Hello, I'm Hugo Rifkin, and now we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day from the Manelson files to whether the left has grown flabby and unfit intellectually at least.

And joining me now, they're fit and unfabby intellectually.

I was going to say intellectually at least, but no, in every way. It's James Marriott. Hello, James.

Hello, good morning. sounding very fit there's James Marriott. Hello, James. Hello, good morning.

Sounding very fit there. And Charlotte Ivers. Hello, Charlotte. How are you? Hello, Hugo. Not feeling particularly fit, I have to say. Indeed. I mean, from where I'm sitting, you're both like Greek gods. Is that HR? Yeah, we've got us doing it again. let's let's start with what will probably be the lasting impact of the so-called

Mandelson files, and it's not to do with the appointment or the vetting of the former ambassador

to the United States.

It's about Pat McFadden, the then-then cabinet office minister.

He texted Peter Mandelson in May 2025 to complain, every meeting I have is who can

we tax in order to pay for benefits for others.

McFadden is now the work in pension secretary, responsible for benefit reform or indeed for the

lack of it. And today's son concludes that Kirstarmer's Labour is the Welfare Party.

Charlotte, this is one of those kind of sort of epithets that's going to be hung around the Labour Party from now on.

It is, isn't it? And everyone keeps talking about that note, dear Chief Secretary to the Treasury, there's no money left, which of course kind of did for the Labour Party for a generation when the Coalition Government arrived in the Treasury to find it. I'm a bit sort of perturbed by this whole thing, to be honest. I was reading through the messages thinking, why am I seeing this? Right. Because it's not like we see anything in there that is a smoking gun. It's not like we see anything in there. You know, it's not like Peter Mandelson. We find out was texting people about trafficking young women or even that he was spilling state secrets. What we see are all of these kind of dirty laundry airing from the Labour Party. And yeah, of course, it's not like they've had a fantastic couple of years. Of course they've all

been winging to each other. And it sort of strikes me as likely to make people less willing to

communicate properly and also more likely to start destroying

their own messages before they get asked to hand them over, which is bad for transparency more

broadly and for record keeping if we every few years decide that we want to see everyone's text.

I think it's not conducive to good government.

I sort of see where you're coming from.

If they weren't sending text messages like this,

you'd sort of think, why the hell not?

...