Peter Mandelson may have Labour politics in his DNA, but his avaricious courtships of the rich and powerful have been his undoing.
Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party late on Sunday. The former business secretary who was made a peer in 2008, said he did not wish to cause the party “further embarrassment” over his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
For some in Labour who viewed Mandelson as an Icarus who basked in the sunshine of power, connections and money, his plummet to earth was long overdue.
Newly released documents revealing new fresh details about the pair’s friendship cemented his fate. Bank statements appeared to show that Mandelson-linked accounts received $75,000 from the late financier, even though Mandelson said the claims he had received the payments from were “false” and that he would investigate them immediately.
That wasn’t washing on Monday with his erstwhile Labour colleagues. “Yeah, I get offered 75 grand regularly, maybe twice a week; sometimes it’s hard to remember,” one Government source remarked sarcastically.
There is also the issue of a £10,000 loan from the late financier to Mandelson’s husband Reinaldo Avila da Silva in 2009, just after Epstein was released from a Florida jail where he was held for child sex offences.
To say Labour MPs are furious would be an understatement. But they are enraged for a range of reasons. Some grimace at the offhand way Mandelson has dealt with the female victims.
In January he said he never saw girls at the convicted paedophile’s properties and declined to apologise to victims for maintaining his friendship with the American because he was not “knowledgeable of what he was doing”.
After outrage he later did extend an apology to the victims and repeated it again on Sunday. But some in Labour don’t think he means it.
“I’m glad he’s gone and he should do whatever he can to help Congress in their inquiries; it’s the very least any of these men can do to repent,” a female Labour minister told The i Paper on Monday.
Starmer has also called for Andrew Mountbatten Windsor to assist Congress.
Other Labour sources also expressed irritation at how Mandelson put his greed and lobbying for rich friends ahead of both the party’s principles and the policy discussions of the Labour Government of which he was part.
The Financial Times uncovered emails which showed Mandelson telling Epstein in 2009 that JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon should “mildly threaten” Alistair Darling, then chancellor, over a one-off banker bonus tax. Mandelson was business secretary at the time.
Disagreements between a chancellor and business secretary are to be expected. But the quote confirms the long-held suspicions of some on the Labour left that Mandelson’s politics had always put him on the wrong side of the argument.
It’s not as if Labour hadn’t repeatedly forgiven Mandelson. He had to resign from the Government for the first time in 1998 after it emerged that Geoffrey Robinson, a fellow minister, had given him a secret loan of £373,000.
Within a year, he was back in a Government role, appointed Northern Ireland secretary.
He remained in the job until January 2001, at which point he resigned because of allegations of misconduct related to a passport application for the Hinduja brothers. An investigation later absolved him of any wrongdoing.
In the 1990s he saw himself as Robert Kennedy to Blair’s vote-winning John F. Kennedy. When calling Blair’s private office, he would tell staff “Bobby” was on the line for “Jack”.
After advising Starmer and his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney in the run-up to the election, Mandelson saw off stiff competition from career civil servants to become the current prime minister’s political pick for UK ambassador to Washington in December 2024.
At the time, the nomination was seen as a balance between high risk and high reward. Given Mandelson had twice previously resigned from government, there were clearly potential perils. But Mandelson also moved in the social circles key to wooing senior people in Donald Trump’s mercurial administration which was then still in its early days.
He had been on holiday with Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and made connections with Mark Burnett, the TV producer of the Apprentice
Nicknamed “silver tongue” by former US President George W Bush, Mandelson’s political nous was also unrivalled: Starmer judged the risk was worth it.
Now, of course, there is a further fallout for both Starmer and McSweeney, the latter widely blamed for pushing the appointment, amid a wider discontent about the rightward direction of the party.
Some in Labour have long memories. When Mandelson said of New Labour in 1998: “We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes” many in the party winced. Some still recoil at the sentiment.
McSweeney is already on borrowed time so far as some Labour MPs are concerned. “This whole saga will feed into that sense that the right of the party has been wrong all along,” as one Labour MP said on Monday.
The Conservatives accused Starmer of lacking backbone for allowing Mandelson to resign from the Labour Party rather than expelling him and called for an independent investigation into why Starmer appointed Mandelson as US ambassador despite knowing about his Epstein connections.
No 10 said on Monday it wants Mandelson to resign his peerage. However, ministers need to be mindful that any bill could be mischievously amended to abolish the House of Lords in one fell swoop.
But, having been on a leave of absence from the Lords since taking up the ambassadorship last February, there are no plans for Mandelson to don ermine again. He has been effectively retired from politics.
Speak to Labour figures and they used to acknowledge Mandelson’s presentational skill and strategic nous even as they held him responsible for ditching some of the party’s key socialist principles. Blair once said the New Labour project would only be complete when party members had “learnt to love Peter Mandelson”.
The grandson of Herbert Morrison, Clement Attlee’s deputy prime minister, this is Mandelson’s final fall from grace from a party which gave him endless second chances.
“I have dedicated my life to the values and success of the Labour Party and in taking my decision I believe I am acting in its best interests,” Mandelson said in his resignation statement.
On Monday one Labour MP said, “On balance, some in the party think he’s done more harm than good. He was right to go.”
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