For Labour’s infamous Prince of Darkness, the lights went out on Thursday morning. It would have been barely 5.30am in Washington DC when news of Peter Mandelson’s sacking as the UK’s ambassador to the US emerged.
But in truth, it had seemed inevitable from Wednesday afternoon when the Sun newspaper published snippets of 2008 supportive emails sent by Mandelson to his “best pal”, the child sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Mandelson, a former cabinet minister in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has risen before from the ashes of previous sackings that had seemed to spell the end of his career. But there is surely no coming back from this one for the Labour peer.
When the dust settles on this newest of political scandals, old questions will remain about the – once again – errant political judgment of prime minister Keir Starmer.
RM Block
He had been warned that it was a gamble to appoint Mandelson to represent the UK to the regime of US president Donald Trump. He had even been warned about Mandelson’s known links to Epstein. Yet in February he appointed him anyway, and now it has all blown up in the prime minister’s face just six days before Trump’s state visit to Britain.
Starmer may have believed that it couldn’t get any worse after the resignation last week of his deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, in a scandal over underpaid stamp duty. But this week had other ideas.
It was known that Mandelson had been close to Epstein and had spent time on his private island – the British peer later disowned his late friend. Then on Monday Democrats in Washington released an effusive birthday message he wrote to Epstein, as well as a picture of him in a bathrobe laughing with the sex offender.
It is believed that Bloomberg on Monday approached Mandelson for comment about a further tranche of emails between the two men that would prove damaging for Mandelson. On Tuesday, the ambassador, sensing the danger he was in, issued a grovelling statement expressing his regret for his association with Epstein.
He gave an interview on Wednesday in the US to the Sun’s editor-at-large there, Harry Cole, who was until this year a senior member of the Westminster press lobby. Mandelson told Cole that further “embarrassing” revelations would emerge.
Back in London on Wednesday, it was clear by lunchtime that a significant problem was brewing for Starmer when Tory leader Kemi Badenoch hammered him during prime minister’s questions over his decision to appoint Mandelson to the US.
[ Peter Mandelson named UK ambassador to US for ‘new chapter of friendship’Opens in new window ]
Badenoch goaded Starmer for being weak by not sacking Mandelson, in whom the prime minister had vested responsibility for negotiating the unpredictable currents and eddies of the Trump regime. The prime minister responded that he had confidence in Mandelson but he seemed to flounder somewhat while under pressure.
Shortly afterwards, Westminster journalists gathered for a briefing with Starmer’s officials, where they repeated that he had confidence in Mandelson. But they also pointedly refused to discuss what Starmer knew about the extent of Mandelson’s links to Epstein when he appointed him, relying on the fallback excuse that there had been an official vetting process.
“Did the prime minister not look Mandelson in the eye and ask him to tell him the full truth?” said one journalist. What did the prime minister know about the full extent of the Epstein links and when? When the Westminster press pack swarms in this manner over a single issue, it rarely bodes well for Downing Street.
A couple of hours later, the Sun published snippets of the embarrassing emails that Bloomberg had asked Mandelson to comment on days earlier, including his exhortation to Epstein as he went to prison to “fight for early release”.
“I think the world of you ... ,” Mandelson wrote. The appearance of these snippets in the Sun shortly after Mandelson sat down with Cole suggests that somebody in the former ambassador’s orbit may have provided them to the tabloid in the hopes of stymieing Bloomberg by getting ahead of the story.
By Wednesday evening, the mood in government over the affair had darkened, the latest emails seen as a game-changer. By early on Thursday morning, the rumour sweeping Westminster was that Downing Street was waiting on Mandelson to fall on his sword.
“But you could be waiting a long time for Peter Mandelson to fall on his sword,” one wise old head told The Irish Times. “They might have to push him on to it.”
There was a fear in Downing Street that if they allowed the issue to fester any longer, it would overshadow Trump’s visit next week – which it may do to some degree anyway. Morgan McSweeney, the Corkman who is Starmer’s chief-of-staff, was an early protege of Mandelson, who gave him his first job in Labour HQ more than 20 years ago. Regardless of his top strategist’s rumoured concern over sacking Mandelson so close to Trump’s visit, Starmer’s ruthless streak won out and he made the call. Possible replacements are said to include the former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill, as well as a senior former leader in the intelligence services.
Starmer cannot afford to make yet another mistake.
