Andrew arrested, Mandelson probed - where it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, “nobody is above the law” is about to get tested hard. Right so Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince, has been arrested by Thames Valley Police on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and officers have been searching addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk, and that alone is enough to set the whole Epstein universe on fire again, because this isn’t another vague “links to Epstein” story any more, it’s the British state saying, out loud, that it is treating a former royal now as a suspect in an abuse-of-office investigation connected to what he is alleged to have passed to Jeffrey Epstein while holding a public role. But Peter Mandelson is the name sitting right beside that in the public mind, because the Metropolitan Police have already confirmed they are also investigating misconduct in public office allegations involving a former minister in relation to Epstein material and they have executed search warrants there as well, and the public can see the two tracks at once now, not as gossip, as policing decisions, and that is why the question becomes immediate and unavoidable: why does one man get the full spectacle and the coercive control of an arrest while the other gets “under investigation” language, even while warrants are being served? Andrew’s brother, King Charles has done the ritual line, deep concern, proper process, law must take its course, and Keir Starmer has done the other strand of that, saying nobody is above the law, and anybody with information should come forward. With the nonsense he’s up to in trying to make the law fit when it comes to protesters, it’s a bit rich invoking the law in respect to this quite frankly, but that’s by the by. Those phrases though are supposed to steady the ship, but they don’t, because when the Epstein name is involved people do not hear reassurance, they hear establishment self-protection, and they start asking who is being thrown overboard and who is being kept behind the rope, how far does this latest Epstein rabbit hole go?

Trump’s Iran threats are now colliding with real-world red lines, a live military build-up, and a negotiation track detonating into war. Right, so Donald Trump has sent big, very loud signals at Iran while keeping the talks going, and those two things do not sit together unless the threat is the whole point. The second round of indirect talks in Geneva has ended, Iran’s side has described it as more serious than the first round, and they are talking about “guiding principles” and drafting. At the same time, Trump has been pushing more military weight into the region, and Israel’s own leadership has been told to prepare for a war scenario. Ali Khamenei has gone on record with the bluntest version of what Iran is saying back: you bring carriers, we have weapons that can sink them. He has framed it as a warning, not a plea, and he has framed American “strongest army” boasting as exactly the sort of arrogance that produces a surprise you cannot walk off, that even the strongest armies can get hurt. Once the other side answers your threat with a specific consequence, it stops being performance and starts being a bill you might have to pay. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, has described the Geneva talks as more constructive than the earlier round and said there’s a general understanding on guiding principles, but he has also been careful to say it’s early days and the hard part is still to come when it comes to putting anything into text. The real fight isn’t the atmosphere in the room, it’s what Iran would actually accept on uranium enrichment, what the United States would actually trade on sanctions relief, and whether Washington is trying to drag missiles and regional alliances into a nuclear negotiation until “deal” really means surrender. Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy leading the US delegation, is doing it in a format that shows how little trust exists, because the talks are still indirect and mediated by Oman. Nobody is sat there smiling across a table. Notes are being carried back and forth like both sides are building a paper trail as much as they are building an agreement.

BBC Question Time panel leaves the Greens out while Labour bleeds councillors to them days before Gorton & Denton votes. Right, so Fiona Bruce is hosting Question Time tonight and the BBC has already published the panel list, which means the thing doing the damage is not a clip, not a quote, not a bad moment on air, it’s a decision that exists before the cameras even roll, because it names four people and only four people: Heidi Alexander for Labour, Richard Holden for the Conservatives, Robert Jenrick for Reform, and Jon Sopel as the journalist, and the Greens are not in the room. That list sits there in public before a single audience question, and that’s the whole point, because when a programme that often squeezes in five guests decides it’s only doing four tonight, it isn’t “one of those things”, it’s a hard exclusion choice, it’s a choice about who gets treated as automatic politics and who gets treated as optional, and they’ve made that choice in the same week a Green candidate is actually on a real ballot in a live parliamentary by-election. Tom Stannard, acting as Returning Officer for Manchester, has already signed and published the legal notice that fixes the Gorton and Denton by-election for Thursday 26 February 2026, and that notice is the hard object the whole week is built around because it lists the candidates by name, including Hannah Spencer for the Greens, Labour’s Angeliki Stogia, and Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin, so the Greens aren’t some outside commentator asking for airtime, they are literally on the ballot in a parliamentary contest happening in days. Robert Jenrick being put on that Question Time sofa tonight then becomes a broadcast decision with teeth, because the BBC is choosing who gets treated as automatic national politics in the same news cycle that by-election is live, and with Jenrick booked Reform gets the default stamp of “serious” while the Greens get treated as the party you can leave off the stage even when the Returning Officer’s own notice says they are in the same race.