The latest revelations about Peter Mandelson have left many in Labour “seething with disappointment and boiling with betrayal”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason. 

The Metropolitan Police has launched a criminal investigation after newly released Epstein files revealed that, while Mandelson was business secretary in 2009, he leaked Downing Street emails containing market-sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein.

Keir Starmer has ordered the release of files relating to his government’s appointment of Mandelson as US ambassador. But the “gravity of what is alleged” could build “to perhaps one of the biggest” political scandals “for a generation”, said Mason, and calls into question the prime minister’s judgement in sending Mandelson to Washington a year ago.

What is in the files?
Starmer has said he will release emails, documents and messages relating to Mandelson’s appointment, provided they do not prejudice national security or damage diplomatic relations. The decision pre-empted a Tory plan to use a Commons debate today to try to force the publication of the records, including details of what Mandelson told the PM and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, about the nature of his relationship with Epstein.

“Attention will turn swiftly” now to that proviso for exempting documents and “which ones aren’t in scope”, said Politico. No doubt there will be “debate about whether WhatsApp messages sent on private phones will be included”. And it’s not yet clear “who is in charge of the process” and “which senior officials” have oversight.

What does it mean for Starmer?
Mandelson “risks being a headache that simply will not end”, said The Guardian’s political correspondent Peter Walker. How on Earth could Starmer’s team have thought it was a “good idea to appoint a tarnished, if well connected, figure to be the ambassador to Donald Trump’s court”?

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, seen by many as a potential challenger for Starmer’s leadership role, today defended the decision to appoint Mandelson and rejected the idea that it could cost the PM his job. That would “let Mandelson off the hook”, Streeting told LBC. “This is his misjudgement, his misconduct, his irresponsibility.”

Sex doesn’t sell like it used to: that was the major takeaway from a recent survey of young people in the US.

In a “stat that made Hollywood blink”, nearly half (48%) of 1,500 respondents aged 10 to 24 said there was too much sex in film and television, said Audrey Weisburd in Paste Magazine. More than 60% of the 14- to 24-year-olds said they wanted romances depicted as “more about friendship than sex”. This fits the stereotype of a generation that’s having less sex than their parents. Yet the findings, from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, don’t tell the whole story.

‘Movement towards authenticity’
Shows such as “Heated Rivalry” and “Bridgerton” are “filled with sex scenes” and “body parts” yet have still “captivated young viewers”, said USA Today. For Gen Zs who are not engaging in sex but are seeking out emotional validation and connection, these stories “might almost fill that void”, said Chicago health educator Virginia Gramarosso.

What “feels unique” about “Heated Rivalry”, about two male ice hockey players having a decade-long affair, “is that it lets its sex scenes play out, sometimes sticking with its characters nearly from the beginning of their encounter until the end in real time”, said Faith Hill in The Atlantic.

“The way that sex has been portrayed in film for a long time hasn’t been particularly realistic,” said American actor and director Olivia Wilde while promoting her new film “I Want Your Sex”. So “there’s been this movement now towards authenticity”.

‘New grammar of intimacy’
In an era when online porn is more accessible than ever, “gone are the days when gratuitous sex would satiate an audience”, said Olivia Petter in The Times. “People want to see themselves represented on screen and this perhaps applies to sexual content now more than ever.”

This all “may be less about prudishness than dissonance and fatigue”, said Paste Magazine. Gen Z is “the most digitally sexualised generation in history, raised on algorithmic thirst, parasocial infatuation, and the casual surveillance of bodies online”. Yet “instead of translating that saturation into appetite, it’s produced a kind of sensory burnout”. What they are seeking instead, “consciously or not, is a new grammar of intimacy”.

A pangolin pup curls up at a rescue centre in South Africa, after its mother was rescued from poachers but then died after giving birth. The image is among 24 shortlisted for the People’s Choice Award, run by the Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum, London.

Lance van de Vyver / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The choice of Sean Bean as the new host of “Get Birding” was met with “a raised eyebrow or two”, said Gerard O’Donovan in The Telegraph. But the “Game of Thrones” star has been a “keen birder” since he was a teenager, and “he’s a natural”.

The RSPB podcast began in 2021 during lockdown as twitching exploded in popularity, and is now back for its fourth series. It’s “hugely listenable”, said Alexi Duggins in The Guardian. Bean is “warm and honest”, sharing his “lifelong love of birding” and how he has found time for it in between his acting jobs. In the first episode, he chats with musician Guy Garvey about “spotting different species while working abroad, recognising birdsong and the meditative joy of watching the feathered creatures”.

The new series “sprinkles celebrity birdwatchers among ornithological experts” including RSPB president Dr Amir Khan and 23-year-old environmental activist Mya-Rose Craig (also known as Birdgirl), the show’s original presenter, said Lucy White in the Irish Independent.

Bean makes for a “genial host”. The “rugged actor” is “so Yorkshire he’s wearing a flat cap in the video version”. When he’s not pottering around his “three acres of rewilded land”, he chats with his “fellow bird-fanciers” about the joys of connecting with nature. “Birdwatching really settles your mind,” he says. “I guess it’s like playing a musical instrument, you can’t be thinking of anything else when you’re in the garden, everything else floats away, all your troubles. It keeps you sane.”

No, the public is not irredeemably ignorant
Sarah O’Connor in the Financial Times
There’s a “disconnect between the metrics” that “economists, policymakers and journalists” use and “how people actually perceive change in their everyday lives”, writes Sarah O’Connor. “But that doesn’t mean the public is stupid”: if inflation is falling, for example, prices are still rising, “just not as quickly”. Rather than “waving a spreadsheet” and accusing us of being “out of touch with reality”, policymakers should be having conversations “about why the statistics differ” from our “perceptions”.

Thin-skinned Trump’s threats reveal the weakness he has lived with his whole life
Simon Kelner in The i Paper
Donald Trump has “a notoriously thin skin”, writes Simon Kelner. “It clearly rankles” the president that “he cannot subdue” Bad Bunny, who “used his platform” at the Grammys to “decry” US immigration policies. In calling the rapper “terrible”, Trump just “ensured” that more people than ever watch his Super Bowl half-time show on Sunday. Belittling has worked for Trump before, but this time he’s up against someone with a “bigger, more devoted constituency”.

The embarrassing Brit abroad is a dying breed. I admit it – I was one
Carol Midgley in The Times
If you’ve “ever cringed” at the “embarrassing Brit abroad”, writes Carol Midgley, “let your buttocks be unclenched”: they are “a dying breed”. According to a survey, holiday “crimes” such as “packing tins of Heinz beans” and “getting third-degree sunburn” are “on the wane”. I “wince” when I recall my past misdemeanors, including “throwing down the 8am beach towel” to hog a sunlounger and “seeking out restaurants” that “sold chips”. But, “if you must know”, I still take my own teabags.