Marvin Rees: The Funniest Comedy Show the BBC Crisis Never Commissioned.

From Bristol's Streets to the House of Lords – Baron Rees of Easton, or "Marvellous Marvin of Stapleton Road," Delivers a Masterclass in British Political Farce.

There’s something magnificently British about watching a politician fail upwards with such spectacular velocity that Isaac Newton’s corpse starts spinning. Marvin Rees – sorry, Baron Rees of Easton, or as Bristol locals know him, “Marvellous Marvin of Stapleton Road” – has become the subject of 2025’s most unintentionally hilarious hagiography. And the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

Just as Tim Davie resigned from the BBC after a week of scandals over edited Trump footage and accusations of institutional bias, along comes a puff piece so obsequious, so divorced from reality, that it makes the Corporation’s crisis management look competent by comparison. The article from wsetarnbusiness.co.uk – “Marvin Rees: A Trailblazing Leader Redefining Modern British Politics” – is a masterclass in the kiss-arse narrative. It reads like it was commissioned by someone desperately hoping Baron Rees would notice them, written by someone whose tongue is so far up the establishment’s backside they can taste ermine.

If the BBC were still capable of commissioning quality satirical content about the gap between political mythology and sycophantic PR, this would be it. Unfortunately, Davie resigned on November 9th, 2025, too busy managing his own spectacular failure to notice that the perfect case study in establishment rehabilitation just appeared online – complete with breathless praise, zero critical analysis, and the kind of arse-licking that would make even the most shameless political aide blush.

Act One: The Man Who Made Democracy Disappear.

Let’s set the stage with December 2024’s pièce de résistance: the email deletion scandal.

Just one month after leaving office as Bristol’s mayor, a Freedom of Information request revealed that Marvin Rees’s entire email inbox had been deleted. Vanished. Disappeared faster than trust in the BBC during the Huw Edwards scandal or Tim Davie’s credibility during the Trump editing controversy.

This is the same Marvin Rees who proclaimed himself – and I quote – “Bristol’s most transparent person.”

You couldn’t write comedy this good. Actually, you could, but commissioning editors would reject it for being too unbelievable. “Nobody would actually call themselves the most transparent person then delete all their emails,” they’d say. “It’s too on the nose.”

When Conservative and Green Bristol City councillors discovered this convenient data disappearance, they didn’t hold back. They called it a “stain on Bristol’s civic character“ and branded Bristol City Council an “impenetrable fortress“ for anyone seeking information about decision-making. The council was found to be “in breach of its statutory duty.”

But here’s where the comedy becomes properly British farce: by the time this scandal broke, Marvellous Marvin had already buggered off to the House of Lords. No consequences. No accountability. No investigation. Just £361 per day in attendance allowance (that’s £1,805 a week for showing up), subsidised restaurants, and the kind of job security that comes from never having to face voters again.

Transparency, apparently, comes with a delete button and an ermine robe.

Act Two: When Democracy Says “Fuck Off” (Twice).

If Act One was dark comedy, Act Two is pure slapstick – the kind where the protagonist keeps walking into the same door but somehow ends up in a palace anyway.

Scene One: The Labour Party Rejection (July 2023).

Marvin Rees applied to become the Labour parliamentary candidate for Bristol North East. Around 700 party members – his own people, the faithful, the ones who supposedly knew him best – turned up to hustings in Fishponds to choose between three candidates.

They chose Damien Egan.

Not Marvin Rees. Not the man who’d been mayor for seven years. Not Bristol’s “most transparent person.” His own party members rejected him. That’s not losing an election. That’s your family telling you they’d rather eat at Wetherspoons than at your house for Christmas.

Scene Two: The Bristol Referendum Restraining Order (May 2022).

But the punchline was still to come.

In May 2022, Bristol held a referendum on whether to keep the position of elected mayor. After eight years of Marvin Rees’s “transformative leadership,” the people of Bristol had a choice: keep the mayoral system or bin it entirely.

They binned it. 59.3% voted to abolish the position. Turnout was 28.6% – low, but higher than the 24% when Bristol voted to create the position in 2012.

But here’s what makes this properly funny: they didn’t just vote Marvin Rees out. They voted to abolish the entire position to make absolutely certain nobody like him could ever come back. That’s not a political loss. That’s not even a vote of no confidence. That’s Bristol taking out a democratic restraining order.

The position ceased to exist in May 2024. Bristol looked at eight years of Marvin Rees and said, “Never again. Burn the whole system down. Delete the job. Make it impossible.”

Act Three: The Establishment’s Witness Protection Programme.

Here’s the timeline that makes this comedy absolute perfection:

• May 2022: Bristol votes to abolish your job (59.3% voting to scrap the mayoral position)

• July 2023: Your own party members reject you as an MP candidate

• May 2024: You leave office after voters eliminated your position

• June 2024: Your emails mysteriously get deleted (just a month after leaving)

• December 2024: You get nominated to the House of Lords

• February 2025: You’re Baron Rees of Easton

Let that sink in.

Get rejected by voters? Get a peerage.
Get rejected by your own party? Get a peerage.
Delete public records? Get a peerage.
Fail to deliver on promises? Get a peerage.
Have the electorate literally abolish your job to prevent anyone like you from returning? Get a bloody peerage.

This is the British establishment’s witness protection programme for political failure. It’s funnier than Tim Davie keeping his job through multiple BBC scandals, only to resign over editing Trump’s speech. It’s the perfect British farce.

Baron Rees of Easton vs Marvellous Marvin of Stapleton Road.

There’s a glorious Bristol irony in the journey from “Marvellous Marvin of Stapleton Road” to “Baron Rees of Easton.”

The distance between Stapleton Road and the House of Lords is about 120 miles. But spiritually? That’s the distance between accountability and aristocracy. Between facing your constituents on the number 48 bus and collecting £361 a day for attendance. Between deletion and elevation. Between democracy and its corpse.

“Baron Rees of Easton” sounds dignified, historic, earned – like something out of Downton Abbey or a Jane Austen novel.

“Marvellous Marvin of Stapleton Road” sounds like what it is: a politician who couldn’t deliver, got rejected by voters twice, deleted his emails, and still ended up with a title and a seat for life. The nickname captures that particular Bristol brand of scepticism reserved for politicians who talk a magnificent game about representing the people while their actions tell a very different story.

From Stapleton Road to ermine robes. That’s not social mobility. That’s a magic trick.

The Insecurity Complex: When Credentials Become Compensation.

Here’s something nobody talks about with Marvin Rees: the man collected qualifications like other people collect Nectar points. Look at that CV:

• St George’s Comprehensive School, Bristol

• Swansea University (Economic History and Politics)

• Master’s degree in Political Theory and Government (Swansea)

• Master’s degree in Global Economic Development (Eastern University, Pennsylvania)

• Yale World Fellows Programme (that’s Yale University, Connecticut – not the lock company, for anyone convinced otherwise)

• Worked with Tony Campolo, advisor to President Bill Clinton

• BBC Radio Bristol journalist

• Director of Bristol Partnership

• Programme manager for race equality in mental health, Bristol Public Health Department

Note to readers: The Yale World Fellows Programme is an elite leadership development programme at Yale University designed to “nurture global leaders.” It’s intensely selective, highly prestigious, and opens doors to international networks of power and influence. It’s also about as far from Stapleton Road as you can get while still being on the same planet. Just so we’re clear – this isn’t about someone who’s good with padlocks. Though given the deleted emails, perhaps expertise in locks might’ve been more useful than political theory.

Two master’s degrees. Yale fellowship. International development work. Presidential advisor connections. That’s not a CV – that’s a man constantly trying to prove he belongs in rooms where he suspects people don’t want him.

And here’s the tragedy wrapped in comedy: none of it matters in the House of Lords. Not one single qualification. The House of Lords doesn’t require qualifications. It requires connections, playing the game, and being the right sort of failure.

All those years accumulating credentials to prove his worth to the establishment, and in the end, the establishment didn’t care about the credentials. They cared that he failed in the right way while maintaining the right connections and never actually threatening the system.

A man so insecure within himself that he had to constantly prove his intellectual worth to people who were never going to judge him on intellect anyway. The gentrified Bristol middle classes were duly impressed by the Yale fellowship and the master’s degrees – “Oh, how marvellous, a working-class boy made good!” – while the actual establishment just nodded along, knowing that credentials are what you collect to impress people who don’t matter, while power is what you accumulate by impressing people who do.

Marvin Rees spent years proving he was clever enough for the establishment. The establishment didn’t care if he was clever. They cared if he was compliant. And when Bristol voters rejected him twice, the establishment’s message was clear: “Don’t worry, Marvin. You passed the test that actually mattered. Here’s your peerage.”

That’s not intelligence. That’s insecurity weaponised into establishment compliance.

The “Achievements”: A Greatest Hits Album of Broken Promises.

Let’s talk about what Marvin Rees actually delivered with all those impressive qualifications. His 2016 manifesto contained 78 uncosted promises and 38 vague commitments. Here are some highlights:

The Arena Island Betrayal.

Rees campaigned in 2016 – on camera – to keep Bristol’s arena at Temple Meads (Arena Island). Videos of those promises have mysteriously disappeared from the internet, much like his emails.

The arena ended up in Filton instead. His rationale for this complete U-turn? Brexit.

Brexit. The universal excuse for every politician who can’t deliver. “Sorry I shagged your wife, love – Brexit.” “Sorry, the dog died – Brexit.” “Sorry, I completely reversed my flagship campaign promise – Brexit.”

The Bristol Beacon Money Pit.

The renamed Colston Hall – now Bristol Beacon – cost Bristol taxpayers £132 million. The original budget? £48 million. The final cost? Almost three times that. One Conservative councillor later calculated that with interest on the loans, the true cost to Bristol taxpayers would be closer to £183 million over 50 years. That’s £2.3 million a year for the next half century that Bristol won’t have for anything else.

£132 million. For a music venue. In a city with crumbling roads, failing schools, housing crises, and people sleeping rough on those very same streets where Marvin claims he learned about inequality.

The Heat Network Giveaway.

In 2023, Rees oversaw the transfer of Bristol’s heat network to Vattenfall, a Swedish state-owned energy company, as part of the City Leap deal. The network was transferred at “at cost” price rather than market value, meaning Bristol charged them what it cost to install rather than what it was worth as a going business concern.

Now, according to reports, private equity interests are circling, sensing an opportunity to profit as monopoly heat providers to Bristol residents who’ll have no choice but to pay whatever they demand. Vattenfall reportedly got cold feet when the government started talking about regulating the heat network sector – regulations that might’ve prevented obscene profits.

City Leap? More like city loss.

The Mass Transit Mirage,

Plans for an underground mass transit system were “pushed forward” with great fanfare, then “ultimately vetoed.” Millions spent on consultants, feasibility studies, public relations campaigns, glossy brochures.

Nothing built. Not one metre of track. Not one station. Not one bloody thing except invoices from expensive consultants and a pile of abandoned promises.

Classic Marvin. All vision, no delivery. All talk, no transit.

The Housing Record: Promises vs Reality.

Rees promised 2,000 new homes built every year in his 2016 manifesto, with 800 being affordable. The actual delivery? Between 2016/17 and 2019/20, Bristol saw between 1,350 and 1,994 new homes per year, with only 188 to 312 of those being affordable annually.

In 2018, Rees oversaw the founding of Goram Homes, Bristol City Council’s own housing company, designed to accelerate homebuilding across the city. The council-owned company entered into partnerships with major housebuilders to deliver developments across Bristol, including Vistry Group, Hill Group, and Keepmoat Homes.

It’s worth noting a development that emerged after Rees left office: In February 2024, the Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into eight major UK housebuilders, including Vistry Group, over suspected exchanges of commercially sensitive information about sales prices, incentives, and rates of sale. In October 2025, the CMA accepted commitments from the seven companies under investigation rather than proceeding to formal findings.

To be clear: Goram Homes’ partnerships with these developers were established before any public investigation was announced, and there is no suggestion whatsoever of any knowledge of, involvement in, or wrongdoing by Bristol City Council, Goram Homes, or Marvin Rees regarding the matters under CMA investigation. The partnerships were standard commercial arrangements for delivering housing developments. The CMA investigation concerned the conduct of the housebuilders themselves in their wider market activities, not their specific partnerships with local authorities like Bristol.

The broader point remains: despite these partnerships and initiatives, Bristol’s housing crisis worsened during Rees’s tenure. Rents skyrocketed. Homelessness increased. Record numbers ended up in temporary accommodation. The promised 2,000 homes per year never materialised.

But at least there’s that £132 million concert hall.

The Man of the People (Who Needed Constant Establishment Validation).

Here’s the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Marvin Rees’s entire political identity: he positioned himself as a voice for the voiceless, a champion of the marginalised, a working-class Bristol lad who understood poverty and inequality from lived experience.

And then he spent his entire career accumulating credentials to prove he was worthy of sitting at establishment tables.

The working-class background was his political capital – “I understand struggle because I lived it.” Fair enough. True enough. Important enough.

But then why the desperate need for Yale validation? Why the constant CV-padding with international programmes and presidential advisor connections? Why the compulsive credential-collecting?

Because he never believed the working-class background was enough. He never truly believed that lived experience of poverty and racism gave him the right to challenge power. He needed the establishment’s permission slip. He needed the Yale fellowship to prove he was clever enough. He needed the master’s degrees to prove he belonged. He needed the international connections to prove he was serious.

And the tragedy – the proper, Greek tragedy of it – is that the establishment didn’t care about any of it. They were always going to accept or reject him based on whether he threatened their interests, not whether he had the right qualifications.

The establishment doesn’t reward intelligence or education or even achievement. It rewards compliance. And Marvin Rees, for all his degrees and fellowships and international programmes, learned to be compliant while talking the language of challenge.

That’s the real skill that got him to the House of Lords. Not the Yale fellowship. Not the master’s degrees. The ability to sound radical while being fundamentally safe. To talk about transformation while practicing preservation. To invoke his working-class background while desperately seeking establishment approval.

And Bristol voters saw through it. That’s why they abolished his job. They recognised that all the impressive credentials didn’t translate into delivery. All the fancy education didn’t prevent the email deletion. All the talk about transparency didn’t stop the opacity. All the promises about housing didn’t solve the crisis.

The gentrified Bristol middle classes were impressed by the CV. The actual working-class communities he claimed to represent? They voted to make sure nobody like him could do it again.

The “UK Climate Leader” Grift.

After Bristol showed Marvin the door, he reinvented himself as a “UK climate leader.” You know, the kind of climate leader who took a 9,200-mile long-haul flight to Vancouver to speak about climate change at a TED event in June 2022, prompting even sympathetic observers to note the “inconsistency” between rhetoric and reality.

He now sits on panels at fancy conferences (Rio de Janeiro, anyone?), collects speaking fees and consultancy gigs, and warns the world about climate change while his actual record in Bristol tells a rather different story.

The gap between Marvin’s climate rhetoric and his climate reality is so wide you could drive a diesel bus through it – probably one of the ones Bristol still operates despite eight years of his “green leadership.”

But here’s the really funny bit: getting sacked by voters for failing to deliver apparently qualifies you as a “UK climate leader.” It’s the same career trajectory as Tim Davie at the BBC – fail upwards, collect the title, ignore the critics, keep cashing the cheques.

The Victim Narrative Shield.

Marvin Rees has perfected the art of deflecting legitimate criticism by invoking his background. It’s a masterclass in political judo – use your opponent’s force against them by making any criticism sound like an attack on your identity rather than your record.

Grew up poor? Check.
Faced racism? Check.
Single-parent household? Check.
Descendant of enslaved people? Check.

These experiences are real, formative, and important. They deserve acknowledgement. But here’s what they’re not: a get-out-of-accountability-free card.

When local journalists questioned his administration’s secrecy, when democracy activists challenged his transparency failures, when Bristol voters highlighted his broken promises, some defenders cried racism. Not all criticism was racist, obviously – but the accusation was weaponised to shut down legitimate scrutiny.

This is deeply insulting to actual victims of racism. It’s a cynical manipulation of identity politics to shield incompetence from accountability. You can be both a person who experienced discrimination AND someone who failed to deliver for the city you governed. These things are not mutually exclusive.

Martin Luther King Jr. faced racism. He also delivered. Nelson Mandela faced racism. He also delivered. Barack Obama faced racism. He also delivered (mostly).

Marvin Rees faced racism. He also deleted his emails, got rejected by voters twice, and failed to deliver on his manifesto promises. The racism he experienced doesn’t erase the failures. The failures don’t erase the racism. Both things can be true.

But only one of them got him a peerage.

And here’s where the insecurity comes full circle: a man so uncertain of his own worth that he collected credentials to prove his intelligence, then weaponised his background to deflect criticism of his competence. The qualifications were meant to prove he belonged. The victim narrative was meant to prevent scrutiny of whether he delivered.

Neither worked with Bristol voters. Both worked perfectly with the establishment.

The BBC Connection: When Institutional Failure Meets Political Farce.

Let’s talk about why this story’s timing is particularly delicious.

The BBC imploded spectacularly in November 2025 under Tim Davie’s leadership. After years of scandals – the Huw Edwards case, the Bob Vylan “death to the IDF” livestream at Glastonbury, the Gaza documentary that failed to disclose the narrator was the son of a Hamas official, accusations of bias from all sides – it was a selectively edited Trump speech in a Panorama documentary that finally brought Davie down.

On November 9th, 2025, both Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness resigned after the Daily Telegraph published a leaked memo showing the BBC had edited Trump’s January 6th speech to make it appear he directly encouraged the Capitol riots. The edits spliced together different parts of his speech, cutting out the bit where he said “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

Trump’s press secretary called the BBC “100% fake news.” A UK government minister called the editing “incredibly serious.” And Davie, after five years of managing crisis after crisis, finally fell on his sword.

Tim Davie, like Marvin Rees, mastered the art of failing upwards – until he didn’t. Both men represent the same phenomenon: British institutional failure rewarded with promotion, security, and unaccountability. Both men deleted inconvenient evidence (the BBC faced criticism for deleting programmes from archives; Rees deleted emails). Both men faced crises of public trust. Both men responded with corporate language about transparency while practising opacity.

The difference? Davie at least faced consequences eventually. He had to resign. Rees? He got promoted to permanent, unelected aristocracy.

If the BBC were still capable of commissioning biting satirical content – if it still had the balls it possessed when it made Yes Minister, The Thick of It, or Have I Got News For You in its prime – Marvin Rees’s story would be the perfect subject. A man with impressive credentials but chronic insecurity, collecting qualifications to prove his worth while failing to deliver for the people he claimed to represent, then getting rejected by voters twice before being elevated to permanent aristocracy? That’s comedy gold.

But the BBC can’t do that anymore. It’s too compromised, too cautious. Davie resigned before he could commission anything that was honest. So we’re left doing it ourselves, watching Marvin collect his attendance allowance while the institution that should be scrutinising him just imploded under its own contradictions.

Two British institutions – local democracy and public broadcasting – failing simultaneously. One leader resigned in disgrace. The other got elevated to the House of Lords.

The Hagiography Industry: When PR Becomes Propaganda.

Which brings us back to that absolutely gorgeous puff piece from wsetarnbusiness.co.uk – “Marvin Rees: A Trailblazing Leader Redefining Modern British Politics.”

Trailblazing. Leader. Redefining.

This is the same man who:

• Had his emails deleted

• Got rejected by his own party members

• Had voters abolish his position

• Failed to deliver on his manifesto

• Sold public assets at knockdown prices

• Spent £132 million on a concert hall while Bristol’s housing crisis worsened

• Collected credentials compulsively while failing to deliver competently

But sure. “Trailblazing.”

The article reads like it was written by the kind of spin doctor even Trump would hire – all breathless superlatives and zero substance. Must be that Yale connection. Perhaps they teach a module on “How to Polish Turds for the Establishment” in the World Fellows Programme. If so, whoever wrote this piece deserves top marks for effort, even if the subject matter was utterly unpolishable.

Every paragraph drips with generic praise: “beacon of hope,” “transformative leadership,” “legacy of compassion,” “champion of equality.” It lovingly lists all those qualifications – the degrees, the Yale fellowship, the international experience – as if any of them prevented the email deletion, stopped the housing crisis, or delivered the arena he promised.

Not one mention of:

• The email deletion scandal

• Being rejected as an MP candidate

• The referendum that abolished his job

• Any criticism whatsoever

• Any actual scrutiny of his record

• The gap between qualifications and delivery

It’s not journalism. It’s not even PR. It’s hagiography – the written equivalent of painting a saint on a church ceiling, minus the artistic talent and plus the stench of desperate arse-licking.

Someone wrote that article hoping Baron Rees would notice them. Someone published it, hoping for access, quotes, or favours down the line. Someone promoted it, thinking this kind of sycophantic credential-listing passes for content in 2025.

The hagiography industry exists because the aristocracy needs justification. The House of Lords needs people to believe its members earned their seats through merit, service, and achievement. The establishment needs stories that make failing upwards look like success, that make credential-collecting look like competence, that make democratic rejection look like visionary leadership ahead of its time.

Marvin Rees’s elevation to the peerage isn’t scandalous because it breaks the rules. It’s scandalous because it follows them perfectly. The rules that say qualifications matter more than delivery. The rules that say Yale fellowships count more than voter trust. The rules that say the establishment’s approval matters more than democratic accountability.

The Real Legacy: A Warning About British Democracy.

If you want to understand what’s wrong with British democracy in 2025, Marvin Rees’s story is the perfect case study.

He collected credentials compulsively. He broke promises repeatedly. Voters abolished his job. He deleted evidence. His own party rejected him. And he ended up in the House of Lords.

That’s not a broken system. That’s a system working exactly as designed – protecting the establishment, rewarding those who play the game properly, ensuring that democratic rejection never leads to actual consequences for the right sort of people, and valuing credentials over competence.

Tim Davie’s resignation from the BBC, the House of Lords corruption, the local democracy failures, the housing cartel investigations, the deleted emails, the broken promises – they’re all connected. They’re all symptoms of the same disease: a British establishment that values compliance over competence, credentials over delivery, and networking over accountability.

Marvin Rees didn’t break the system. He learned to work within it. He figured out that delivering for voters matters less than networking with the right people. He understood that collecting impressive qualifications matters more than translating them into actual achievement. He recognised that failing in the right way – publicly, with the right rhetoric, while maintaining establishment connections – is more valuable than succeeding for the wrong people.

The insecurity that drove him to collect all those qualifications? The establishment loves that. Insecure people are controllable people. They’re desperate for validation. They’ll compromise to get it. They’ll fail to deliver for the people who elected them while succeeding at impressing the people who can elevate them.

Bristol voters rejected him. The establishment promoted him. And that tells you everything you need to know about who matters in modern Britain, and what qualities actually get rewarded.

Conclusion: Welcome to Britain, Where Insecurity Meets Aristocracy.

Baron Rees of Easton will collect his attendance allowance, deliver speeches about equality and opportunity, sit on committees about urban development and climate change, and live very comfortably for the rest of his life.

He’ll never face voters again. He’ll never have to explain the deleted emails. He’ll never have to account for the broken promises. He’ll never have to justify the £132 million concert hall or the sold-off heat network or the arena U-turn or the gap between his impressive qualifications and his unimpressive delivery.

All that desperate credential-collecting finally paid off – not because the credentials mattered, but because they impressed the right people. Not the voters, obviously. They weren’t impressed. But the establishment? They loved it. A working-class lad with Yale validation and multiple master’s degrees who learned to fail in acceptable ways? Perfect. Exactly what the House of Lords needed.

He’s untouchable now. Permanent. Part of the furniture. Baron for life. All those years proving he belonged finally vindicated – not by delivering for the people he represented, but by impressing the people who could elevate him beyond democratic accountability.

And Bristol? Bristol gets to watch from a distance as the man they rejected twice, the man whose position they abolished to prevent anyone like him returning, collects £361 per day for the privilege of helping govern a country whose voters he couldn’t convince to keep him in a city.

That’s British democracy in 2025: optional for the important people, binding for everyone else. Credentials are valued over competence. Compliance rewarded over delivery. Insecurity weaponised into establishment protection.

Marvellous Marvin of Stapleton Road became Baron Rees of Easton not despite his insecurity, but because of it. Not despite his failure to deliver, but because he failed in exactly the right way – maintaining establishment connections, collecting impressive credentials, delivering establishment rhetoric, and never actually threatening the system that protects people like him.

It’s the funniest comedy show Tim Davie’s BBC resignation never commissioned. It’s the most perfectly timed farce British politics has produced in years. It’s the ultimate failing upwards story, told in real-time, with real consequences for real people who have to live with the broken promises, deleted accountability, and a political system that rewards the right kind of failure with permanent, unelected aristocracy.

And the punchline?

There isn’t one. This is just how things work now.

Welcome to Britain, where democracy is a suggestion, accountability is optional, credentials matter more than competence, insecurity gets weaponised into compliance, and failing means never having to say you’re sorry – just collect your peerage and carry on.

Baron Rees of Easton (Okay, Stapleton Road then): A trailblazing leader in showing us exactly how broken this system really is, one credential at a time.