Could the Epstein scandal topple the British Prime Minister?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hi there, I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redmond. And together we're the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. For those of you who might be new to our show, we here at the Global Story dive deep every weekday on one big story at the intersection of where the world and America meet. And you can now watch the Global Story on the iHeart app. Catch every brand new episode every weekday. Just tap into iHeart to start watching. And we hope you enjoy the show.

0:38There's been a lot of renewed scrutiny here in the U.S. in the last few days over the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's links to some of America's most powerful men. But in the U.K., a political scandal is unfolding which is now so serious that it's got many people asking whether it could even topple the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. The victims of Epstein have lived with trauma that most of us can barely comprehend. I am sorry. Sorry for what was done to you. Sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson's lies and appointed him. The scandal revolves around one of Starmer's key allies, a politician known in the UK as the Prince of Darkness.

1:35A man who stood beside President Trump in the Oval Office just last year when he was briefly the UK's ambassador to the United States. He's called Peter Mandelson. and newly released email exchanges between Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein suggest a close relationship between the two men that went on for years. They involve business advice, personal loans and even the leaking of sensitive government information which is something that's now under police investigation. Now, Mandelson has said he regrets his relationship with Epstein. He says he was never complicit in Epstein's crimes And at the BBC, we understand Mandelson's position is that he hasn't acted in any way criminally.

2:23From the BBC in Washington, D.C., I'm Tristan Redman. And I'm Asma Khalid. Today on The Global Story, Britain is facing what could be its biggest political scandal in more than half a century. What does it tell us about Jeffrey Epstein's global network of the rich and powerful?

2:45A heads up, this episode talks about themes of sexual abuse. On January 30th, the U.S. Department of Justice dropped the latest tranche of Epstein files. Three million pages, 180 ,000 images, and 2 ,000 videos. Journalists around the world have been combing through the documents. Here in the United States, there's been a flurry of revelations, which, frankly, a week later are still leading the headlines. The latest on the Epstein files, the Department of Justice releasing thousands of more documents. The Epstein files fall out once again spreading across the Atlantic. We move on to the other news this Monday night, to the Jeffrey Epstein files.

3:24The Epstein files. The Epstein files. The Epstein files. The Epstein files. Epstein files. But on our show, we want to understand how the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an American, seems to have had friends throughout the world. and how these latest files are now leading to questions over how the elite behave in other countries. The documents show that Epstein's network included CEOs, royalty, top figures in academia and sports, and extend as far away as Norway, Israel, and Slovakia. Now, to be clear, being named or pictured in the Epstein files is not an indication of any wrongdoing.

4:02But in Britain, the outcry over Epstein's friendship with the center-left spin doctor and politician Peter Mandelson has now reached a fever pitch. It's even threatening to bring down the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer. Now, Mandelson is the man behind Tony Blair's rise in the 1990s. Think of him as a British James Carville. And the irony here is that he may now be the cause of the demise of the Labour Party. That's the very same party he brought back to power all those years ago in the 90s. Before we continue, I want to make it clear that Peter Mandelson has told the BBC that he, quote, was never culpable or complicit in Epstein's crimes.

4:42Like everyone else, he said, I learned the actual truth about him after his death. In a few moments, we're going to speak with one of the UK's top political reporters who's known and reported on Mandelson for some three decades. But first, I want to know how we actually got to this point. And Tristan, I will say, I know Mandelson mainly as the man who was appointed to be the British ambassador to the U.S. by Keir Starmer in 2024. Well, Mr. President, thank you very much. And then there was that scene in just May of last year. Thank you very much indeed also for that very typical 11th hour intervention by you with your phone call.

5:24Mandelson was in the Oval Office with President Trump celebrating a trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K. So thank you for that. The prime minister was delighted. Those were the good times, Azmert. Thank you very much. It was beautifully stated. What a beautiful accent. I'd like to have that accent. Thank you. My mother would be proud. But then back in London a few months later, Mandelson's relationship with Epstein starts to become problematic. On the 9th of September, there was a big grove of documents that was published by Congress, documents from Epstein's estate, and included the now famous birthday book.

6:03In the book, Mandelson has an entry and he describes Epstein as, quote, my best pal. There were also emails from 2008 that showed that Mandelson was sending messages of support to Epstein just before he began his prison sentence. So Mandelson said to Epstein, quote, I think the world of you. After all this came to light, Starmer ends up sacking Mandelson as the UK ambassador in Washington. and actually Mandelson spoke to us at the BBC not long after this and he said that he never saw girls at Epstein's properties. I never saw anything in his life when I was with him, when I was in his homes, that would give me any reason to suspect what this evil monster was doing.

6:49On the 30th of January, there's another big tranche of documents in the Epstein files that were released and there's more stuff in there about Mandelson. They show that his friendship with Epstein, after Epstein went to prison in 2008, it didn't just continue, but it actually seemed to get deeper.

7:10There's a lot of stuff in this tranche, so I'm just going to give you one excerpt. Okay, so on the day Epstein was released from jail in July 2009, Epstein actually emailed Mandelson and he said, free and home. Mandelson writes back to him and he says, how shall we celebrate? Now, at that moment, Mandelson is actually a minister in government. The prime minister was Gordon Brown. And Epstein replies, with grace and modesty, those are the names of two strippers, he says. Mandelson then writes, from now on, grace and modesty should be discovered in London. How is freedom feeling? And Epstein says, she feels fresh, firm, and creamy.

7:52And Lord Mandelson says, naughty boy. Okay. So there's quite a bit of this kind of thing, but the exchanges which have the most serious implications are ones that suggest that Mandelson actually shared sensitive internal government information with Epstein whilst he was a minister back in 2009. The emails here suggest that he even lobbied the government on banking policy on behalf of Epstein. Now, Mandelson says that he was actually seeking Epstein's expertise in the national interest in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. He said he did nothing out of the ordinary. Nonetheless, in the present day, there is outrage in the United Kingdom.

8:35On Tuesday, Mandelson stood down from the House of Lords. That's the second chamber in the British Parliament. The police launch a criminal investigation. Now, at the BBC, we understand Mandelson believes he hasn't acted in any way criminally and that he wasn't motivated by financial game. But be that as it may, there is huge pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer. And that's because MPs in his own party are angry. Now, the particularity of the British parliamentary system is that they have the power to remove him from office as their party leader. So that means he'd no longer be prime minister.

9:08You'll remember something similar happened multiple times after Brexit in the 20-teens. So this is really serious for Sir Keir Starmer at this point. Well, that's a lot. So let's turn now to a man who actually knows Peter Mandelson. Yes. He presents political programs for BBC Radio, and he's an expert in British politics. My name is George Parker. I'm the political editor of the Financial Times. George, before we get into detail about these latest revelations, I want to start our conversation with some of your own reporting. You interviewed Mendelsohn for a comprehensive profile for the Financial Times almost exactly one year ago to the date.

9:49Why were you interviewing him at that time? And can you tell us how the issue of his links with Jeffrey Epstein came up? Well, we were interviewing Peter Mendelsohn ahead of his arrival in Washington. He'd just been nominated as the British Ambassador to Washington by Keir Starmer. And I think we were one of the very few, maybe the only big newspaper interviews that he did ahead of his appointment. I've known Peter Manbusson for the best part of 30 years. I've reported on this plotting of Labour's rise to power in the 1990s. I worked in Brussels at the time he was European Commissioner. So I know him extremely well.

10:23We did this interview with him and he knew that I was going to ask him, I think, about his links with Jeffrey Epstein. I decided to leave it till quite late in the interview before I raised the subject. And I said to him, you know, do you regret your relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein? And he started by saying, well, yes, I regret meeting him. I regret being introduced to him. I regret the harm that was done to young women. But this is an FT obsession. I'm not going to go into it. And frankly, you can all F off, except to use the exclusive. Oh, wow. And it was a really striking moment.

10:58And I could see the press officer who was with him blanching in fear, as concerns. It's all on the record, of course. And it wasn't a quote that aged particularly well, as you know. How animated was he when he said that to you? Not at all. I mean, the thing about Peter Manson, he does menace extremely well. He's known as the Prince of Darkness. So he wasn't angry. He said it in a very cold manner. And I think in the article, I described how this icy chill descended. It wasn't very widely reported, this link with Epstein. And I should pay credit here to my colleague Jim Pickard, also from the FT, who in 2023 revealed that Peter Manson had stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2009.

11:47So this was a time when Jeffrey Epstein was already in jail for trafficking young women for prostitution. Peter Manson at the time was the effective Deputy Prime Minister of the UK. He made a private visit to New York and stayed in the home of someone who was serving a prison sentence for paedophile activity. It's an extraordinary thing. So that was in the public domain. And yet, Keir Starmer still decided to appoint him as the ambassador, a decision which, of course, has come back to Haugton. For an international audience, can you give us a sense of how significant a person he is in the British political firmament?

12:30He's one of the biggest and most significant British political figures of the last 25, 30 years, for sure. He was, along with Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, one of the three people credited for turning the Labour Party from a party of opposition into a party of government. A new dawn is broken, has it not?

12:54And it is wonderful. He was an architect of the 1997 general election with Tony Blair. And we shall make this country as proud of us as tonight we are proud of them. Thank you very much. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were prime ministers, but Mansell did a lot of the work behind the scenes. He initially started off as a sort of media person. And I remember when I started as a young journalist working in the House of Commons, that sometimes you'd be writing a story and you'd be conscious there was a shadow behind you. And it would be Peter Mandelson looking over your shoulder and saying, I don't think that's quite right.

13:35You know, that's like, as I mentioned, that slightly sort of arch and slightly menacing way. But he would come into the press gallery to see what you were writing, which was extraordinary at the time. But he basically was valued by Blair and by Gordon Brown as someone who had very good political skills. He was very good at advising others, but he had two massive weak points. One was he was very bad at advising himself and trying to stay out of trouble himself. And his other massive weakness, which has come to full flower in this case, of course, is his attraction to money. He had to resign twice from the government over his association, one way or another, with rich men.

14:20Peter Manelson has resigned. The news came half an hour ago.

14:27Good afternoon. After a day fighting off criticism over his loan from Geoffrey Robinson, the Trade and Industry Secretary is going. Now we have his resignation, of course, of the sacrum of Peter Mandelsohn as ambassador, again, over his association with Jeffrey Epstein. In light of additional information in emails written by Peter Mandelsohn, the prime minister has asked the foreign secretary to withdraw him as ambassador to the United States. Can you also, though, help us understand how big of a deal this Mandelson-Epstein scandal is in British terms? Because really sitting here in Washington, I will say he's largely known to us as being the former British ambassador here to the United States.

15:05So how big of a deal is this scandal? It's a really, really big deal. And although the British public, like the voters in many other countries, generally regard politicians as being on the take and being a bit disreputable, in british politics generally the scandals we have are not on a huge scale they're usually fairly minor misdemeanors that can bring people down but this is a scandal on a much bigger scale this is someone who as an mp received we now know from the epstein files 75 000 i think at three payments which was never declared um peter mannison said he can't remember receiving the money well that's a nice problem to have if you can't remember 75 grand dropping into your bank account.

15:55And he then subsequently became effectively the Deputy Prime Minister in Gordon Brown's government and was handing over market-sensitive government secrets to Jeffrey Epstein. And it's being investigated now by the Metropolitan Police in London. He's being investigated for misconduct in a public office, which I should say is an offence which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. So this is a really serious scandal. We've heard some people saying that this is one of the biggest political scandals in the UK since the 1960s. Would you concur with that? Yes, I do concur with that. The significance of Peter Manson as a politician, in fact he's been appointed by three separate Labour prime ministers, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and lastly Keir Starmer.

16:45And the nature of the allegations being made against him and being investigated by the police. I mean, receiving money and then passing on government secrets, if that's what the police decide is what happened, is a very serious matter. Can you explain why it connects to the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer? I mean, I realize he appointed Mendelsohn as the ambassador, but what's the connection there? The reason it's damaging for Keir Starmer is that this is a problem of Keir Starmer's own making. he had to appoint a new ambassador to Washington and he was persuaded that Peter Manson had the contacts, the political skill, the experience, the nows to navigate the court of Donald Trump.

17:29Now, he made that appointment in February 2025 in the knowledge that he'd been told by the vetting team that Peter Manson continued his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after Jeffrey Epstein had gone to prison for that relationship. Now, he would say after that that he asked for more details, and Peter Mandelson said he had made a mistake. He believed wrongly Jeffrey Epstein's assurances he'd done nothing wrong. It had been publicly known for some time that Mandelson knew Epstein, but none of us knew the depth and the darkness of that relationship. And when later further information came to light, he was asked whether he had accepted gifts and hospitality, about whether he had been fully transparent about the relationship.

18:27The information now available makes clear that the answers he gave were lies. The problem there is that you've got a Keir Starmer who's weak, a weak leader at the moment for lots of different reasons and in political trouble in the UK, suddenly confronted with this scandal where people say, hang on, you appointed this guy who we now know received money as well from Jeffrey Epstein. It's a different order thing. You did this in the full knowledge that he was a friend and an ongoing friend of Jeffrey Epstein. We now come to plenty of questions. Joanna Baxter. Question number one, please, Mr Speaker.

19:08Prime Minister. Thank you, Mr Speaker. On World Cancer Day. House of Commons, I should say, where I work and spend my time, is awash with very, very angry Labour MPs from Keir Starmer's own party. I think people are very disappointed with today. There's no denying that. It's a terrible day for number 10. I think it was a catastrophic misjudgment. The red flags were there. Peter Manchin should never have been appointed to that role. I think he has to consider whether or not he's capable now of continuing on as Prime Minister in the interests of a country of the party. The talk now is of a leadership challenge to Keir Starmer at some point, probably sooner rather than later.

19:47Oh, wow. And there's a really toxic... You're suggesting this could be the end for him. I spoke to one Labour MP today who said, this feels like the beginning of the end.

20:04Now, look, I mean, people could go away and sleep on it, and they may wake up and feel different, and it's quite difficult to remove a prime minister, and people will have to think very long and hard about it. But the problem is that this goes right to the heart of Keir Starmer's political judgments, which Labour MPs have been doubting for some time. There was a supplementary problem in the House of Commons, which is that there was a big debate about releasing documents relating to Peter Manson's appointment, which Keir Starmer said he will do, but with certain caveats about whether it would be, they won't release documents, he says, which relate to national security or international relations.

20:42And Keir Starmer said, we in the civil service will decide what we release. Lots of Labour MPs thought that sounds like a cover-up. And so under duress and facing a House of Commons defeat on this issue, Keir Starmer eventually had to agree that these documents will be scrutinized by a committee of MPs and members of the House of Lords, like a congressional committee, I guess, in the United States, to decide whether they're released. In other words, it's been taken out of his hands. Again, another sign of weakness and another sign of bad judgment, that he was dragged into this concession. Put those two things together, and I can tell you that the mood at Westminster is really, really toxic.

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22:12George, in terms of Mandelson and Epstein, they seem to have had relatively close ties. What does all of this tell us about how Epstein built a kind of global network? I mean, what use, What possible use could a person like Peter Mandelson have been to someone like Jeffrey Epstein? Peter Mandelson is one of the best connected British politicians. I should say not just in Britain, but he, as I mentioned before, he was the business secretary in the British government. He was also a European commissioner, so he understands how Brussels works. He set up a business called Global Council, which had lots of connections in China.

22:49He had good contacts in Washington, D.C. as well. So he was someone who was extremely well-connected. He knew lots of people. It was an interesting symbiotic relationship. Mounderson was drawn to great wealth, his Achilles heel. But people were also drawn to Peter Mounderson because he exuded connections, intrigue, power. and also i should say he was extremely good company as i said i mean for many years he provided the ft and other newspapers with amazing stories he gave you good insights he gave you he was prepared to gossip a bit about other leaders so he was a he was an intriguing political character in a fairly often what can be quite a dry political landscape and you know for someone like jeffrey epstein he was a route into the city of london the british financial services sector And, you know, he was in his own completely different way.

23:43Like Epstein, he was just a massive networker. One thing I should say, which is interesting about Peter Manderson, is that he, and this is an excuse he's given, by the way, which is that he's gay. Possibly some people will think because that I'm a gay man, I was sort of insensitised or I wasn't attuned to what was going on. I don't really accept that. I think the issue is that because I was a gay man in his circle, I was kept separate from what he was doing in the sexual side of his life. I mean, this is a point he's made. He claims to have been shielded from the abuse that was going on of young women because of the fact he wasn't going to those kinds of parties.

24:27He, in a sense, had three buckets of people in his life, the business and the financial, the political and the academic, and then what he was doing with young women. It's possible that some people crossed over, but I didn't. And I think probably the reason I was separate from the third of those is because I'm gay. It doesn't probably fit the obvious caricature of the kind of person who was drawn into that circle. Who knows what's next? I don't know what's next. I'm not going to go and just sort of disappear and hide that that's not me. We've got one final question for you that's sort of a big picture question.

25:13The scandal of Jeffrey Epstein, it seems, has swept up so many figures from around the world. It is kind of mind-boggling in its scale. And to me, when you see some of the emails in context, I mean, one question I've had is just how much time people have that they are able to correspond with such level of frequency with one another. Nonetheless, to me, it's also a real vivid window into the world of the rich and powerful. And I'm curious what you make of what this all tells us about the powerful, the establishment, you could say, and how they behave. It's absolutely grim. And this will be fueling conspiracy theories for years to come.