• Vetting

I’m currently quite confused as to (a) what happened (b) what should have happened and (c) in what order everything happened with regard to the disaster of Peter Mandelson’s appointment to be the UK’s Abaser-on-the spot to the Court of King Potus.

The sacked Foreign Office head civil servant Sir Olly Robbins seems to be saying that he did everything correctly, that due process was followed, that he didn’t over-rule the UK Security Vetting recommendation and that Number Ten was putting pressure on him to approve the man’s appointment. The PM seems to be saying the exact opposite. All the other political parties are jeering and throwing rotten tomatoes.

Just winding back to first principles, surely the business of vetting someone is to see if their appointment is likely to cause a problem. It seems odd to me that, as appears to be the case, the PM was not told that there were some question marks over Mandy.

Robbins said that in an oral briefing from the UKSV he was told that the man was “a borderline case”, something which in the light of experience (past and present) seems quite charitable. Robbins, however – perhaps swayed by pressure from Number Ten and also by the fact the wretched man had already been appointed – decided that he was probably OK.

In any rational world, he’d have gone to Starmer and said “the vets think he might be a wrong’un. I think he might be all right. These cancel out. Your call, boss.”

That Mandelson had been appointed on 20 December 2024 and the vetting decision wasn’t made until 30 January 2025 seems to make the whole process stark nonsense anyway.

It also appears that the concerns raised didn’t have anything to do with the Epstein scandal, which hit the fan in early September 2025. This doesn’t seem like good vetting to me: what aspects of his past were they looking at? It also makes one wonder, if the Epstein connection were removed, what else there was about Mandelson that caused the vets so much concern.

In fact. Olly Robbins was wrong. He may have followed the byzantine process but his conclusion was incorrect. Disaster and disgrace for all concerned followed.

• A rough ride, but…

The problem really started with the PM. I think he’s has a very rough ride recently as a result of problems not entirely of his making. He’s done a pretty good job of walking the tightrope between appeasing the USA and not taking part in its crusade against Iran. The special relationship, or what’s left of it, may yet survive. After all, it survived Harold Wilson’s refusal to get dragged into another American foreign-policy disaster in Vietnam.

However, one has to question the judgment of someone who seemed to think that Mandelson was the best person for the job. It’s well known he’s a skilled political operator: also that he has a fatal weakness for the rich and powerful which has cost him senior positions twice before. Such temptations abound in Washington.

• Strange results

It could have been worse. It seems that George “we’re all in it together” Osborne was also on his shortlist, as was Matthew Doyle who later came unstuck also as a result of close associations with a sex offender. I suppose it could have been worse still, with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being given the nod from Number Ten.

All in all, it doesn’t seem that this system is working particularly well. That’s to say, it has a process but you turn the handle and a strange result can be produced. Mind you, you can say the same about other systems here including the legal and the planning ones.

Another odd result of this is Mandleson’s compensation payment of £75,000. Could have been a lot more. Private Eye 1671 points out on p12 that this is the same as the standard compensation to the (unconvicted) victims of the PO scandal “caused by the Horizon IT system which as Business Secretary in the late 1990s Peter Mandelson, had falsely called ‘robust’.”

• Data

Every day we use them, often many, many times. We use them when we save a file, stream a video, pay an online parking charge or access a web page. You’re using one now by reading this.

I’m talking about data centres. These require 24/7 power and cooling systems and, if they don’t get them, part of the modern world stop working. To do this, they consume a huge about of power, perhaps three per cent of the world’s electricity. It’s estimated that by 2030 this could be closer to 13 per cent and more than double that by 2040. Some countries like Ireland might see even higher consumption rates, with 28 per cent of its electricity being used in this way by 2028.

This isn’t perhaps the massively bad news that some have suggested. In the first place, as grids become greener, such electricity is likely to place less of a burden on the environment.

Secondly, as there are only a few of these compared to the total number of individual energy consumers who’re responsible for the same percentages, it’s possible to mandate that these come with their own sustainable power supply. Indeed, it is very much in their interests to control both costs and reliability of supply.

Thirdly, we all need them. They are the invisible glue that makes the world work as it does, whether we like it or not. pretty much all of us benefit from, or are complicit in, their operations. There are possibly worse ways in which this power can be spent.

Of course, the biggest driver for this is AI. We all use that as well, even if we don’t always know it.

The Washington Post, as reported in The Week, has noticed a backlash against this, including from several state lawmakers. The newspaper asserts that “luddite” opponents are “exaggerating the water requirements of the sites, and spreading fears that new schemes will drive up electricity bills, even though many projects are set to generate their own power.” The pushbacks also tap into the “general anxiety about AI” and what this will do for jobs.

The summary of the article ends on a typically jingoistic note: “by throwing ‘sand into the gears of progress’ as China’s AI buildout races ahead, opponents are damaging America’s interests.”

• The machine stops

And, probably, all of ours. The whole point about data centres is that, wherever they are, they connect all of us together in the way we now demand. Every now and then when encountering internet outages, 404 errors or the like, I’m reminded of EM Foster’s terrifying story The Machine Stops which anticipated the internet, AI, the societal changes these wrought and the chaos that ensued when the title of the story came true. It was written in 1909, which makes the prescience all the more remarkable.

Whether the machine of the internet or of the more recent addition of AI, on both of which we now depend, can stop in the brutal way Forster imagined is beyond my competence to judge. I’m assured not: but we we were also assured with equal confidence that the Second World War would never happen.

The internet is probably so de-centralised that it can’t be switched off in the way that a deep freeze can be. AI would seem to be anything but, with a small number of very influential players intruding themselves into our lives in much the same way, but even more insidiously, than did social media. The difference is that you can choose not to engage with social media online (though you can’t escape the opinions which it’s propagated and which have since cropped up elsewhere, including in our newspapers). AI, however, is everywhere.

I think it’s important not to be too cynical about it. It provides quick answers to any number of questions. However, it has learned this from what we have written on the internet. Every sentence, fact, supposition or idea you post online will form a part of its DNA. One way of looking at AI is thus as a form of immortality.

Everything can get taken over by bad actors and every new technology has been accused of this. When you’re living through a change, it’s tempting to see this as somehow more significant than ones our predecessors experienced. Fire, farming, bronze, iron, gunpowder, printing, the steam engine, coal, oil, the telephone and the internet have all catapulted us into a different world. These may be coming at us with shorter time intervals but that doesn’t necessarily make it the agent of destruction that some predict.

The trick is diversification. The amount of problems something can cause us is directly proportionate to how much we rely upon it, and thus how many of them there are. If we rely on oil and a large amount of it comes through one narrow waterway and a conflict closes that off, we all suffer. Diversify our sources and this disappears. We’re doing a pretty poor job of sorting this for our power supplies, despite frequent sharp reminders.

The internet may, as suggested above, be sufficiently diversified to protect us from a single local catastrophe. However, I remain slightly haunted by the conclusion of EM Forster’s story. If you haven’t read it, that didn’t end well…

• And finally…

• Anything to do with Moorfields Eye Hospital always catches my attention as in 1986 I had much of the sight in my left eye saved by, as it later turned out, the only person in the world who knew how to perform the necessary operation properly. Six-year-old Saffie Sandford recently experienced an even more dramatic gene-therapy salvation. If you want to read the rather odd story of my operation – which involved a pair of check trousers, a pair of finger-measuring doctors, a pair of girlfriends and Margaret Thatcher – then you’ll find an account of it in Gravity and Rust.

• Penny sometimes dresses up as a banana (most recently yesterday) as part of her work with the Hungerford Food Community that she founded. One of its many laudable aims is the reduction of food waste: bananas are a case in point as over a million of them are ditched every day in the UK. The Week reports that a supermarket in Kirkwall in the Orkneys meant to order about 2,500 of them recently. Unfortunately a finger slipped and they ended up with about 38,000. “Owing to ferries being cancelled in high winds,” The Week explained, “the bananas couldn’t be returned, so they were distributed to schools and community groups.” However, much of the normal wastage ends up in the bin.

• The construction of anything running on rails seems to lead to massive cost and schedule over-runs in the UK. A case in point, as highlighted on p17 of Private Eye 1673, is Birmingham’s eastern tram extension. This is costing about £352m: France, on the other hand, manages to build its own trams for about ten per cent of the cost. As a result, most of its cities or large towns have trams whereas hardly any of the UK’s do. This is one reason, the Eye continues, why France is able to build 300,000 new homes a year. a figure “Britain can only aspire to.”

• In football news, Chelsea has just dispensed with its twelfth manager in ten years, with Liam Rosenior having been given the boot after just over a hundred days. Not a position you’d want if you crave job security but probably great if you fancy hoovering up a severance payment. I was born almost overlooking Stamford Bridge and yet have never had any particular affection for them, except when they’re playing Manchester United or Arsenal. It’s an odd fact (non football fans look away now, if you haven’t already) that since Chelsea’s last domestic triumph (the 2018 FA Cup) the team has contested six domestic finals, all of which they lost: and six European or international finals, all of which they won.

• And still with that sport, the World Cup will be getting under way quite soon. This BBC article takes a look at the teams’ kits. Most of them are pretty horrible and remind me of the kind of pattern you get offered when following click baits to determine if you’re colour blind. Less being more for me, those of Panama, the Netherlands and England stand out, as does Germany’s because it’s so unashamedly retro.

Fave for me, though, is the USA’s. Striped tops are very cool – both Milan sides have the joint best shirts ever – but I think hoops are almost better. When I was very young I briefly fell in love with QPR because of their blue and white. However, neither stripes nor hoops are that common with club teams and are almost unheard of internationally. I’ve no idea why. The USA have gone for this. But that doesn’t mean I want them to win. Or that they will. But they might. No they won’t…

Across the area

• A new residents party for West Berkshire

The traditional model for local political representation in England broadly mirrors the model found at Westminster with the four or five main parties splitting all the seats between them. There are, however, a number of local residents parties or groups and also a good number of independent councillors – currently about 3,000, about 20% of the total.

On 23 April, West Berkshire’s currently sole independent councillor, Adrian Abbs (who represents Wash Common), announced the formation of a new party – West Berkshire Residents. You can click here to visit WBR’s website.

It describes itself as “a non-partisan registered political party representing the people of West Berkshire — not a national party, not a political ideology. Just your community, working for you.” One of the main reasons why WBR was set up would seem to be the problem of trust. A presentation (not currently on the website) cites a 2024 ONS survey as saying that only 12% of the population trust political parties but that, by contrast, local community groups and residents’ associations (RAs) were trusted by over two thirds of the respondents.

The same document also points to four councils where RAs either control the authority or are decisive majority. In one of these, Epson and Ewell, the local RA has been in power for 89 years. This might be some kind of record for any party.

The three main tenets of WBR can be seen on the home page of the website:

• Community first (“Every decision made in the interests of West Berkshire residents — not a national party’s agenda.”)
• Cooperation not opposition (“We work with whoever is in power to get things done. The best ideas deserve support regardless of who proposes them.”
• No party whip (“Our councillors vote with their conscience and their community — never under instruction from a national party.”)

“I really believe independent councillors can work with whoever is in charge instead of just opposing,” Adrian Abbs said. “The public that I speak to seems to echo this — especially when residents associations come together.”

Adrian Abbs is the first independent councillor on West Berkshire Council (though he was elected as a Lib Dem). The 2023 elections also saw the first ever Labour member elected. There are therefore signs that the mould is being broken. The emergence of Reform UK may hasten the trend.

There are arguments as to why the party system is good, even at the local level. When you vote for someone you know in theory at least what they stand for on the major issues. Decisions taken collectively by a cohesive group often stand a better chance of being implemented. There’s a collective sense of answerability and therefore perhaps an easier set of labels for people to latch onto (though this may not be an advantage).

There are, however, also cases where the traditional party rigidity works against the interests of local democracy. A lot of local decisions are not political in the sense that they’re the product of a distinct ideology about, for instance, the role of the state and the private sector or taxation policies: these are beyond the remit of local councils to influence in any significant way. Councils need to deal with the nuts and bolts of many aspects of life: they haven’t designed the machine but they have to make it work.

There are many issues on which there’s a cross-party consensus although the party structure doesn’t always allow this to be expressed. A non-partisan approach enables people to vote on the merits of the issue, not the instructions of the party. A strong leader can get matters agreed quickly but not always with the right amount of discussion. Others might argue that too much discussion can be worse than not enough.

“I welcome this,” David Marsh, the leader of the Minority Group (MG) at WBC of which Adrian Abbs is a member, told us on 23 April. “I see no reason why he shouldn’t remain as part of the MG under his new banner.”

Adrian Abbs may well be right in saying that the best ideas deserve support regardless of their provenance. We shall see whether WBR can attract enough support from the public – and perhaps also from existing councillors.

This time next year the district will be in local-election mode for the contest in early May and the new group will be expecting to field as many candidates as possible. We shall, as ever, provide coverage of all the candidates and the main campaign issues. The emergence of both WBR and Reform, and the implications of local government reorganisation (more will be known on the Ridgeway Councils in July) promise to make this contest a particularly interesting one.

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