Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Oscar

Edmondson. I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and Isabel Hardman. Now, we've just had the first

tranche of documents released in the Mandelson files, which detail the process by which

Peter Mandelson was made a US ambassador.

Tim, the big question, I suppose, that many people were hoping to get an answer to from these

documents was how much did Stama, how much did the government know about Peter Manlinson's

association with Geoffrey Epstein prior to making him ambassador to the US?

Now, did we get a satisfactory answer to that question? Yeah, I think we have a

much clearer picture of that now. There's a two-page vetting report which was put together for the

Prime Minister. And to a degree, it's what we in journalism would call a cuts job. It's sort of

rehashing a lot of stuff that had already appeared and warning of genuine reputational risk

from Mandelson's relationship with Epstein and from his previous resignations from the government.

We have learnt too that the vetting seemed even to Jonathan Powell, the National Security Advisor,

to be a bit thin. He says in one of these documents that he never remembered sitting in a

meeting discussing Mandelson's appointment, and that that was a bit weird, and that is probably

one of the phrases that sort of jumps out at you when you read this stuff. I mean, look,

did Starman know enough not to appoint Mandelson? I mean, anyone who

understands the background would say that there was plenty there that could have easily caused

him to come to that view. And I don't think that's been changed by this. I think, if anything,

it's been slightly reinforced. But clearly, there's not an absolute sort of killer fact in here

that would derail the prime minister's position or his,

let's put it like this, that would derail his judgment at the time, what is in fact his real

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