drink tea like a buddha

[drink tea like a buddha @TeaLike69495]

@DreyfusJames I felt Tip Toe failed to recognise that the majority of people in the uk are not homophobic & have a ‘live and let live’ attitude to people’s sexual preferences. It felt like RTD was stoking the fires of division rather than looking for ways to calm the tensions that are there.

[drink tea like a buddha @TeaLike69495]

@suzanne_moore Of course Madonna should do whatever she wants. At the same time I think one of the most rebellious feminist things a woman can do these days is to allow herself to look her age, and reject the capitalist driven industry that tells us that we must look forever young.

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

Latest on Mandelson/McSweeney messages:

* Downing Street briefed journalists the messages relating to the 5 September reshuffle had been withheld at the request of the Metropolitan Police. But today the Met have told the Mail on Sunday this is untrue, and they did not ask for the messages to be held back

* Two of the unpublished messages from Mandelson to McSweeney reportedly relate to Darren Jones and Peter Kyle. Both of them were subsequently promoted in that reshuffle

* On 27 February Mandelson accompanied Keir Starmer to a meeting at the Washington offices of Palantir. No minutes were kept of the meeting, and it was not included in Starmer's official schedule. The Mail on Sunday has learnt that a week after Starmer returned from Washington Cabinet Ministers received an instruction from No.10 to meet with Palantir representatives.

[drink tea like a buddha @TeaLike69495]

@RhonddaBryant @Keir_Starmer @UKLabour Starmer has made a whole catalogue of errors and poor judgements. For me the Mandelson appointment was the final nail in the coffin. Mandelson represents everything that is wrong with people in power in this country.

[drink tea like a buddha @TeaLike69495]

@RhonddaBryant Labour must accept that @Keir_Starmer is now a liability - even the most loyal Labour voters don’t want to vote for him. I’ve voted @UKLabour all my life - but I won’t vote for Starmer’s Labour ever again. He’s failed and has to go.

[drink tea like a buddha @TeaLike69495]

@Keir_Starmer No one likes your plan - not just Tony Blair!

[drink tea like a buddha @TeaLike69495]

@DailyMail Hugh Edward’s was able to function perfectly well in a high pressured career - he was perfectly capable of not paying a vulnerable young man for sex. His ‘excuse’ is an insult to mentally ill people who manage to struggle through everyday without exploiting young people.

[The National @ScotNational]

Question Time has been called out for a 'dangerous' lack of balance on its panel – with Zack Polanski suggesting the BBC had allowed a billionaire to buy 'an entire episode' https://t.co/mNc7S4lBy4

[Novara Media @novaramedia]

Concerns over Peter Mandelson’s links to senior figures in Israel, China and Russia - and his naivety about the prospect of having his past relationships exploited - were raised in a vetting document before he was appointed as ambassador to Washington, it has been reported.

His associations with former Israeli military intelligence general Tamir Hayman, China’s minister of finance, Lan Fo’an and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska were all mentioned in a nine-page summary of Mandelson’s vetting file in January 2025.

Also cited was a £1m loan Manelson received to invest in an Israeli startup, according to multiple anonymous sources who spoke to the Guardian.

Then foreign office permanent secretary Olly Robins was made aware of the United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV) file and appointed Mandelson anyway, a decision for which he was sacked in April.

Fresh questions about the decision to appoint Mandelson are likely to emerge as the second tranche of Mandelson files is expected to be released in June. This month the intelligence and security committee (ISC) accused the government of redacting much of the material, with two MPs claiming that there was a “cover up”.

According to the Telegraph, the new papers are expected to show messages between Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, discussing Labour’s political and media strategy.

The papers will also show that Mandelson gave unsolicited advice to cabinet ministers about how to do their jobs.

A source told the newspaper: “There is a certain generation of politician who thinks they have something to offer. He does that whether people want it or not.”

The UKSV file is expected to be among the documents published next week, with redactions requested by the Metropolitan police.

The Met is investigating Mandelson for misconduct in public office after he allegedly leaked information to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Hayman now works for the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an influential security thinktank in Tel Aviv, which said he had “no personal connection or familiarity whatsoever” to Mandelson.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Palantir’s UK mouthpiece has been uncritically platformed the BBC (multiple times), the Sun, the Times, the Observer & now the Evening Standard.

It’s a really instructive lesson for everyone on how power works & the role the media plays

[drink tea like a buddha @TeaLike69495]

@YvetteCooperMP If the current govt hadn’t made such a hash of things you wouldn’t be having to do this. So disappointing. @UKLabour should never have let the Right Wing of the Party to take over and dominate in the way they did. @Keir_Starmer absolutely has to go.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

It would be bad for public confidence if there was a suspicion that large corporate interests are buying access to the Government via the Tony Blair Institute.

My letter to the cabinet office. 👇🏼

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

It’s not as if they weren’t warned. I tweeted this when they announced an AI special.

I really hope people complain. Especially about the inclusion of Laura Gilbert, a paid corporate lobbyist bankrolled by Oracle’s Larry Ellison who funds Tony Blair’s institute.
2/

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

So you know what @bbcquestiontime did with Farage? They’re now doing it with AI.

This ‘expert’ panel on AI is a disgrace: not one critical voice.

Gilbert works for Tony Blair to promote AI. Jones is govt chief AI booster (& Blair flunky). Riparbelli is industry. Gawdat is ex industry. And for ‘balance’? A Tory MP.
1/

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Oracle’s £250m gift to the Tony Blair Institute appears to buy you an entire Question Time episode.

[Richard Burgon MP @RichardBurgon]

Tony Blair once said: “My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson.”

That quote is worth remembering given The Times is reporting that Blair plans more interventions on Labour’s future.

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

Genuinely amazed that some people are praising Tony Blair’s intervention. Labour’s problems - and the problems facing the country - are a direct result of his failure to understand how his messianic New Labourism was simply not delivering for vast swathes of working Britain.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

The fourth man.

UK’s vetting agency claim Mandelson’s relationship with a British individual posed a national security threat. The Guardian named the other three (foreign nationals) but not the fourth man. Presumably because of defamation fears.

Answers on a postcard please.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Tony Blair is the living embodiment of what happens when political office becomes a down payment on future plunder. Ejected in 2007 by his own MPs as a massive liability, he bequeathed Britain a wild casino economy primed for the 2008 crash. And when the British economy crashed and burned, Mr Blair kept quiet while honing his skills at securing power by other means.

His first job, after his ejection from 10 Downing Street, was as the West’s Middle East envoy, with a supposed emphasis on Gaza. It took six painful years for Mr Blair’s tenure to prove a failure so profound it amounted to active complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing, in Palestinian erasure, and in paving the ground for the ongoing genocide.

Soon after, the Chilcot Inquiry demolished Blair’s Iraq lies, exposing him as a liar, a chancer and a war criminal responsible for countless corpses of Iraqis, but also of British soldiers.

Then came Blair’s real innovation: the financialisation of the ex-premiership itself. The Tony Blair Institute, fuelled by £130 million from Oracle's Larry Ellison—coincidentally, the largest individual donor to the Friends of the IDF—became a shadow state, brokering governance contracts for autocrats and companies like Palantir that weaponise AI to produce mega-death abroad and full-on surveillance of Western populations.

Now, in May 2026, this corporate fixer issues a 5700 word tantrum demanding that Labour embrace Trump even more than Starmer already has, denounce what is left of Labour’s betrayed Green New Deal, and trash the remnants of workers' rights. This is not the wisdom of an aging statesman. It is the frantic squirming of a man fearing his grip on oligarchic power might soon wane and whose entire post-10 Downing Street existence depends on preventing the many from ever reclaiming what the few have plundered.

https://t.co/1Onlpx9Nkh

[Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn]

Tony Blair thinks the answer to this country’s problems is AI, welfare cuts and endless spending on war.

Who benefits? Arms companies and tech billionaires.

Once again, Blair is wrong. The answer is a redistribution of wealth and power and the relentless search for peace.