Tories accuse Starmer of not revealing all his Mandelson messages – UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. Keir Starmer heads the cabinet today as Labor MPs ponder the scope of the Peter Mandelson files. In terms of Mandelson-related revelations, the impact is probably not as bad as many MPs feared; Policy nail An official said the mood last night was “at the high end” of expectations. Here’s our main story on the data release: Henry Dyer and Pippa Crear.

There will be more news today.

The Mandelson papers were only released because of a modest address offered by the Conservative Party. Kemi Badenoch initiated the move in part because she suspected that Starmer had concealed all he knew about Mandelson’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him as ambassador. Although some material related to Epstein has been suppressed due to the police investigation, the documents released yesterday did not provide any new evidence to support this claim. But the joy of a fishing trip is what you can never catch now, and the Tories struck gold yesterday with Pat McFadden’s revelation that Labor MPs are always joking about “who we can tax to benefit others”. Many right-wing newspapers are discussing this issue today, and it has the potential to be as damaging to the party as Liam Byrne’s famous “there’s no money left” remark (another disrespectful phrase intended to be private and used cruelly but unfairly by the Conservatives).

Conservatives can sit back and take the ‘job well done’ view. However Alex BurghartThe Shadow Cabinet Secretary was giving interviews this morning and told the Today program that he thought Starmer had not disclosed the full Mandelson messages.

Burgart said:

There are many things missing. Anyone looking at those 1,500 pages will see acres of white space, those asterisks, massive amounts of redactions.

Some of this is good because these are national security issues, our relations with Americans.

However, it is clear that there is a lot of unpublished material. And we know that all ministers were asked to forward WhatsApp messages to Peter Mandelson and many ministers, some very senior people, did not respond at all.

There is almost no exchange of views between the Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson. There is no exchange between people like Peter Kyle, who is a very close ally of Peter Mandelson. So it’s clear that some things have been deleted or lost.

Asked whether he claimed messages from the Prime Minister were being withheld, Burghart replied: “If they were not delivered, I suspect they were deleted.”

He pointed out: Yesterday in the House of Commons When the Prime Minister’s principal secretary, Darren Jones, was asked to reassure Starmer that he had not deleted any messages from Mandelson, Jones was unable to give that assurance. Burgart continued:

It is not credible that there was so little exchange of views between Mandelson and the prime minister. There is almost nothing on record.

So either these things are deliberately hidden or deleted.

But in answer to your question, yes, it is obvious that there are still things missing. I don’t know if we will see it or not.

Here is the agenda of the day.

9.30: Keir Starmer chair cabinet.

9.30: Former SNP chief executive and Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband Peter Murrell is back at the high court in Edinburgh; where, after his guilty plea to embezzlement charges, he will be held in a “narrative hearing” that will lay out agreed-upon explanations for his crimes.

11.30: Energy secretary Ed Miliband answers questions in the House of Commons.

Afternoon: A lobby briefing is being held in Downing Street.

12.15: Mayor of London Sadiq Khan will give a speech at the SXSW event and call for a ban on social media for under 16s.

After 12.30: Police minister Sarah Jones is to make a statement to MPs about the murder of Henry Nowak and the police response to it.

Lunch time: Andy Burnham makes a campaign visit to Makerfield.

13.30: Rhun ap Iorwerth is taking questions in the Senedd for the first time as first minister.

14.30: Scottish first minister John Swinney is taking questions at Holyrood on Tuesday for the first time under the new plan for FMQs to be held twice a week, rather than just once a week.

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