This week's bombshells prove Nicola Sturgeon and Keir Starmer share a common trait

​Keir Starmer and Nicola Sturgeon

Keir Starmer and Nicola Sturgeon have both been asked questions about what they knew and when

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PA

Nigel Nelson

By Nigel Nelson


Published: 02/06/2026

- 13:08

Fleet Street's longest serving political editor says a lack of curiosity as hurt both the Prime Minister and the former SNP leader

Politicians need special qualities if they are to govern effectively – a sensitive nose to sniff out the unintended consequences of new plans, and eyes wide open to expect the unexpected.

They also need a keen sense of curiosity, something former Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Prime Minister Keir Starmer appear to lack.


Ms Sturgeon may well not have queried the £2,595 price tag on a coffee machine as she downed her morning cuppa, and been grateful for the hair dryer her bald, embezzling husband Peter Murrell did not use.

And I quite understand she never realised the £515 Montblanc fountain pen she was writing with was similar to the one used by Roger Moore’s James Bond in Octopussy.

But did she really not raise an eyebrow at the £81,277 Jag? Or notice the £124,550 motorhome complete with steering lock and wheel clamp?

If my wife bought one of those I would think she had gone stark, staring bonkers.

And not just because of the cost, but because the prospect of holidaying in one would normally turn her stomach. At the very least we would have had a gentle, exploratory conversation over whether she might be going round the twist.

The 1,500 pages of Peter Mandelson files show a similar lack of curiosity by Keir Starmer over the man he was appointing to the UK’s most important diplomatic post.

Not because of what is there in black and white but because of what isn’t. Nowhere does the PM ask if this posting was really such a good idea.

And we already know he went ahead with announcing the appointment before security vetting was done which shows a cavalier disregard for Lord Mandelson’s previous associations – not least with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – already in the public domain.

The Tories whinge about the redactions, which they were bound to do no matter how few or how many there were. But there are clearly some odd gaps.

It was GB News Political Editor Christopher Hope who got the sensational scoop that texts between Lord Mandelson and Keir Starmer and his head honcho Darren Jones are missing.

The only legitimate reason for their absence is if they involve international relations or national security. That is likely to be probed more fully at PMQs tomorrow and in the subsequent debate.

Which meant that most of the media latched onto Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden’s unfortunate remark that every meeting he had with Labour backbenchers seemed to contain the damning sentence: “‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?”

Mr McFadden made clear that was the wrong question and not one he agrees with, but it will now be used incessantly against him nevertheless.

Remember the fate of 2010 departing Treasury Secretary Liam Byrne who left a note for his successor saying there was no money left.

It was a joke, meant to give whoever got the job following that year’s General Election a private laugh, and such notes are common and rarely made public. Though David Cameron waved that piece of paper around at every opportunity to inflict maximum political damage which I always thought uncharacteristically graceless of him.

But that’s politics, a rough old game in which misrepresenting off-the-cuff remarks becomes cannon fodder in the battle for votes.

There is nothing winkled out of the Mandelson documents so far which will do in the PM. Despite that, the narrative that he is on his way out has been set anyway.His severance payment may not be enough to buy a motorhome, but he should be able to afford a few Montblanc pens with which to write his memoirs.