The man who should have been first to quit in Mandelson scandal
BRUCE NEWSOME
WHO WILL be next to resign over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK Ambassador to the US?
On Wednesday last week, Sir Keir Starmer told the Commons he regrets the appointment, but blamed the appointee. He stated that Mandelson ‘lied repeatedly’ about his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was a matter of record, decades before the appointment in December 2024. As Kemi Badenoch replied to Starmer’s statement: ‘The Prime Minister cannot blame the process. He did know. It was on Google.’
Even more was known to the ministers and staffers who had served with Mandelson in Tony Blair’s regime three decades earlier. And what they did not know from personal experience they could read in British intelligence, as we shall see.
Starmer admitted to Badenoch that he had known that Mandelson had continued his relationship with Epstein after the American’s conviction for trafficking children for prostitution.
Indeed, everyone with a search engine should have known the same. Among the emails that the US government published last year is one that Mandelson sent to Epstein the day before he reported to jail in June 2008: ‘I think the world of you, and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened . . . Your friends stay with you and love you.’
Starmer is ultimately responsible for returning Mandelson to government work, despite the prior scandals. Betting markets and astute observers estimate that Starmer is likely to be forced out within months. Still, the corollary to ‘likely’ is some chance of hanging on.
Starmer gains time by sacrificing staffers. On Sunday, his Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned. On Monday, his Communications Director, Tim Allan, resigned. On Tuesday, Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald resigned, even though Wormald had received Starmer’s appointment days before Starmer appointed Mandelson.
While most journalists focus on how these resignations help Starmer’s survival, they distract from Starmer’s most culpable (and senior) staffer: Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser.
Powell, like Starmer’s first three sacrifices, worked with Mandelson under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and failed to repudiate Mandelson thereafter. McSweeney’s friends told the Daily Telegraph that Powell pushed for Mandelson’s appointment. Days later, Powell’s friends told both Politicoand the New Statesman that Powell was sceptical of the appointment, and that McSweeney prevailed. I am sceptical of Powell’s version: Powell is more senior and responsible for security decisions. He was responsible for national security when a threat to national security was appointed Britain’s Ambassador to the most important country in the world.
The scandal is not just about a lord who had stayed friendly with a convicted paedophile and pimp, but also a lord who traded secrets for decades.
The latest US release of Epstein’s emails reveals that Mandelson leaked to Epstein changes in UK government policy and personnel (including even Gordon Brown’s intent to resign as Labour leader after losing the general election in 2010).
On June 13 2009, Nick Butler – one of Brown’s special advisers – proposed the government’s sale of £20billion in assets. Mandelson (then the Business Secretary) forwarded Butler’s memo to Epstein (who had made his fortune in finance): ‘Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.’ Four months later, the government announced £16billion in planned disposals.
In August the same year Shriti Vadera, then a junior minister, emailed a proposal to increase bank lending. Within four seconds, Mandelson forwarded the email chain to Epstein. Mandelson added a line that he would repeat in other forwards, ‘Please protect’, which suggests awareness of impropriety.
Mandelson also responded to Epstein’s lobbying. On May 9 2010, Epstein emailed: ‘Sources tell me 500 b[illion] euro bailout, almost complete.’ Mandelson replied that it would be announced ‘tonight’. Anyone could use that information to buy euros, knowing that the currency would strengthen in foreign exchange.
Last Tuesday the Metropolitan Police opened a criminal investigation ‘for misconduct in public office offences’.
Politically, at least, the government has already found Mandelson guilty. On the following day, Starmer told the Commons that Mandelson ‘betrayed our country’.
A new analysis by Heligan Group, an investment bank, concludes that the Mandelson-Epstein scandal should be understood primarily as a national security issue rather than a political misjudgment. Heligan argues that the re-appointment of a known paedophile’s confidant, serial grifter and indiscreet communicator reveals the UK government’s inadequate vetting, information security, and boundaries between informal and formal social networks.
Ergo, if the appointment of Mandelson is a national security failure, the National Security Adviser should resign. Starmer not only appointed Powell as NSA, but also used Powell as Britain’s chief diplomat, which makes Powell even more culpable for the appointment of a disastrous Ambassador.
During the debate in the Commons last Wednesday, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Alicia Kearns characterised Powell as ‘de facto Foreign Secretary’ and asked: ‘How can we have confidence that he went through the appropriate vetting, when we cannot have confidence that it was done for our ambassador to America?’
Kearns raised ‘significant concerns about his [Powell’s] business interests’.
Further, Powell has a strange habit, by his own admission, of taking home secret papers without authorisation, including a briefcase-full that were stolen from his car boot in 1997, and never recovered. So Powell hardly has the ethos to vet the security of other appointees.
That’s before we consider that Powell either should have recused himself from the appointment of his friend Mandelson, or opposed the appointment, knowing what he already knew. Have no doubt:Powell knew all about Mandelson’s dodgy dealings.
Mandelson’s first resignation from Cabinet was prompted by revelations in 1998 that fellow MP Geoffrey Robinson had advanced him a home loan – a clear conflict of interest.
In 2008, as EU Trade Commissioner, Mandelson approved removal of a tariff on Russian aluminium, shortly after meeting Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminium king, on Deripaska’s yacht.
Mandelson acted inappropriately with Chinese oligarchs too. In 2010, after Labour lost the general election, he established a lobbying firm, Global Counsel, which specialised in Russian and Chinese state enterprises. From 2015 to 2023, Mandelson also served as honorary president of the Great Britain China Centre. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China sent to the FBI a confidential dossier listing ‘multiple instances of Chinese Communist Party figures praising or thanking’ Mandelson.
In 2024, MI6 reportedly declined to clear Mandelson for the Washington Ambassadorship, given Mandelson’s prior business with Epstein, Russia and China.
Powell either supported Mandelson’s appointment despite security concerns, or failed to exercise his power as NSA to oppose the appointment, or failed to resign as NSA if his opposition were overruled by Starmer.
Whichever is the case, Powell should have been first to resign last week.
This article (The man who should have been first to quit in Mandelson scandal) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Bruce Newsome
Featured image: inews.com
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