air is all the previous civil servants and spin doctors employed in number 10 on the appointment

of Peter Mandelson. How have they managed to escape? Have they invagled Kier-Starmer further into

the mess? He already finds himself. We discuss that. We look also at sort of new,

about what constitutes a mandate. Is it actually an independence parliament or a

NP majority alone? We talk about very good hustings that I was involved in that looked at

the school's starting age and strangely quite a lot of agreement actually across the parties.

Anyway, now for the podcast. Well, hi folks and welcome to this week's Leslie Cast. We are recording after

the parliamentary sessions. The old Foreign Effect Committee have had two evidence sessions

this morning, one with Whitehall Mandarin and the other with the shadowy figure of Morgan McSweeney.

I caught a tiny snippets of both of them, Leslie,

but I think you've diligently looked at them properly.

I sort of thought, well, see, they're going to be one or the other,

and I think wrongly thought the McSweeney one would be sort of tastier. So I'm only looking through the headlines of the Guardian

discussion of the Philip Barton. And boy, he wasn't a happy guy. You know, he seems to be in

this summer at least quite explicit, although he rejects the claim that McSweeney swore at him.

And McSweeney, I think, is also, you know, heaven for fend.

But basically, you know, Barton said he thought Mandelson's links to Epstein would make his

appointment as ambassador difficult and says there was general pressure on the foreign office,

although not in relation to... I can never just stick the boot in and leave it eye in there, can they? No, no, no, it really sort of... Well, let me just stop you there. I think you're asking one question, which actually could be considered as two different questions, and then there was a lot of kind of huffton buffed and tuft and bits. And then they eventually said, well, would you like us to ask both?

He's no, no, no. I've prepared an answer for both of them. And then he's twittering through.

Always with these things, as what Joanna Cherry would call her schmozzle. And if you watched any

of the stuff at any of these Supreme Court cases that have had that's constantly kind of well, this numbered such in the bundle, well, it's numbered a bit in the online bundle and it's just about what's in the papers. But anyway. You've got to hand it to Emily Thornberry. She's like, I think you've got it in front of you. It's page 80 if you'd just like to add in there. And also, I noticed somewhere

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