One thing is already clear: Peter Mandelson (aka the Prince of Darkness) is now a spent force in British politics.
The most high-profile casualty so far of the recent data dump of more than 3 million Epstein files is Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US, who is sometimes endearingly referred to as the “Prince of Darkness”. Together with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Mandelson was one of the three main founders of the New Labour project in the late 1990s — a project that is now in its final death throes.
The leaked files not only confirm that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein had continued, and even flourished, after the financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, but also reveal the extent to which he was willing to betray his own government and country in order to curry favour with Epstein and Wall Street.
In 2009, Mandelson gave Jeffrey Epstein advance notice of a €500 billion bailout to save the Euro.
That information could, and probably was, used for the purpose of insider trading, including quite possibly by Epstein’s personal bank of choice, JP Morgan Chase. A NYT investigation revealed in December that the US’ largest lender “spent years supporting — and profiting from — the notorious sex offender.”
In June 2009, as the dust from the Global Financial Crisis was still settling, Mandelson sent Epstein a Downing Street memo on a £20 billion asset sale, with a comment: “interesting note that’s gone to the PM.” A year later, he even gave him advance notice of Gordon Brown’s resignation as prime minister, saying: “Finally got him to go today”.
The leaked emails also reveal the role Mandelson played as UK business secretary lobbying on behalf of Epstein and JPM to soften bank reforms on both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. At one point, he even suggested to Epstein that JPM CEO Jamie Dimon should “threaten” the UK Treasury over its proposed taxes on banker bonuses.
From The Banker:
The correspondence shows Mandelson, then UK business secretary, agreeing to press Larry Summers, head of Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, to meet JPMorgan executives including [Jes Staley, then-chief executive at JPM’s investment bank division and Epstein’s point man at the bank] to discuss the lender’s opposition to US proposals to tighten banking regulation through the Volcker reforms.
Epstein urged Mandelson to intervene directly, writing: “I would like you to ask Larry Summers if he would meet directly with Jes.” Mandelson replied: “I can say this to him.”
Emails and internal government memos indicate that Mandelson sought and used talking points supplied by Staley in his discussions with Summers, the FT reported. The documents also show that he shared confidential UK government readouts of high level meetings with Epstein.
A Spent Force
One of the few positives to come out of the resulting scandal is that Mandelson is now surely a spent force in British politics. Granted, this is the third time he has had to resign in disgrace, but this scandal is of a whole different magnitude. It is about something far darker than political corruption and venality; it is about the systematic use and sexual abuse of minors for the benefit not only of the rich and powerful but also of political Zionism.
As the veteran journalist Peter Oborne writes for in an excellent article for Middle East Eye, the Epstein files “shed light on a deeply corrupt system of government that functions in the interests of criminal elites, who believe that they have no obligation to obey the laws that constrain ordinary voters.”
Mandelson has already stepped down from the House of Lords and will now face a criminal investigation over his possible misconduct while in public office, which may well lead nowhere. Meanwhile, both the Keir Starmer government and the broader political and media establishment in the UK are in a state of disarray and denial.
Starmer appointed Mandelson as UK ambassador to the United States in full knowledge of Mandelson’s ties to Esptein and other transgressions. The Daily Mail reported in September that Mandelson, as a political appointee, had not faced the standard security vetting for senior diplomats. At Mandelson’s inauguration ceremony, Starmer could barely contain his glee.
According to the Daily Mail article, it was Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, a former Mandelson protege, who insisted on taking direct control of the recruitment process:
According to senior diplomatic sources, the Foreign Office was largely cut out of it all as Mr McSweeney pushed for the appointment.
The incoming Trump administration had wanted [the then-ambassador, Karen] Pierce to stay in post for at least another year… The US officials argued that if Ms Pierce was not going to have her tenure extended then the job should go to MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore, who, a source said pointedly, ‘could actually be trusted with sensitive material.’
However, in an echo of the so-called Dodgy Dossier which paved the way to war in Iraq, sources claim that the objections were watered down [in the final report].
In the end, Mandelson was forced to resign as ambassador in September as the scale of his involvement with Epstein became impossible to ignore or conceal.
In the clip below, Labour MP Richard Burgon argues, quite convincingly, that one of the main reasons why Mandelson was given the job, despite his sordid past, was as payback for the central role he had played in orchestrating former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s demise. In 2017, Mandelson famously said he was working “every single day’ to bring [Corbyn] down”:
In that endeavour, Mandelson and his fellow Blairites were able to count on the unyielding support of the British press as well as Israeli lobby groups like Labour Friends of Israel, which were terrified of the idea of a pro-Palestinian prime minister ever taking office in the UK. As Peter Oborne writes in his excellent article, “Vanishingly few politicians have stood outside [the corrupt system that Mandelson embodies]. The most notable was Jeremy Corbyn.”
The Damage Done
Starmer may have issued a public apology (see below), but the damage, it seems, is already done. When Mandelson was appointed, it was already public knowledge that he had stayed at Epstein’s New York townhouse while Epstein served out his prison sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor. That in and of itself should have disqualified him from any public role, particularly one of such import.
Also, as Philip Pilkington points out in the tweet below, Mandelson was not just part of the liberal establishment in Britain; he WAS the liberal establishment in Britain. This is why the fallout from this scandal has only just begun…
Nick Corbishley 