‘Keystone cops’: How Lord Mandelson mocked No10 staff including Morgan McSweeney ahead of White House meeting

[17/08/2025, 16:03:48] Pat McFadden: Yes of course. I see Keir will now be at WH meeting with Z (Zelensky).

[17/08/2025, 16:06:16] Peter Mandelson : Yes. Morgan is coming with him. The media prep is interesting. Completely reductionist for Keir. Want to avoid any encounter with journos that might involve him answering a question. No sense of opportunity for personal projection. Just avoid all risk. Always the same.

17/08/2025, 17:35:25] Pat McFadden: I spoke to him. It’s a bit of a whirlwind. This external strategy unit idea has come from a lack of belief that good people will come in to number 10 and it’s hard to get the bad ones to leave.

[17/08/2025, 17:35:41] Pat McFadden: I’m going to see him when he comes back.

[17/08/2025, 17:40:26] Peter Mandelson : I told him he needs an instrument/entity to recruit top people but I fear he is using excuse to keep people because he knows Keir won’t fire them.

[18/08/2025, 13:07:11] Pat McFadden: Let me know how it goes?

[18/08/2025, 14:12:09] Peter Mandelson : We have a whole lot of No10 keystone cops coming, including Morgan, falling over themselves and complaining they won’t all be in the Oval (none of us will be).