This embarrassment could have been prevented. Every single aspect of this was avoidable. The Labour Government knew about Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein before it offered him the role of ambassador to the US. It should never have given him the position. Now he has it, and it has dragged the name of Britain into the mud.
The photos show Mandelson with young women, their faces cropped out, or in his bathrobe speaking with Epstein. An intimate portrait of a man fully ensconced in a paedophile’s fairyland.
The reality of what these euphemisms entail comes through in certain letters, by those who made it all a little too obvious for posterity. One cartoon shows Epstein handing out a lollipop to some children; the year 1983 is written underneath. Next to it is an image of Epstein being massaged by topless women labelled 2003, with the clear insinuation that the lollipop is the start of a grooming process.
Mandelson is one of the great survivors. His entire political life – whether as a Labour minister or as an EU commissioner – has been beset by accusations of close social contact with rich and powerful individuals who pose an acute danger of a conflict of interest. And yet, even though he has twice been forced to resign from the cabinet, he always returns to political life.
He’ll probably survive this too. The Government has stood by him. But then, of course, it must do, because all of these facts were known when they made Mandelson ambassador. They knew he had a track record of – at best – questionable behaviour. They knew he was intimately connected to Epstein. And yet they gave him the position anyway. To get rid of him now inevitably raises questions about their own judgement.
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When in office, Johnson tried to destroy the standards system altogether in an attempt to save Owen Paterson after he was found to have breached Parliament’s paid advocacy rules. During the pandemic, the government’s procurement programme eroded even further; last September one study found corruption “red flags” in 135 contracts worth more than £15bn of public money.
At the moment, that sense of trust is collapsing. It is chiselled away by populism, corroded by endless conspiracies online, hammered by genuine stories of ministerial misbehaviour. It was of vital importance that Keir Starmer’s Government restore that sense of confidence.
What would happen if we were to apply that standard to Mandelson? Would we consider the Epstein letter to meet the “highest possible standards of proper conduct”? Do we believe that Mandelson “acted with integrity” when he wrote “yum yum” on that card? No one could say it with a straight face.
This has been a shameful episode and one utterly of the Government’s own making. One day we’ll get a Labour government sensible enough to recognise that Mandelson is not suitable for public life. But it’s evidently not this one.
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