On His Merits

Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring was permitted his latest recrudescence without the inconvenience of a security vetting, according to the Ministry for Wogs and the White House. Evidently Team Starmer was so anxious to prove its patriotism that the ambassadorship was awarded on the strength of a nod, a wink and Lord Mandelbrot's long and fragrant track record of leg-humping the excessively wealthy. In the presence of so iconic an epitome of Blairite values, mere security checks would have been an unpardonable breach of Britishness; thus His Majesty's Government decided to carry them out only when, with impeccably British timing, it was too late. With equally impeccable British common sense, a Ministry flunkey pointed out that if there had been anything obviously suspect about Lord Mandelbrot he would hardly have been in the running for the chancellorship of Oxford University or the presentership of Radio Murdoch; just as Jimmy Savile could never have worked at the BBC or Boris Johnson been made prime minister had either of them exuded the smallest whiff of the not altogether above board.