Peter Mandelson

Peter Benjamin Mandelson is one of the architects of New Labour, the man credited alongside Alastair Campbell with transforming a fractured British left into an election-winning machine. He served twice in Tony Blair's cabinet, survived two forced resignations, became the European Union's Trade Commissioner, and — after a final act of rehabilitation under Gordon Brown — was appointed in December 2024 as Keir Starmer's ambassador to Washington, tasked with managing London's most important bilateral relationship during the early Trump administration. What ended that appointment was not Westminster intrigue but a cache of more than 100 previously unreported emails, published by Bloomberg News on September 11, 2025, showing that Mandelson had privately championed Jeffrey Epstein across the years when Epstein's crimes against minors were becoming a matter of public record.¹

The emails, spanning 2005 to 2010, revealed Mandelson offering encouragement, strategic counsel, and expressions of deep personal loyalty to a man already facing allegations of sexual abuse of children. Starmer dismissed him the same day Bloomberg published the story. By February 2026 Mandelson had been arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of misconduct in public office after additional emails allegedly showed him forwarding sensitive government information to Epstein during his time as a UK minister.² He resigned from the Labour Party and the House of Lords shortly after. The friendship cost him his ambassadorship, potentially his liberty, and the reputation he had spent four decades constructing.

  Political career

Born October 21, 1953, Mandelson is the grandson of Herbert Morrison, the Labour politician and wartime Home Secretary. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at St Catherine's College, Oxford, before becoming Director of Campaigns and Communications for the Labour Party from 1985 to 1990, a period in which he rebranded the party's image and laid groundwork for what eventually became the 1997 landslide.³

He won the Hartlepool constituency in 1992 and entered the Blair cabinet in 1998 as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, introducing Britain's first national minimum wage before resigning in December of that year after disclosure of an undisclosed £373,000 home loan from fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson.³ Blair restored him to cabinet in October 1999 as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, where he helped consolidate power-sharing arrangements under the Good Friday Agreement. A second resignation followed in January 2001 over allegations that he had improperly assisted with British passport applications for two wealthy Indian businessmen, the brothers Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja.³

Rather than retire, Mandelson repositioned himself in Europe. He served as the EU's Trade Commissioner from 2004 to 2008, leading European positions in the World Trade Organisation's Doha Round and negotiating a series of bilateral trade agreements.³ Gordon Brown recalled him to Westminster in 2008 as First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, a role he held until Labour lost the 2010 general election. After leaving government he founded Global Counsel, a strategic advisory firm, and became Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham.³

Starmer announced Mandelson's appointment as Ambassador to the United States in December 2024. He took up the post on February 10, 2025. What neither the public nor, Starmer would later claim, the prime minister himself knew was that Mandelson had received an adverse security-vetting recommendation in January 2025; senior civil servants overruled it and cleared his appointment anyway.⁴

  First contact with Epstein

Mandelson's association with Epstein dates to at least 2002, when a New York Magazine account placed him at a dinner at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse. In 2003, while serving as an EU commissioner, he spent nearly a week on Epstein's private island in the Caribbean, Little Saint James. That same year Ghislaine Maxwell compiled a 238-page birthday scrapbook for Epstein's fiftieth birthday; Mandelson contributed a ten-page handwritten note describing Epstein as "an intelligent, sharp-witted man" who had "parachuted into my life" and calling him "my best pal."⁵

A 2002 memo, subject to government secrecy orders at the time of writing, reportedly showed Mandelson urging Tony Blair to meet Epstein. The precise content was withheld from release in September 2025 on grounds of international relations exemptions.⁶

  The Bloomberg emails

Bloomberg News obtained more than 100 emails between Mandelson and Epstein covering the period 2005 to 2010. The first documented exchange dates to October 2005. The emails' arc tracks Epstein's legal exposure: they begin as social correspondence and become progressively more concerned with managing the fallout from criminal investigation.

After Florida police moved toward charging Epstein in 2006, Mandelson wrote: "I am following you closely and here whenever you need. Keep me posted."⁶ The register escalates in 2008. Writing the day before Epstein reported to a Florida jail in June 2008 to begin an 18-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor, Mandelson wrote: "I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain." The same email urged Epstein to "fight for early release" and declared: "Your friends stay with you and love you."¹

A separate email from the same period indicated that Mandelson viewed the conviction as wrongful and believed it should be challenged.⁷ The sentence Epstein received from prosecutor Alexander Acosta — thirteen months in a county jail with work-release privileges — was itself widely condemned as lenient; Mandelson's private position went further, treating it as an injustice rather than an insufficiently punished crime.

  Contact after the conviction

Documented contact did not end with Epstein's release in 2009. On November 6, 2016 — two days after Donald Trump's presidential election victory — Epstein emailed Mandelson noting that it was his sixty-third birthday and writing "you made it." Mandelson replied within thirty minutes: "Just. I have decided to extend my life by spending more of it in the US." Epstein responded: "In the Donald white house." Mandelson asked "What's the Donald white house? And how are you?" Epstein clarified "Trump / and having a great deal of fun."⁸

That exchange, released by the US House Oversight Committee in September 2025, placed the relationship in an active state as late as 2016 — seven years after Epstein's conviction and three years before his 2019 arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges.

  Financial entanglements

The Wikipedia account of the relationship, drawing on court documents and investigative reporting, records that Epstein paid commercial airline tickets totaling more than $7,400 for Mandelson's 2003 Caribbean trip and made three payments to Mandelson amounting to upwards of $75,000 through 2003 and 2004.⁶ Between 2009 and 2010, Mandelson's husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, received monthly stipends of $4,000 from Epstein. Mandelson himself allegedly stayed at Epstein's Manhattan apartment in 2009 while Epstein was serving his sentence.⁶

These financial details emerged from records associated with Epstein's estate and have been reported by multiple outlets. Mandelson has not publicly addressed them directly.

  Alleged disclosure of government information

Additional emails, released in stages through late 2025 and early 2026, alleged a more serious breach. Documents presented to the Metropolitan Police and to parliamentary committees indicated that between June 2009 and May 2010 — while Mandelson served in Gordon Brown's cabinet as Business Secretary — he forwarded to Epstein material including a Downing Street memo proposing \£20 billion in asset sales, advice suggesting that JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon pressure Chancellor Alistair Darling on bankers' bonuses, and advance notice of a \€500 billion EU bailout on May 9, 2010, the day before it was publicly announced.⁶

On February 23, 2026, the Metropolitan Police arrested Mandelson on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was taken to a London police station for questioning and released on bail the following morning. His legal representatives denied wrongdoing. Starmer subsequently told the House of Commons that Mandelson "betrayed our country, our Parliament, and my party" and had "lied repeatedly."²

  Dismissal and aftermath

Starmer fired Mandelson on September 11, 2025, hours after Bloomberg's publication, informing the House of Commons that the content of the emails was "materially different" from what had been disclosed at the time of appointment. Global Counsel, the advisory firm Mandelson had founded, severed ties with him the same day.⁹ He received a severance payment of \£75,000.⁶

In the days that followed, Mandelson told one interviewer he regretted "ever meeting" Epstein and had "fallen for his lies."¹⁰ In a separate interview he acknowledged maintaining the friendship "for far longer than I should have done."⁷ He described himself as having been taken in by a "charismatic criminal liar." The apologies did not address the specific content of emails suggesting the 2008 conviction was wrongful, the ongoing contact through 2016, or the financial transactions.

In April 2026, parliamentary and press inquiries established that Mandelson had received an adverse formal security-vetting recommendation in January 2025. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper dismissed Olly Robbins, the senior civil servant who approved the appointment against the vetting recommendation. Starmer told Parliament he had not been informed of the failed vetting at the time of appointment.⁴

Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party and from the House of Lords in February 2026. Multiple honorary awards were subsequently revoked.

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  References

  Footnotes

1. Bloomberg News, "UK Ambassador Mandelson Expressed Support for Epstein, Emails Reveal" ↩ ↩²

2. Bloomberg News, "Peter Mandelson Arrested on Suspicion of Misconduct in Public Office" ↩ ↩²

3. Britannica, "Peter Mandelson" ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Irish Times, "Peter Mandelson became UK ambassador to US despite failing security vetting" ↩ ↩²

5. The Hill, "Epstein's birthday book contains note from UK ambassador Peter Mandelson" ↩

6. Wikipedia, "Relationship of Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein" ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. PBS NewsHour, "U.K. fires ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson after publication of supportive emails to Jeffrey Epstein" ↩ ↩²

8. AOL / Associated Press, "Peter Mandelson was in contact with Epstein till at least 2016, new emails reveal" ↩

9. Bloomberg News, "Peter Mandelson's Firm Global Counsel Cuts Ties With Him After Epstein Emails" ↩

10. Time, "Mandelson Breaks Silence After Being Sacked Over Epstein Row" ↩