What a shabby, mortifying, tawdry spectacle. It’s impossible to read Peter Mandelson’s message to Jeffrey Epstein, published yesterday by the US House Oversight Committee as part of the now infamous birthday scrapbook, without feeling clammy fingers down your spine and shuddering.
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.
Mandelson’s entire 10-page note to Epstein is full of innuendo. He describes Epstein as “mysterious”, he refers to his “interesting” friends, he talks of his “glorious homes he likes to share with his friends (yum yum)”, he describes him as “my best pal” and finishes with the words “we love you”. It is as witless and embarrassing as it is morally discreditable.
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 birthday scrapbook is composed of various disparate contributions but they mostly share this style – a bundle of suggestive euphemisms and code words. Donald Trump’s entry, for instance, speaks of a “wonderful secret”.
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.
You can’t judge someone by their friends, but it’s notable how naturally Mandelson fits into this social milieu. His letter is a perfect example of the entire document: fawning, flattering, gushing, dripping with euphemism.
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.
Perhaps it is this confidence in his own survival that allowed Mandelson to respond to the Financial Times’ questions in February about the Epstein connection by saying: “Frankly you can all f**k off. OK?”
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.
This Government came to power promising a scandal-free government. Just this week we’ve had a reminder of what things looked like under the previous government – a treasure trove of leaked data obtained by The Guardian, showing how Boris Johnson used his time as prime minister to enrich himself after leaving office.
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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.
It was incumbent on this Labour Government to get this right. This was not just about money. It was about something profound: public faith in government.
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.
In some areas, the system is very severe. Last week, the adviser on ministerial standards issued a report on Angela Rayner’s tax affairs which found that she had “acted with integrity” but that she had failed to seek out the suitable level of legal advice on her tax affairs and therefore had not met the “highest possible standards of proper conduct”. Rayner duly resigned.
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.
It was a travesty that Mandelson was given that position. His occupancy of it is now a festering sore on the British body politic: it damages our reputation internationally, it encourages conspiratorial views about elite paedophile networks, and it damages public confidence in government.
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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