Can Keir Starmer’s premiership survive the Curse of the Prince of Darkness? Could Peter Mandelson’s controversial rollercoaster career end up in a prison cell? Do the shocking Mandelson / Epstein revelations both guarantee a leadership challenge to the prime minister but also represent the legacy that dooms whoever might succeed him to general election defeat? Is Mandelson destined to be the biggest individual British political scandal since the Profumo Affair (* see 'stop press' at the end of this article) back in 1961 that contributed heavily to the Macmillan government’s downfall?
Legitimate questions dominating Britain’s political / media landscape against the extraordinary backdrop of Scotland Yard launching a criminal investigation into potential misconduct in public office by Mandelson and parliament agonising on a cross-party basis on how he could be stripped of his lordship.
But there was a measure of relief for Starmer on Tuesday afternoon when Mandelson volunteered to surrender his peerage, although a formal removal process has to be completed. It prompted a scathing response from former prime minister Gordon Brown, who was cruelly betrayed after making Mandelson his de facto number 2. Brown has filed his own police complaint and “inexcusable and unpatriotic” was his damning verdict on the colleague who, along with Tony Blair, helped create the New Labour election winning machine before Mandelson was twice sacked for financial scandals before being forgiven and inexplicably restored to high office. Mandelson was always the slippery wealth obsessed Machiavellian figure for those of us personally au fait with the New Labour project.
And all this as the erupting volcano of the Epstein Files continues to spout toxic fumes in the direction of both the government and the monarchy on both sides of the Atlantic.
More Le Carré than Le Carré
There was a certain irony in Lord Mandelson announcing he was resigning his lifelong Labour party membership less than 30 minutes after millions of us had watched the dramatic denouement of The Night Manager, based on John Le Carré’s novel. But even Le Carré’s mastery of espionage, political dirty tricks and betrayal would have struggled to come up with a plot to match the turns and twists of the following hours and days.
According to Mandelson, his 10.30pm Sunday resignation amounted to a ‘selfless’ act to protect the Labour party he loves. According to the party, disciplinary action was already looming over his alleged failure to level with the prime minister over the extent of his Epstein relationship. Which version of that to believe remains an open question among so many questions. The timing also meant it missed all but the last print editions of the nationals with the papers mainly catching up via their online presence.
Likewise, was Mandelson aware of – or at least suspicious of – the ticking timebomb about to explode among the US Justice Department’s chaotic Epstein Files mass dump? (*Speaking of ticking timebombs, a declaration of personal interest here. It’s the term I used in writing and broadcasting critically both before and after Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment citing the strong buzz on Capitol Hill about the scale of damning new material on both Lord Mandelson and the disgraced former Prince Andrew contained in the then unreleased Epstein Files.)
In Mandelson’s case, it’s hard to believe that British intelligence services hadn’t picked that up too – begging yet another crucial question yet to be answered: Did they fail to alert No10 or did they do so and the prime minister and his Mandelson protégé chief of staff Morgan McSweeney decide to carry on and gamble on appointing him to Britain’s most important ambassadorial post regardless?
The creepy crawler
By Monday morning, the intense media focus had shifted several degrees from saturation coverage of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s hugely damaging presence in the Epstein Files (ditto his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson whose charity folded on Tuesday) over to the Mandelson resignation and the implications for the prime minister and his judgement. (Incidentally, I’d advise anyone seeking out the full nauseating chain of Ferguson messages to Epstein to do so with a sick bag handy!).
The weekend papers had revelled in those front-page images of the former Duke of York on all fours crouched over an unidentified young female inside Epstein’s Manhattan mansion with the Daily Star picking up the best headline gong with ‘Creepy Crawler’.
Monday’s Mail splashed with ‘ANDREW IN NEW EPSTEIN LEGAL THREAT’ – based on a legal action being launched on behalf of an unnamed woman who claims Epstein had her flown to the UK for sex with Andrew at his Royal Lodge mansion in Windsor before ‘he took her for tea at the Palace’. If any legal action were to succeed, it’s impossible to believe King Charles would emulate his late mother by footing the legal costs! In an intriguing twist on Tuesday evening, Thames Valley Police, on whose patch Royal Lodge is situated, indicated their willingness to investigate the sex trafficking claim. A marked shift from Scotland Yard’s past record of rejecting calls to investigate allegations involving the then Duke of York.
By Tuesday, the front pages were all about the emerging Mandelson developments: ‘Police Look into Epstein leaks from Mandelson’(The Times); ‘Mandelson leaked No10 emails to Epstein’ (Daily Telegraph); ‘MANDELSON… POLICE PROBE EPSTEIN LINKS’(Mirror); ‘LABOUR’S DARK LORD NOW FACES A CRIMINAL INQUIRY’ (Daily Mail) with the Mail managing to squeeze the additional page 1 headline in… ‘Mandelson reported to police after Epstein files reveal he gave ‘market sensitive’ No10 emails to paedophile financial friend’; ‘Calls for Mandelson to face police inquiry over alleged leak to Epstein’ (The Guardian).
Dark day for The Dark Lord
Politically, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn was first out of the Monday morning blocks calling for a police probe into potential misconduct in public office by Mandelson, although the LibDems, Reform UK and the Tories weren’t far behind, with several Labour MPs expressing support even as a seemingly dazed No10 dithered until promising full support later in the day after the Met had already indicated it was ready to investigate. LibDem leader Ed Davey additionally tossed in a demand for a full public inquiry into the ‘Mandelson scandal’.
Doing TV over the weekend and on Monday morning, I suggested it might be time for the King and the prime minister to join forces – for the reputational sake of the monarchy and British politics – to compel both a disgraced royal and a disgraced former deputy prime minister to testify to the US congressional inquiry into the Epstein scandal. To be fair, Starmer has publicly backed calls for Mandelson to do so without specifically referencing Andrew.
Soupcon of sympathy
You almost felt a soupcon of sympathy for Keir Starmer as he struggled in the Commons on Monday afternoon at an appearance scheduled to try and justify the value of his controversial trip to China but at which opposition parties – and some of his own MPs – only really wanted to grill him about the Mandelson issue. Even the Tories largely abandoned their planned ‘Never Here Keir’ pitch to debunk his slim pickings, Jimmy Lai isn’t free attack line to concentrate on the unfolding Mandelson revelations.
Only days earlier, Sir Keir might have expected a slight opinion poll boost after finally standing up to President Trump over Greenland and the Trump’s partial retreat over slandering British troops. But a combination of the fallout over blocking Andy Burnham standing in the February 26 Gorton by-election Labour look condemned to lose now, followed by the Mandelson scandal eruption put paid to that. A new opinion poll gave Sir Keir the lowest prime ministerial rating on record. How did things go so Pete Tong so quickly seemed to be the expression on Starmer’s face as he ducked, dived, mumbled and snapped in that uncomfortable Monday afternoon Commons bear pit. A sharp reminder that reacting quickly under pressure isn’t his forte.
Condemnation and mockery
Inside Tuesday’s papers, condemnation and mockery in almost equal measure. The pro-Labour Guardian leader contained these lines: “The Epstein files make it hard to dismiss the question of misconduct in public office as frivolous. In 2003/04 it appears that as a Labour MP, he received $75,000 from Jeffrey Epstein. Lord Mandelson says he has no recollection of these payments. Six years later, Lord Mandelson leaked sensitive government information during the banking crunch in 2009 to Epstein, a convicted sex offender while serving in the cabinet. Emails suggest he advised US bank JP Morgan to ‘threaten’ the UK chancellor, which by all accounts it did, over a proposed tax on bankers’ bonuses. The peer’s lobbying firm Global Counsel later had JP Morgan as a client.”
(Personal note: Fortunately for Britain at the time, the chancellor, the incorruptible Alastair Darling, was in no mood to be bullied. Neither was his PM boss Gordon Brown. But what neither knew was that the US bank had a treacherous mole in their Cabinet in the shape of Mandelson feeding his financial sugar daddy, Epstein. It’s important to note that Mandelson’s alleged leaks were passed on via private devices and not from his official government email / phone addresses.)
Email trail of betrayal
Back to the Guardian leader, “Sir Keir’s judgement has been suspect since he hired Lord Mandelson, whose career has courted controversy, to be Britain’s ambassador to the US. The peer was eventually sacked over his links with Epstein. Yet even when the US Department of Justice released 3m documents from Epstein’s personal files featuring the peer thousands of times there was no automatic expulsion, no legislative action, no institutional reckoning.
The damning leader in a title which once upon a time lauded Mandelson, continued: “Once cash flows into a minister’s household while that minister is in office, the argument there was ‘no personal benefit’ disappears. ‘Have you permanently stopped the Reinaldo sub?’ Lord Mandelson jokes with Epstein in 2010 in reference to money for his husband. This is household-level financial support from a disgraced financier to the family of a serving cabinet minister. The payments, the files suggest, occurred when Lord Mandelson was business secretary.
Worse was to follow. On the evening of 9th May 2010, at the height of the eurozone crisis, emails suggest that Lord Mandelson message Epstein that a 500bn bailout was ‘almost complete’. The package was formally announced the following morning after an all-night summit. This was price-sensitive information about a massive and still confidential rescue passed to a private financier before markets opened.”
I’ve quoted the Guardian leader at length to illustrate how seriously Mandelson’s alleged criminality has united titles on the left as well as the right. It’s worth noting in the above context that at the time, Epstein was an adviser to both voracious ‘Wolves of Wall Street’ investment bankers and shady Russian oligarchs. One file even infers Epstein might have had a direct line to Putin himself, even after his paedophile conviction in Florida.
How deep the rot?
Elsewhere in Tuesday’s Guardian, columnist Gaby Hinsliff weighed in under the headline: ‘How deep did the Epstein rot go? The public needs answers’. Her opening paragraph spoke volumes: “Peter Mandelson did not want, he wrote disdainfully to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, to ‘live by salary alone’. Not for him the life of the little guy, slave to a mere six figure salary: he had always aspired to something grander, a lifestyle well beyond his means, to which rich men such as Epstein were so often his passport.”
Award-winning political sketch writer John Crace posed the relevant headline question: ‘The establishment has closed its doors to Westminster’s ‘prince of darkness’. What took it so long?’
Then in her midweek Wednesday column, Marina Hyde joined battle with a brilliant column headlined, ‘Never forget Epstein’s little helpers – the powerful men who knew about his crimes, and helped him out anyway.’ Her devastating opening paragraph arguing: “Like a lot of women. I do vaguely care about the latest political implosion of Peter Mandelson – but I think we’re all massively more obsessed with the fact that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men trying to help a known ex-con minimise and wave away his underage sex crimes.”
Keir’s Labour women problem
A column doubtless read with approval by a couple of senior Labour women making life uncomfortable for the prime minister as well as Mandelson as they did the studio rounds – Baroness Harriet Harman, never a Mandelson cheerleader, who deplored his willingness to enter Gordon Brown’s cabinet and then betray him by leaking highly sensitive information to Epstein. While, wearing her hat as chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Emily Thornberry repeated her complaint over how her committee was denied the opportunity by No10 to question Mandelson before he was appointed to Washington when, she stressed, he would have faced an intense cross-party grilling over the whole history of his Epstein relationship.
‘NOW STRIP HIM OF HIS PEERAGE’ screamed a double page headline inside Tuesday’s Daily Mail, over political sketch writer Quentin Letts depiction of the cross-party Commons savaging of Mandelson’s reputation the day before as, ‘The Persian cat’s corpse was torn apart by hounds. Lord Mandelson had no defenders’.
For once, I couldn’t help smiling at provocateur-in-chief Richard Littlejohn’s column, ‘By this time next year, Mandelson’s white y-fronts may be concealed under an orange jumpsuit in a Supermax prison. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer man…’
But Tuesday’s Mail wasn’t letting up on an errant royal either by re-running for a 4th time the image of Andrew creepily posed on all four across a prostrate young female alongside an A N Wilson guest op-ed headlined, ‘How can we all believe in the magic of monarchy when faced with such greed and sleaze’.
A mistimed scoop?
Tuesday’s Times was an interesting case of a ‘scoop’ that might prove more of an own goal. The front-page blurbs an image of Mandelson posing in natty pink polo neck with the headline, ‘I was too trusting’ and the tag ‘Exclusive interview’. Except that anyone buying the paper wouldn’t find a word of it inside. The very small print below the front-page image revealed, ‘Online at thethetimes.com’.
So what was it all about? The answer appeared to be that Katy Balls, the paper’s enterprising Washington Bureau chief, had flown to the UK to secure an exclusive interview and photo shoot with Mandelson at his Wiltshire home about his Epstein relationship. Quite a scoop indeed. Except that it was apparently intended for this weekend’s colour magazine, completed and printed BEFORE his Lordship resigned from the Labour party and the damning new emails that has prompted Scotland Yard’s interest emerged.
In the online version – condemned as ‘tone deaf’ and ‘self-serving’ by a string of politicians left and right – Mandelson attempts to portray himself as another Epstein ‘victim’ protesting: ‘Epstein is like dog muck; the smell won’t go away’.
For those who bought the print paper possibly in the mistaken belief that the interview was inside, it was coverage very much in line with everyone else with the focus on the Scotland Yard intervention, the efforts to strip Mandelson of his coveted peerage at warp speed and analysis of how seriously compromised Keir Starmer’s premiership is and how badly holed the Labour party’s electoral future is with or without a new captain at the helm.
But at least Murdoch won’t have to foot the bill for pulping a magazine albeit one carrying a distinctly devalued and outdated ‘Scoop’. Such are the perils of magazine print deadlines, eh, Rupert?
On Wednesday, every national paper front page was dominated by Mandelson’s lordship downfall and Scotland Yard confirming he faces a criminal investigation. The Sun rather cleverly combining that with the revelation the man formally known as Prince Andrew had formally been kicked out of his Royal Lodge mansion on Tuesday to take up much humbler temporary digs on brother Charles’s private Sandringham estate. The Sun’s headline over images of Andrew and Mandelson… ‘Princes of Darkness’. The Mirror opts for the single word main headline, ‘INEXCUSABLE’; ‘Evidence that damns Labour’s Dark Lord’ (Daily Mail); ‘Oh, Lord!’ (The Metro); ‘Mandelson facing full criminal investigation’ (The Times); ‘PM: He let his country down’(The Independent), while, characteristically, The Daily Star cheekily repeats that image of Mandelson in his briefs with the headline: ‘You’ve let your pants down… you’ve let your country down’.
Clintons’ u-turn piles pressure on
So what’s happening Stateside in the Epstein Files battle on Capitol Hill? Democrats and a rising number of Republicans are determined to press ahead with seeking evidence under oath from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and the soon-to-be ex-Lord Mandelson, albeit US media fascination seems to focus more on the fallen royal than the disgraced ambassador. The pressure on Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor to testify has been ramped up by this week’s surprise decision by Bill and Hillary Clinton to reverse their previous decision not to give evidence.
But the congressional investigation focus is also on the estimated three million files that – despite a legal order – the Department of Justice still hasn’t released. Speculation continues over whether that could be motivated by an attempt to protect President Trump himself.
Although mentioned thousands of times in those released already, there has been no smoking gun emerge. One claim about the future president sexually assaulting a 14-year-ago does appear to be bogus. And it’s undoubtedly true that Trump fell out with Epstein years before his paedophile conviction.
But what’s beginning to emerge from the mountain of material in Epstein’s voluminous records is that his associates probably fall into three categories – those who actively participated in his perverted world, those who knew about or suspected it and did nothing to raise the alarm and those who genuinely knew nothing. But such is the scale of the redactions and the shortage of context, it’s proving difficult to decide who among his rich, powerful cronies and clients fits into which category. It’s also clear that away from his paedophilia predilection, Epstein was a global pimp for the powerful with special access to glamorous young Russian women. In some cases, they were likely plants reporting back to Kremlin security chiefs on their encounters with Epstein’s VIP associates, offering up blackmail / Kompromat opportunities. More evidence is emerging in the complex Epstein Files web of alarmingly close ties with other significant Kremlin operators.
An interview The Donald might yet regret
But in the case of Donald Trump, several Democrat congress figures flag up the infamous 2002 New York magazine interview the future POTUS gave in which he boasted: “I’ve known Jeff Epstein for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
How young exactly is the question the investigating congressional committee would like to ask the president but so far with little prospect of getting an answer. But it’s a fair bet that’s one interview The Donald regrets giving, considering polling shows a majority of Americans, including many of his own MAGA base, suspect Epstein File cover-ups continue.
Ordeal by arcane fire or the day a premiership died?
The real drama in the UK on Wednesday kicked off with a fiery PMQs. If it had been a boxing match, Kemi Badenoch, with a little help from Ed Davey, had Keir Starmer reeling on the ropes, including the killer punch admission he knew about Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with Epstein and yet went ahead with appointing him to Britain’s most sensitive diplomatic post. It was a confession that drew audible gasps on all sides of the House. Starmer clumsily ducked questions why – after both the Financial Times and Channel4 News exposed the ongoing relationship – he ignored them. The FT had both reported and directly alerted the PM to the fact Mandelson had even stayed in Epstein’s Manhattan home while his financier friend was in jail for prostituting a 14-year-old girl.
The prime minister, I suspect, will live to regret defending his chief of staff and Mandelson protégé, Morgan McSweeney, during his PMQs battering. It also became clearer that the security services had flagged up concerns about Mandelson that were effectively disregarded.
Badenoch certainly made a smart move employing an arcane parliamentary procedure – The Humble Address – to deliver what followed. A forensic debate showing the Commons at its cross party best and a vote on the full disclosure of every single scrap of information surrounding Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment and sacking and challenging Labour MPs to support it.
It was a sign of how desperate Starmer’s position had become that mid-debate, No10 dramatically dropped its own amendment to the Badenoch motion in favour of accepting that everything should be provided to parliament’s cross party Intelligence and Security Committee… a move that had earlier united Badenoch, Angela Rayner and most MPs across the House. Former deputy PM Rayner, an obvious candidate to replace Starmer, effectively spearheaded Labour backbench opposition to the prime minister’s proposal.
Originally, Starmer had sought to hold back material on the basis of ‘national security’ and ‘international relations’ with an investigation being carried out by the cabinet secretary, restrictions that an overwhelming cross party Commons majority rejected by voting through the Tory motion.
Yes, it was a vote under an arcane procedure but one that many across parliament and the media will reasonably interpret as a de facto one of ‘No Confidence’ in the prime minister’s judgement. Not a good omen ahead of what could be a make-or-break by-election for Keir Starmer’s future on February 26th.
But with Scotland Yard warning their criminal probe could be compromised by early publication of the Mandelson documents, how soon parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee can launch its own massive investigation is far from clear yet. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle told the Commons the police had no power to dictate the ISC committee timetable, potentially setting up a confrontation between parliament and Scotland Yard.
Or as one senior Labour minister put it to me privately last night: ‘What odds Keir and Morgan McSweeney are both long gone before either the committee or the police finish investigating?’
How the papers saw it
It wasn’t just the usual suspects on the right that made depressing front page Thursday breakfast reading for a beleaguered premier.
‘It’s over for Starmer, say Labour MPs amid fury over Mandelson (The Guardian); ‘Starmer Isolated: Labour MPs losing confidence in the prime minister’ (the i); ‘Furious MPs force Starmer into U-turn on Mandelson files’ (The Independent); ‘Liar, liar, pants on… hired! (The Metro); ‘STARMER IN GRAVE PERIL AS RAYNER TWISTS KNIFE (Daily Mail); ‘Rayner Turns on Starmer (Daily Telegraph); ‘Starmer fights for future over Mandelson scandal’ (The Times); ‘Barrage over Mandelson painted as ‘beginning of end’ at No10 for Starmer’ (Financial Times). While The Sun opts for a one-word splash headline, ‘REVOLTING’, combining stories about Labour MPs rebelling against their leader and protesting staff allegedly refusing to serve Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor at his new digs on King Charles Norfolk estate.
Stop press – 8 February:
I was in the middle of a Sunday afternoon TV interview on just how the escalating Mandelson crisis has left Keir Starmer’s premiership hanging by a very thin gossamer thread when news broke of Morgan McSweeney’s dramatic resignation as the PM’s chief of staff. Not before time was my instant reaction and that it could only lead to Starmer's own resignation. The only question being when not if. I also made a point of saying the Mandelson disaster is now clearly a far far bigger political scandal than the Profumo one that brought down the Macmillan government.
