“Interesting note that’s gone to the PM.”
With those words emailed to Jeffrey Epstein in 2009, along with a sensitive government briefing on the financial crisis, disgraced Labour peer Peter Mandelson sowed the seeds of his final downfall. That, along with his insistence last weekend that he couldn’t recall being sent $75,000 by the US financier – who had been convicted of soliciting underage girls.
“You are one of my best friends,” Mandelson later told Epstein in embarrassing emails released at the weekend.
Now their sordid association has turned into Mandelson’s worst nightmare.
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It had already cost him his reputation and his job as the UK’s ambassador to the US. At the weekend, it also cost him his membership of the Labour Party. On Tuesday afternoon the price tag grew further, when Mandelson quit his seat in the House of Lords.
What it ends up costing UK prime minister Keir Starmer has yet to be determined.
Starmer’s political judgment, and that of his Cork-born consigliere Morgan McSweeney, is once again under fierce scrutiny for having sent the peer to Washington in the first place, despite pushback from within government over his known Epstein links.
[ Newly released Jeffrey Epstein files: 10 key takeaways so farOpens in new window ]
No wonder the UK prime minister moved so quickly on Tuesday to try to limit the damage. Labour backbenchers, meanwhile, were speculating this week on where the scandal might end, and involving who else.
The speed and ferocity of the crisis was evident in the fact that Starmer took decisions on Tuesday that on Monday he had said would be too difficult. The rate at which he shifted also showed how far the waves from the Epstein storm have crashed into Downing Street.
Starmer told a UK cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the government would draft a law to strip the disgraced Mandelson of his peerage, despite saying a day earlier that it would be too complicated and slow.
Two hours later, Mandelson quit the Lords. Technically, his peerage remains extant, unless Starmer presses ahead with a bill to can it anyway.
The prime minister said he was “appalled” by the further emails between Mandelson and Epstein that emerged over the weekend. Downing Street said they included details of market-sensitive government decisions, such as the 2009 briefing note sent to Epstein, which included government plans to sell £20 billion of bonds.
Starmer said Mandelson had “let his country down”, and he told his cabinet that he believed there may be more revelations to come.
“The public don’t really see individuals in this scandal, they see politicians,” said Downing Street, paraphrasing Starmer. “For the public to see politicians saying they can’t recall receiving significant sums of money or not was just gobsmacking, causing them to lose faith in all politicians and weaken trust still further.”
Starmer ordered the UK government to send a dossier to London’s Metropolitan police, who were already looking into whether any crimes had been committed following official complaints on Monday by Reform UK and the Scottish National Party.
Potential criminality aside, the emails sent to Epstein by Mandelson – then the business secretary in Gordon Brown’s cabinet – were toe-curlingly cringey. The peer often sounded weak and needy in his interactions with the sex offender, who died in prison in 2019.
“Need to talk, feeling confused,” wrote Mandelson in one message in April 2009. “Where r u? I miss you,” he said in another, in December 2010.
He buttered up Epstein with stories of how people at a lunch had told him that the US financier was among “the nicest and cleverest” people they knew.
In another missive, Mandelson, a gay man, joked with Epstein after the 2010 election that hoped for a hung parliament or “alternatively, a well hung young man”.
[ Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson will go down in history as crawlers and creepsOpens in new window ]
He asked Epstein, who was much more reserved than the peer in their exchanges, for help dealing with his then-partner, now husband, Brazilian man Reinaldo Avila da Silva, who Mandelson claimed had been getting into his messages and emails.
“What shall I do? You may need to help. How does he see them.”
In an interview with Katy Balls of the Times published on Tuesday, but conducted days beforehand, before the worst of the scandal blew up, Mandelson likened his association with Epstein to stepping on dog muck. The smell “won’t go away”, he said.
Now he must wait to see whether he also stepped on a legal landmine. Police are currently reviewing all the emails. If they decide to open a criminal investigation into the leaks of government papers, Mandelson may face even bigger problems. Ironically, if a police investigation proceeds, that might help to shield him from further formal political scrutiny. It was reported on Tuesday night that Mandelson is likely to face a full inquiry.
The Tories are expected to press ahead this week seeking a vote on a House of Commons inquiry into the full circumstances of Mandelson’s appointment by Starmer to the Washington role, just over a year ago. Who knew what about his Epstein links, and when?
Therein lies the true jeopardy for Starmer and McSweeney, who was an early protege of Mandelson’s – the disgraced peer gave him his first job inputting data into a computer in Labour HQ. They remained close, and Mandelson stayed as the Irish man’s mentor.
McSweeney is believed to have returned the patronage by championing Mandelson for the Washington ambassador role, above the protestations of others close to Starmer.
If McSweeney has to pay the price for that decision, Starmer may end up with no coat of armour left.
