Henry Trant

Tweeting about Football (mostly West Ham) and politics with maybe a sprinkling of other stuff. Not afraid to share an opinion

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@nick_g_c @bubblemaster3 @WHUFC_News Likewise, I also liked the Boleyn... but she joined the Board in 2010 and stayed on it till last month, so in that sense wasn't she a part of that Boardroom failure?

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@nick_g_c @bubblemaster3 @WHUFC_News It was inevitable, but let me ask you this... do you think she did well for West Ham?

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@bubblemaster3 @WHUFC_News It seems to me DK has more about him & possibly better advisors than DS & has better understanding of how to maximise value from his shareholding.

He realises criticality of Prem status & how to return to that quicker than DS who always seems to want to do things on the cheap?

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@tommy_whu @WestHam_Central @ExWHUEmployee The best option imo, incentivise him give him his own people to work alongside and send current coaching team back to their places within the club has to be the way to go.

Oh and keep Paco Jemez...

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@bubblemaster3 @WHUFC_News Not an expert, but if DK continues to build his shareholding (possibly out of the Gold estate stock) beyond 40% isn't it conceivable he could end up with more than 50% of the voting rights?

Wouldn't this force DS into some kind of decision? As I say, I'm no expert but...

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

I really hope that #westham supporters succeed in their objective of forcing a sale of the club & removing Sullivan.

The damage he & @karren_brady have caused is immeasurable. Deal of the Century 🤣🤣🤣 if it wasn't so serious.

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@piers_J_morgan @footballforfans @Keir_Starmer @GordonBrown Maybe, just maybe, if Brown hadn't messed around with the regulatory system years before the financial crash may not have happened.

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@MJBr00ks58 @Keir_Starmer @GordonBrown He also dabbled in the pensions sector, much to the detriment of that sector.

Public sector employees did ok, private sector employees much less so with arguably a much worse impact on the country as a whole than his gold sale.

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@dave_etheridge @TerraOrBust He could resign to a time table that says he'll stay until a successor has been found and is in place?

That'd get everyone past the election period?

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@Jim_Buckle @artemisnow40939 @MarkGriffin59 I'm not sure he will be treated like everyone else in all honesty ...

https://t.co/zCqh5muZd8

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

flip remotely ebook (1).pdf (4).pdf - Google Drive https://t.co/3h79pMZPkQ

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@hermexinvesting @Rainmaker1973 Last time, a couple of years ago in Dubai , it was down to a cloud seeding programme gone wrong. Am wondering whether it's the same again.

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@PeterOfNY @grok @EricLDaugh It's not Starmer, it's Micheal Martin the Irish PM in a St Patrick's day meeting today.

Starmer's meeting Zelensky in London today.

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@Techno22024 @HJB_News__ There's a big difference between resigning & actually departing.

He can resign subject to the party finding a new leader which will take a while given two of the potential contestants have their own issues. One involving the taxman & the other has their own Mandelson issues.

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

Good thread. Well worth a read ...

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

There is a habit in British politics of mistaking corruption for embarrassment. We treat betrayal as bad manners. We talk about optics when we should be talking about power. The Mandelson–Epstein affair is being framed as a sordid lapse, a case of poor judgment, an unsavoury friendship that went too far. That framing is false. What this reveals is something colder and far more dangerous: the casual surrender of the state to a private, compromised network.

Peter Mandelson did not merely know Jeffrey Epstein. He trusted him. He forwarded confidential Downing Street material to him. He asked for his thoughts on government assets. He sought his advice on banking and tax policy. He treated a convicted paedophile financier as an informal counsellor while holding one of the highest offices in the land. That is not a social misstep. It is an abuse of office.

By 2009, Epstein was a known quantity. Convicted. Compromised. Surrounded by intelligence interest. A man defined by leverage. In any functioning state, contact with him by a serving minister would have triggered immediate alarm. Instead, Mandelson behaved as if the rules did not apply. As if access trumped duty. As if the country were his to brief.

The most revealing detail is not the money, the photographs, or the tawdry intimacy. It is the ease with which internal government thinking left the walls of No 10 and landed in Epstein’s inbox. That is how power really moves now. Not through Parliament. Not through Cabinet. But through private channels, private favours, private confidants who are never meant to be in the room. This is not conspiracy. It is the normal operating system of a closed elite.

And that brings us to the question no amount of hand-wringing can avoid. What did the Prime Minister know, and when did he know it? Keir Starmer was not appointing a junior functionary. He was sending a man with decades of baggage, scandal, and whispered warnings to Washington. Either he was briefed and chose to ignore it, or the vetting system is so degraded it failed to flag years of documented association with one of the most toxic figures of the age. Neither answer reassures.

We are told that Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party, as if that settles the matter. It does not. Parties are clubs. The issue here is the state. If a lesser official had leaked documents to a dubious businessman, the police would already be involved. Files would be seized. Phones would be taken. The law would move swiftly. The hesitation tells its own story. There is one rule for the governed and another for those who circulate at the top.

This is why the peerage matters. This is why a proper investigation matters. Not to satisfy prurience, but to draw a line. To say that public office is not a private asset. That access is not entitlement. That proximity to power does not place you above it. If that line is not drawn here, it will not be drawn anywhere.

Mandelson's fall is not tragic. It is instructive. He did not fool everyone for so long because he was uniquely clever. He lasted because the system rewards charm, forgives excess, and looks away until it can no longer do so. What the Epstein files have done is strip away the last polite excuses. What remains is a simple truth: when elites stop believing the rules apply to them, the country pays the price.

"What did the Prime Minister know, and when did he know it? Keir Starmer was not appointing a junior functionary. He was sending a man with decades of baggage, scandal, and whispered warnings to Washington."

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@OliverGR93 @grok @Keir_Starmer @elonmusk @grok please can you clarify... what is the rise in public sector wages in the U.K?

What is the rise in private sector wages? And

How much have out of work benefits increased?

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@WHUFCFZ

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

Turns out Baroness Brady's deal of the century may not be quite so great after all. This excellent piece in today's ⁦@dailytelegraph⁩ sets it all out under the headline "West Ham's stadium a major red flag to Buyers."

[Henry Trant @henry_trant]

@rodbishop15 Is the IMF able to accommodate the problems of two #G7 countries #France #UK ?