Mary Dejevsky

I had to go back and snatch a photo, just to confirm the evidence of my own eyes – to confirm that there really is somewhere in the world, and it’s not his native Georgia or recidivist parts of Russia, where the name Joseph Stalin remains a point of pride, as though Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech, let alone perestroika, glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union hadn’t happened. One of the biggest cities in China boasts a Stalin park, a Stalin statue, and – the subject of my snatched photo – supermarket tables and shelves stacked with Stalin-branded wine. Welcome to Harbin, a city of ten million people in the north-east of China, and one of the strangest places among the many strange places I have visited in my travelling lifetime.

Forgive me, but I could not help shouting 'Please, please, not another one', when the BBC’s Newsnight announced, at the start of a breathless breaking news special, that the government of Andy Burnham had seemingly opened the door to a public inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein’s activities in Britain. 'Survivors' – forgive me again, I just can’t use this word in this context without inverted commas – and campaigners on their behalf have been exultant ever since.   In fact, the revelation wasn’t quite as categorical as has been made out.

Four years ago, the unthinkable, for many Westminster residents, happened. Control of the council was won for the first time ever, and convincingly, by Labour. As a Westminster voter for more than 20 years, I had expected that the council would in time flip to Labour; the leftward trend was clear – but not so soon, more likely at the next elections in 2026. In the event, Westminster was caught up in the great shift that swept Labour to power in its general election landslide in 2024. Helped along by some boundary changes, the result was a council made up of 31 Labour to 23 Conservatives. Westminster used to be a byword for clean streets.

It is one thing to glimpse the inner workings of government during extraordinary times. But it is another, and many times more telling, to gain a glimpse of the workings of government at – relatively – ordinary moments. This is what the first tranche of released papers relating to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as HM ambassador to the United States has provided, and it should provide more food for thought than it probably will. The old boys’ network may have died a death but there are plenty of ways to elevate people into high-paying or prominent positions on the public payroll Take, for a start and most obviously, the way that top appointments are made.

If there is anything less edifying than the newly-released emails implicating Lord Mandelson in some very bad behaviour, it is the stream of politicians and others in the UK piling in on the already disgraced peer. Mandelson was never to be trusted, we are told; he should never have been allowed to return to a public position, where his reputation and that of the government and the country were bound up with each other. We should remember, of course, that a good number of those suggesting police action and demanding he be stripped of his peerage, include some of the very people responsible for his repeated comebacks, including his most recent, if short-lived, resurrection as our man in Washington DC.

The medics we knew and loved as 'junior doctors' were redesignated 'resident doctors' as part of their last pay settlement in September. If this was intended to boost their (already considerable) 'self-esteem', however, it seems not to have produced any maturing of their professional attitude. Less than a year after ending their last strike, they are balloting on striking again, in pursuit of a pay rise of 29 per cent (repeat, 29 per cent, no decimal point) to add to the 22 per cent they wrung out of the newly-elected Labour government. In a questionable attempt to increase the franchise, the British Medical Association (BMA) launched a free three-month membership offer halfway through the six-week voting period.

As part of its plans to streamline the planning process for much-needed infrastructure, the government has confirmed that it intends to give people a discount on their energy costs if they have new power pylons or other energy infrastructure built near their property. Outlining the plan, the housing and planning minister, Alex Norris, said that the discount could amount to £250 a year – around 12 per cent of the average household’s energy bill – for those living within 500 metres of new or upgraded structures. ‘If you’re making that sacrifice of having some of the infrastructure in your community, you should get some of the money back,’ he said.

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Less than a month after presenting his credentials to President Trump, His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington was being accused by an MP in the House of Commons of ‘freelancing on US TV’. The UK armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, had earlier distanced himself from comments made by Lord Mandelson, saying ‘that’s not government policy’.  Both were referring to a typically mellifluous performance by Mandelson on ABC’s popular Sunday politics talk-show, This Week. The presenter was another master of fluent politics-speak, George Stephanopoulos, one-time spokesman for the Clinton White House turned media pundit, and the conversation flowed with amicable ease.  So where had our newly minted ambassador gone wrong?

Guten Tag – or, as they more often say in these less formal times, Hallo – from constituency number 061, otherwise known as Potsdam, a city of parks, palaces, film studios and Prussian-ness. For the British, Potsdam will always be the place where the victorious Allies met to carve out the zones of Germany’s occupation – a division which led to Germany becoming two separate countries. After reunification in 1990, Potsdam was designated the capital of the state of Brandenburg. The Potsdam vote will be a test of both the left and far-right’s capacity to broaden its appeal In so far as many German cities have a complicated history, the history of Potsdam, less than half an hour from the centre of Berlin, is more complicated than most.

Is Lord Mandelson being ‘lined up’ as the UK’s next ambassador in Washington? The news that the Labour party’s arch-Blairite and one-time spin-doctor extraordinaire may be in the running for what is seen as the UK’s top diplomatic job has generated an immediate and impassioned reaction, much of it hostile. Some of this is because Mandelson is viewed as the epitome of New Labour. While others are concerned by the political and personal baggage Mandelson would inevitably bring with him.  Some of the very qualities that made him so successful in the UK and in Europe had the opposite effect in the US Now it cannot be excluded that this is no more than a kite-flying exercise on the part of No.