QUENTIN LETTS: The minister regretted so much detail had been expunged

See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER Published: 22:31 BST, 1 June 2026 | Updated: 22:31 BST, 1 June 2026

To obtain a copy of the Mandelson Files you had to negotiate some winding stairs and present yourself to a dusty counter in a parliamentary basement, there to ask a man – ‘psst!’, out of one corner of the mouth – if he had the goods. He disappeared for a minute before staggering back, his spine curving under the weight of three volumes: 1,421 pages of glossy paper.This testament to Whitehall’s memo-writing, the greatest publishing sensation since Dame Hilda Bracket’s Playboy centrefold, was curiously light on Sir Keir Starmer’s dabs. The only expense spared in the operation? No index.Darren Jones, the Cabinet’s smoother-in-chief, reported that £1million had been spent on preparing and printing this blockbuster. Saving the planet was not a concern. The files have, as Mr Jones’s Conservative shadow Alex Burghart put it, ‘acres and acres of white space, a constellation of asterisks’.Not untypical is p.273 of Vol II, part II, which is almost completely white save for three asterisks no larger than squashed gnats. At the bottom of the page is the typed comment ‘Happy to enlarge Peter’.The files were published at 2pm. That gave MPs an hour and a half in which to fight through the thicket of blether before Mr Jones rose in the Commons to make one of his skilfully uninformative parliamentary statements. One or two bigshots were given privileged early access to the evidence. Mr Burghart was allowed to look at it from 9.30am, as was Dame Emily Thornberry, who chairs the foreign affairs select committee. If the latter was looking blotchy around the headlights it was perhaps because 9.30am is damnably early for the dame and her body clock. Our Emily needs her beauty sleep.Mr Jones, in his preamble, talked and talked. It is a forte of his. He began by speaking, as they do, of ‘the victims’. A pause to allow the word to echo round the upper clerestories of this cathedral to virtue. Then: ‘We hold them in our thoughts.’ Another pause. With that I almost expected Mr Jones to announce the first hymn. Darren Jones told the Commons that £1million had been spent on preparing and printing the Mandelson Files – saving the planet was not a concern, writes Quentin Letts Dame Emily Thornberry, who chairs the foreign affairs committee, was allowed to look at the files from 9.30amAfter that moist little moment he was soon expressing his exquisite regret that so much detail had been expunged/expurgated/concealed by jet-hoses filled with industrial-grade Tipp-Ex. This, he insisted, had been at the request of the police rather than at the panicky insistence of, say, Sir Keir. From time to time Mr Jones’s soft fingers drummed a rondo on the despatch box. He smiled pleasantly as he vouchsafed his fog of nullities and inconsequences. He hoped he had been helpful. He was pleased to be able to assist the House. Ha!The word used repeatedly by Mr Burghart was ‘obfuscation’. He marvelled at Sir Keir’s absence from paper-trail. Both Sir Julian Lewis (Con, New Forest East) and Sir John Whittingdale (Con, Maldon) pressed at this puzzling matter. The PM’s disappearance reminded Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough) of the old film, The Man Who Never Was. Mr Jones’s smooth assurances that nothing untoward had occurred was only slightly undone by a government Whip, Deirdre Costigan. She sat nearby, darting her eyes urgently from side to side. Ms Costigan might not be the sort of person you ask for help with a cryptic crossword.Few Labour MPs were present but Kensington’s Joe Powell (decent but dull) hoped the Government would ‘consider the learnings from this episode’. You bet they will: never put anything down on WhatsApp.One of those Plaid Cymru sunbeams moaned about ‘the boys’ club in control of No 10’. Mr Jones politely replied that Downing Street was ‘not solely occupied by men – there are some senior women employed.’There are indeed several women in Cabinet but none was present on the bench beside the minister. Had they not seen reports that Jonesy is said to be considering a tilt at the Labour leadership? He would be marvellous. The anti-populist candidate. Vote Jones for Honeyed Bluster. A leadership campaign this column can at last support.