was no more than he had rightly deserved. The culmination of a lifetime’s brown-nosing the rich, the corrupt and the powerful. So Mandelson happily trash talks Keir to anyone willing to listen. "Rubbish in, rubbish out."

He doesn’t even bother to conceal what he's doing. He’s never happier than when he’s promoting discontent and division. Turns out he hates Labour every bit as much as the Tories do.

The Joy of Six 1520

"I saw a man wearing what seemed to be a hybrid of Hell’s Angels and Crusader outfit, with horns protruding from his shoulders, but I can’t be sure whether this was a political identity or Game Of Thrones fancy dress. Those two are very close together in the imagination of 'Western crusaders', judging from some of their on-line output." Discontinued Notes was in London on Saturday, the day of the Unite the Kingdom march.

James Graham suggests Andy Burnham's attempt at a political heist may turn out more Fargo than Ocean's Eleven: "He’s already watered down his commitment on rejoining the EU, something Wes Streeting is having fun undermining. This follows the 'Red Wall' seat logic of not challenging Reform on their favourite topic. We should not be at all surprised therefore if he waters down his criticisms of Labour’s hostile policies on immigration."

John Lanchester is our guide to the extraordinary world of money laundering. He explains why, when we're all using cash less and less, there is more of it in circulation than ever.

"The government has kept tight controls on the research into cannabis-based medicines, making it prohibitively expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare for scientists to build up the evidence base that would be needed for a wide rollout of the treatment on the NHS." Kojo Koram explains why the legalisation of medical cannabis has had so little effect on the patients who might benefit from it.

Amy Boucher explores the Devil's immanence in Shropshire: "Throughout Shropshire, the Devil is referred to in familiar terms, with epithets such as 'Uncle Joseph', 'Owd Nick', 'Owd Scratch' and 'Owd Mon' used to describe him. These appellations portray a stark familiarity and provide a sense of personhood to the forces that the Devil may represent."

"Beyond his unusual appearance and miraculous shots, there was further mystique because everyone thought they were watching an Indian prince. His skills were clearly a product of the East: mystical, unusual, magical. To many, he was a conjurer. And Ranjitsinhji played on the association, knowing that it helped to paint the picture he wanted. Because nothing was quite as it appeared." Giles Wilcock on the Edwardian conjurer of runs and myths.

Keir Starmer's 10 pledges from his leader leadership campaign

It's clear Keir Starmer never believed in much of what was contained in these pledges. They were written for him so he would appeal to Labour members in the party's last leadership election.

More and more, I favour Neal Lawson's account of how we ended up with a prime minister who possesses so few of the qualities you look for in a political leader:

Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of right-wing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. 

At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grown ups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured. 

But no one reckoned with Covid, Tory turmoil and the collapse of the SNP. Suddenly Keir Starmer wasn’t going to just lead Labour to a better defeat and a springboard for victory next time. Against the odds, he was going to win. Just as Jeremy Corbyn was Labour’s accidental leader in 2015, Starmer was the party’s accidental prime minister in 2024.

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Martin Parr looks at successful and unsuccessful attempts to depose a prime minister: "Labour, significantly, has never toppled a prime minister. It’s not in the culture of so cooperativist a party: there’s no equivalent of the 1922 Committee. And whenever it might have happened, the challenger blinked: Herbert Morrison with Attlee; Roy Jenkins with Wilson; David Miliband with Brown; Wes Streeting may have just joined the roster of the rueful."

Sumaiya Motara on the brutal contest for low-paid work: "It’s like The Hunger Games, but you’re all trying to get a job in a shop where you’re going to be folding clothes all day, for just over minimum wage."

"The case took a dramatic turn in November when Erin’s teenage son ... ran away from his father’s home and hired his own solicitor. After a period in foster care and a series of urgent hearings, he was later reunited with his mother for their first Christmas together in six years." Hannah Summers reports on a hearing that highlights the issue of unregulated psychologists appearing in court as expert witnesses.

Some major news organisations are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. They are doing so largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using it as a back door for large-scale scraping. Mark Graham argues that these concerns, though understandable, are unfounded.

"Whilst Landlord continues to power its way across the country ... it has to be hoped that the company doesn't forget its roots and the locality that sustained it for much of its existence." Real Ale, Real Music visits Keighley, home of the brewer Timothy Taylor.

Robert Hugill praises the new Opera North production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes.

A conspiracy theory from Neal Lawson: Keir Starmer was never meant to be prime minister

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Their influence on the far right means I don't enjoy conspiracy theories as much as I used to, but let's give a hearing to Neal Lawson in the Guardian:

Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of rightwing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. 

At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grownups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured.

But no one reckoned with Covid, Tory turmoil and the collapse of the SNP. Suddenly Keir Starmer wasn't going to just lead Labour to a better defeat and a springboard for victory next time. Against the odds, he was going to win. 

Just as Jeremy Corbyn was Labour's accidental leader in 2015, Starmer was the party’s accidental prime minister in 2024.

This theory is firmly unsourced, but I have always been puzzled at Labour commentators confidence that Starmer would make a good prime minister when he had such a slight political record to be judged on.