Hello, hello, I'm Hugo Rifkin, and now we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day

from the end of Peter Manelson's long and winding Labour career, we assume, to Zat Polanski

wants him to legalise drugs while saying he's never tried drugs or alcohol in his life.

And we'll also listen to some new, but equally wise words from Jacob

Rees-Mogg. Well, I actually agree with what Sebastian Payne wrote in the times recently. Excellent taste that man. Excellent taste. I am joined by, as luck would have it, Seb Payne. Hello, Seb. Thank you very much, Hugo. It's great time. Don't thank me. Thank Jacob. Thank you for the clip, I should say, it's great endorsement to have

and Jacob always said,

very wise, fantastic fantastic wonderful man and also uh by charlotte ivers now the only person in this whole studio who doesn't have her own jacobre's mod clip that's devastating yeah i've only ever written very disabliging things about him so i suspect yeah but um yeah yeah well but maybe we can get in touch and ask him to say something nice about you. That would be good. Jacob, if you're listening, you can send it in as a voice note. That would be absolutely fine. Let's talk about the big news of the morning. Probably will be the big news of the week. One would assume. This is the Epstein emails, the Epstein documents. Lord Mandelson has quit the Labour Party

after further allegations about his relationship with Geoffrey Epstein. He denies

receiving about £55,000 from Epstein, something which appeared in files released over the weekend.

He says he has no memory or records of any transaction. He and Andrew Matt Batton-Winzer

are facing calls to speak to US lawmakers about what they

know of Epstein's crimes. Charlotte, I've lived quite a life. I don't think I've ever forgotten

getting 55,000 pounds from somebody. Yes, I like the quotes that he gave, which was basically,

I'm going to investigate this. And you think, okay, I can investigate my bank accounts for a spare

$55,000 very quickly, I think investigate my bank accounts for a spare $55,000 very

quickly, I think. But look, some people's financial affairs are more complicated, I suppose.

I mean, if one is a billionaire, a millionaire, if one is running a business with a high turnover,

one can understand getting, receiving that kind of amount of money and not necessarily being able to keep track of it. He was the business secretary. Yeah, Peter Mandelson, he's just such a remarkable figure, isn't he? I know it's the most boring thing you can possibly say about Peter Mandelson. He keeps coming back and then he keeps having another scandal. But you sort of look at that and you just go, this is spectacular. How many times

did you already had to resign from government positions? And then you came back and you thought,

well, we don't know. He claims he's not sure himself. I'm just going to take a bunch of money

from this random, extremely dodgy guy, despite being a frontline politician. It's the remarkable,

kind of indomitable human spirit of it all is almost impressive

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