𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

They’re fighting like rats in a sack. That’s the key takeaway from the text messages shared between Lord Mandelson and Cabinet ministers.

The messages – or at least, some of them – were published after Parliament demanded that the Government reveal full details of how Mandelson ever came to be appointed ambassador to the US, a role from which he was unceremoniously forced to resign by Sir Keir Starmer. Other texts were missing from the files, but have somehow been leaked to various journalists. However they were published, they reveal that this Government is a nest of vipers.

They don’t much like each other. And even Labour ministers, it’s become clear, don’t think they are doing a good job of running the country.

Take Darren Jones, previously the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and now the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister.

Mandelson pointed out that plans to grow the economy were being overseen by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner (the deputy prime minister at the time) and Jonathan Reynolds (the business secretary at the time, and now Chief Whip).

Mr Jones responded: “It doesn’t fill you with confidence.”

In another message, reported by The Spectator magazine, Mr Jones told Mandelson he would like to be business secretary himself – or maybe to replace Ed Miliband as energy secretary.

Most damning of all was his admission that, as a minister at the Treasury (HMT), he had stopped listening to government special advisers, known as SPADs, after a bad experience during talks about a steel plant at Port Talbot in Wales.

Mr Jones said: “I lost faith in his SPADs when, on a call about Port Talbot, they repeatedly took a different position to us in HMT ‘because that’s what the unions want’.”

Special advisers have a huge influence on government policy, but apparently they are just regurgitating the views of trade unions.

It’s been widely reported that Pat McFadden, the former Cabinet Office minister and now Work and Pensions Secretary, despaired of Labour MPs, saying: “Every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’.”

But Mr McFadden also revealed that even Downing Street officials had their doubts about the quality of the staff in No 10.

He said Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff at the time, was hoping to bring in outside experts to help. Mr McFadden said: “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 No 10 and it’s hard to get the bad ones to leave.”

Meanwhile, pensions minister Torsten Bell agreed that the Government was bad at “policy”.

Lord Mandelson told Mr Bell in a text message: “The Government doesn’t do policy, generally speaking, well enough.” Mr Bell replied: “That is definitely true – everyone seems to think it’s someone else’s job to get the policy right.”

And Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, revealed his concern about the state of the party. He told Mandelson: “I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election.”