07/02/2026
The Week in Westminster
BBC
4.0 • 258 Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Guardian's political editor Pippa Crerar assesses the latest developments at Westminster.
The Mandelson scandal dominated the week and Pippa discusses it with Labour MP Natalie Fleet, herself a survivor of grooming and a member of the Women and Equalities Committee and senior Conservative MP, Sir Bernard Jenkin.
To debate the government's EU reset, Pippa brought together Lord Peter Lilley, a former Conservative cabinet minister and long-term Eurosceptic. And the MP Anneliese Dodds, who is a former chair of the Labour party and was previously a member of the European parliament.
Labour MP Chris Curtis and Kate Ogden, a higher education expert from the Institute for Fiscal Studies talk about student loans.
And historian Sir Anthony Seldon and seasoned journalist and political biographer Anne Perkins discuss where the Mandelson scandal ranks in the long history of political scandals.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | This is Pippa Carreira from The Guardian with The Week in Westminster. |
| 0:10.0 | Political hyperbole is a regular feature of Westminster life, but in recent days all the superlatives |
| 0:16.0 | have felt justified, as Kirstarman navigated his most difficult week yet as Prime Minister. |
| 0:22.3 | It began late last Sunday night when Peter Mandelson quit the Labour Party, saying he didn't |
| 0:27.8 | want to cause further embarrassment over his links to the convicted child sex offender, Geoffrey |
| 0:32.7 | Epstein. But it was too late, the drip, drip of documents from the US Department of Justice over the following days, |
| 0:40.8 | appearing to show that Mandelson forwarded sensitive information to Epstein, |
| 0:44.9 | has unleashed anger and dismay inside Downing Street, across the Labour Party and beyond. |
| 0:51.9 | Kirstama once again faced questions about his political judgment for appointing |
| 0:56.2 | Mandelson the UK's ambassador to Washington in the first place. He addressed the issue at Prime |
| 1:01.8 | Minister's questions. |
| 1:02.8 | Mandelson betrayed our country, our Parliament and my party. Mr Speaker, he lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship |
| 1:16.4 | with Epstein before and during his tenure as ambassador. I regret appointing him. If I knew then, |
| 1:24.3 | what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government. |
| 1:32.3 | But Kemi Badernock, the Conservative leader, had this question. Can the Prime Minister tell us, did the official security vetting he received |
| 1:38.4 | mentioned Mandelson's ongoing relationship with the paedophile, Geoffrey Epstein? |
| 1:44.4 | Prime Minister? |
| 1:45.9 | Yes, it did. |
| 1:48.8 | The mood among Labour MPs darkened, |
| 1:52.0 | and with a police investigation and hundreds of thousands of documents |
| 1:55.6 | relating to Mandelson's appointment due to be released, |
... |
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