The Prince of Darkness is up to his old spin tricks again. Peter Mandelson was no sooner released by police than his lawyers issued a statement questioning whether he should have been arrested at all.
The i Paper understands that at the start of the week the investigation was likely to go on for weeks before Mandelson was interviewed by police, with officers progressing relatively slowly. Police had already searched his London home and his property in Wiltshire, taking away laptops and boxes of documents.
Until this week the intention had been to interview the former UK ambassador to Washington under caution, rather than arrest him. That plan was thrown into disarray on Monday morning when the police were approached with claims that Mandelson was planning to flee the country – an allegation he has denied. Shortly after 4pm that day, officers arrived at his home in London and led him away.
“The arrest was prompted by a baseless suggestion that he was planning to leave the country and take up permanent residence abroad. There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in any such suggestion,” a spokesperson for his lawyers Mishcon De Reya said. “Peter Mandelson’s overriding priority is to cooperate with the police investigation, as he has done throughout this process, and to clear his name.”
Two hours after Mandelson returned home in the early hours of Tuesday morning, he sent a message to friends describing what had happened and denying that he was preparing to leave the country. “The police were told only today that they had to improvise an arrest,” he said in the message. “The question is who or what is behind this.”
On Wednesday we got the answer. Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, said he had informed police of his concerns, having been in receipt of information about a trip to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) last week. The concern was just one of the baffling things about this whole saga: Mandelson could not do a midnight flit because the BVI, as an overseas territory, has an extradition treaty with the UK.
Moreover, the peer’s lawyers are still insisting he can “clear his name” without apparently realising that that luxury yacht has sailed. Notwithstanding the allegation against him – misconduct in public office – this is a man who has been tried and found wanting in the court of public opinion. His name is so degraded it’s now a byword for enabling misogyny and ignoring the crimes of his convicted paedophile pal, Jeffrey Epstein.
But then Mandelson has never been one for going quietly. There are strong echoes of the defiant speech he gave after defending his Hartlepool seat in the 2001 general election. “I am a fighter and not a quitter,” he famously said then. Now, not only is Mandelson seeking to control the narrative in private conversations with friends, but he has also been texting journalists complaining some of their coverage of his arrest was unfair. Mandelson appears to be the last person in the country who doesn’t realise the game is up. He has no name left to clear. Those days are gone.
Alongside Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former director of communications, Mandelson was one of the architects of modern spin-doctoring. The term only came into usage in the 1990s as a direct result of New Labour’s attempts to frame the political debate to drive the media and public’s reaction. And old habits die hard.
In January, in an interview with the BBC, Mandelson refused to say sorry for maintaining his friendship with Epstein, arguing that as a gay man he never saw the trafficked women in Epstein’s life. He only issued a fuller apology after Cabinet condemnation. Dragged into this torrid world, senior ministers could see what he could not.
Later that month, the peer again attempted to rehabilitate his reputation with a glossy shoot for The Times Magazine, cooking at an Aga in his Wiltshire kitchen next to a Beryl Cook print. The cover photo was designed to show he was one of us: what could be more quintessentially British? Before the magazine could appear in print, the latest and most devastating tranche of Epstein files were released, including the allegation of selling market-moving information, and a photo of him in Y-fronts. The 72-year-old Mandelson is from the old guard, trying to distract us with tactics that don’t work any more.
His high-wire manoeuvrings are not without risk to him and those around him. A generation ago, he had to resign on two separate occasions as a Cabinet minister, firstly over undeclared home loans and then over passport applications for wealthy businessmen. When he represented the UK in Washington, even Donald Trump’s team dubbed him “Sneaky Pete”.
This month, Global Counsel, the consultancy he co-founded, collapsed into administration at the cost of around 100 jobs. One former colleague, clearly untroubled that Mandelson’s lawyers would push back at the idea he has a reputation left to protect, used LinkedIn to call out the “odious actions of a misogynist creep”.
With so much evidence in black and white through the Epstein files – including alleged leaking of market-sensitive documents to the disgraced financier and sex offender during the financial crisis – former Prime Minister Gordon Brown felt able to say that if true, it would be “a betrayal of everything we stand for as a country”.
Mandelson has been bailed until May, at which point he will either be charged, the investigation will be formally dropped, or his bail will be extended. He has denied wrongdoing and insisted that he did not act for financial gain.
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But, by demanding the Met provides the evidence relied upon to justify the arrest, Mandelson’s expensive lawyers are playing hardball as detectives try to ensure they don’t prejudice any future trial. “We have asked the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] for the evidence relied upon to justify the arrest,” the lawyers wrote in their aggressive statement. The camera spins from accused to focus instead on the plod. These tactics have not gone unnoticed by the police.
Misconduct in public office is a complex common law offence that requires proof of a “wilful neglect of duty” to a degree that amounts to an abuse of the public’s trust. It could be months before the Crown Prosecution Service decide on whether to charge Mandelson with any offence.
In the meantime, expect more muddying of the waters. But after 30 years of spin, we’re all wise to it. This time it won’t wash.
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