Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you very much for tuning in.

And you can probably guess what I will be

reflecting on in our time together. And then after my reflections on the latest twist of the

Mandelson-Starma, McSweeney, Oli-Robbins saga, over to your questions. and in our never-ending debate, we'll be reflecting more on defence spending.

Some brilliant emails of differing views in our never-ending debate.

Before all of that, a quick reminder, a rock and roll politics is live this Saturday at the Cambridge Literary Festival.

So you can have a day out in Cambridge going on the river, smoking a jitaine and a glass of wine.

I'm going to talk about I'm going crazy.

Anyway, it's at the Cambridge Festival on Saturday night.

And then on May the 11thth days after the May elections,

which have taken on in some ways a greater significance in light of recent events,

live at King's Place. It's on the Monday after the elections, where all sorts will be going on

probably as we gather together.

Anyway, that's all to come.

The Mandelson saga, or its latest manifestation, is fascinating on lots of levels.

On one, we really learn nothing new, because the information that whoever vetted Mandelson and concluded that

there were grounds for not giving him the go ahead to go to Washington were dealing with

the same information available to all of us, including Kirstama.

I'm sure it is to do with the fact that Madelson's firm Global Council had connections,

arrangements in China, Russia at different times, and that was what was the issue,

rather than the relationship with Epstein, which had no immediate

...