Could Peter Mandelson end up in jail?

0:02This is a Global Player original podcast. I found him. Did I like him? Yes, I liked his humour, his graciousness. I liked his directness. You knew exactly what he was thinking and where you stood and what he wanted and how he was proposing to engage with you. Did I like all his language? No, I didn't. Did he make me gasp sometimes in some of the things he said? Of course. But at the end of the day, President Trump is an extraordinary risk taker. Takes one to know one. That's Peter Mandelson, less than a month ago, believing that he was now being rehabilitated by sections of the British media, believing that he could now be back on the airwaves discussing characters, policy analysis of Trump, not realising what was yet to come.

1:00Peter Manilson will no longer be called upon to offer that analysis. Instead, he is facing accusations of corruption, of receiving payments from Jeffrey Epstein at roughly the same time that he was trying to influence British government policy as the de facto Deputy Prime Minister. Might he now face even criminal sanction? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:30The News Agents. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And it's John. Not quite in the same hemisphere as you two. But the story of Mandelson is extraordinary. He has been telling friends that the only reason he resigned or was sacked, he says he was sacked, he makes no bones about that, was because Downing Street panicked. And he says, they knew everything about my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And given the latest revelations, given the latest shoe to drop, there are so many new stories that have come out about whether Peter Mandelson was acting almost as a lobbyist for the banking industry when he was business secretary within the government and advising Epstein what leading bankers should be threatening the British government with if they don't withdraw their threat of a banker's bonus tax.

2:28That is an extraordinary position where you say, well, who is Peter Mandelson working for, the government or the banking industry? And then this allegation that he has leaked confidential government papers to Epstein after the financial crash when he was in the cabinet about what asset sales might soon be taking place. And potentially the implication being, could any of Jeffrey Epstein's clients benefit from this? And then you'd have on top of that, him allegedly receiving money from Jeffrey Epstein, which he says he can't recall. I mean, if I receive money of$75 ,000 from you, Emily, or you, Lewis, unlikely I know, I think I'd remember it.

3:13And so there are all sorts of things where you think there is a lot of explaining to do. And so far, what we've heard from Peter Mandelson doesn't cut it. And of course, that doesn't even include the category of what you might just call personal humiliation, putting pay once again to the idea, as Mandelson had claimed previously, that his friendship with Epstein had come to an end. The photos which were released over the weekend, which were allegedly taken in Jeffrey Epstein's Paris flat of Mandelson in his underwear, deeply humiliating. And just to expand on what you said again, John, that has emerged in some of these emails, let's just remember the big picture here.

3:50Peter Mandelson was the business secretary for Gordon Brown and the de facto deputy prime minister in 2009. There are files that are showing evidence that Mandelson advised Epstein on how J.P. Morgan, as you say, John, might lobby the government. And not only that, he even suggested that the head of the investment bank call the then-Chancellor, Alistair Darling, and mildly threaten him. This is, as I say, an internal minister, the de facto deputy prime minister, advising Jeffrey Epstein to advise his client to mildly threaten the UK Chancellor. All after which, as we now know, thanks to the FT's reporting over the weekend, Manilson appears to have received tens of thousands of dollars from Epstein in 2003-04 and his partner allegedly receiving$10 ,000 roughly to pay for, of all things, an osteopathy course around the same time, I think in 2010, that these emails were sent.

4:50So as of today, Monday, where are we? Well, last night about 10 o 'clock, Peter Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party, didn't go through Keir Starmer. From what we understand, he went straight to the head of the Labour Party and offered his resignation, said he didn't want to embarrass the party anymore. Notwithstanding that, he remains a peer. He is Lord Mandelson. He hasn't been to the Lords since he lost his job in Washington, but he remains a Lord. And today we heard via the Prime Minister's spokesperson that Keir Starmer would like to see that peerage revoked. But it is still unclear as to whether he's going to initiate any formal act that would strip Peter Mandelson of his peerage.

5:33And frankly, today, I think the questions around Peter Mandelson are rather bigger than a title. And they go to the heart of, as you say, whether he was actually involved in influencing government policy for billionaires, for paedophiles, for people in other states and other countries through his position at Gordon Brown's side. And just to put this in context for some of our younger viewers, listeners who don't know the ins and outs of Peter Mandelson, I mean, he has been at the very heart, at the very origin of the New Labour project. He's really one of the architects of New Labour from the mid 90s onwards, helped bring Tony Blair to power for that historic three term win.

6:23when the party was first in power, Peter Mandelson was called the minister without portfolio. In other words, he didn't have one direct job, but he attended cabinet. And then he was given various roles. And twice in government, he was sacked. He was sacked by Tony Blair for money related, influence related issues. And he was then reappointed years later, decades later, by Keir Starmer to be ambassador for Washington. and there were plenty of people at the time, there were plenty of people around Keir Starmer who were saying, we know about Mandelson's relationship to Epstein. Bad idea, Keir. It's a bad idea, Keir.

7:04And for reasons that we still do not fully understand, Keir Starmer felt able to ignore those voices around him and appointed him as ambassador. And the stuff that's coming out now, and the stuff that you've pointed to, Lewis, which is about influencing tax policy because you have been asked to by billionaires from whom you have received money. He says he has no recollection. In fact, he says he's going to investigate himself. He's going to start an investigation by me to see if he was paid by Epstein or not. Fine. But the fact that all that was coming from somebody at the heart of Downing Street, It's worse than just being a friend of a dodgy guy.

7:48Well, and bear in mind, just briefly bear in mind, of course, that when those emails are being sent, that is around the time and just after the time that Epstein had received his conviction. He was staying in Epstein's flat. He was literally living in Epstein's house in New York whilst Epstein was in an open prison on charges of child prostitution. And look, this is where it gets to, you know, this happened in 2008, 2009 or to, you know, whenever it was a long time ago when Gordon Brown was the prime minister. But it does matter to Keir Starmer today because, I mean, look at two events in parallel.

8:22You've got the king stripping Prince Andrew of his titles and he becomes Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. And you've now got Keir Starmer saying, well, I think that Peter Malletton should be stripped of his peerage. And I sacked him anyway as our ambassador to Washington. To which the obvious point is, well, the king didn't have any option of appointing Prince Andrew, Prince Andrew. He was born. He gets the title Prince Andrew. And that's just the way it is with the royal family. Keir Starmer had a choice in appointing Peter Mandelson as our ambassador to Washington. And there were many people in government and there were many people in the security services who said, whoa, are you sure about this?

9:05Now, Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff at Number 10, close friend of Peter Mandelson, was the person who pushed this through. He is still the chief of staff at Number 10 Downing Street. And given what we have learned over the last weekend, there are some pretty serious questions for Keir Starmer to answer and for Morgan McSweeney to answer about, well, why didn't you listen? Why didn't you let the vetting process go through its full course before reappointing Peter Mandelson? Given everything we have learned since then.

10:04the years, close political allies. Moksweeney is not without enemies within the Labour Party, particularly on the soft left of the Labour Party. And I've no doubt whatsoever that there will be people around Starmer who are saying that Moksweeney, this hastens the date at which Moksweeney has to go. But even if you leave aside the questions of judgment, there are questions for him right now. I mean, I noticed from the lobby briefing this afternoon, the Prime Minister building on what he said yesterday, because the Prime Minister chose on his return from the Far East at the weekend saying that he thought that Andrew should go and testify before Congress.

10:39He now says that he thinks Mandelson should testify before Congress, but also says that he should no longer be a member of the House of Lords, as we've been saying, but also saying that the PM, his spokesperson saying, does not have the power to remove the title and has called on the Lords to modernise its disciplinary procedures for those bringing the House into disrepute. That's just not true. The Prime Minister is, in effect, the only person who can remove the title in the sense that the only way that you can remove someone from the peerage is via an act of parliament, something which is rare, but has been done before.

11:13So the prime minister is the only one. He's affecting powerlessness saying, I'd like to see this, but I can't affect it. That's not true. He's the only one who can affect it by making use of government time on the floor of the House of Commons. And I actually think just to bring back very briefly, John, just to connect the Andrew and the Mandelson story here, Although we say that the king stripped Andrew of his titles, in a day-to-day sense that is true, but actually he remains a duke and he remains not the prince but all of the other titles he continues to have, he's just not using them. That would require also an act of parliament.

11:45And I think there was a bit of a slightly grubby agreement, really, or a de facto one between the palace and number 10 when this question came up. Because what's one of the reasons that neither the palace nor number 10 would have wanted an act of parliament to go before to strip Andrew of his titles? It's because they were afraid that a conservative or someone else would have laid down an amendment to that bill saying the same about Mandelson. or Labour Republican MPs would have put down amendments, putting questions down about royal finances and what the royal family knew about Andrew at the time.

12:13So I think that there has been a bit of a culture of opacity both at Number 10 and at the Palace on this. And I think it's coming back to sting both of them. I hear what you're saying, but I just think we are so way beyond titles at this point. I mean, why are we talking about whether there'll be a rehabilitation of a political career? I mean, not us, but outside, there are still people talking about, will Mandelson come back? Will he have another job in government? What will be the ramifications for Keir Starmer? I mean, it's nonsense. Is there going to be a criminal investigation? Is there going to be accountability before Congress or before a court of law?

12:50I sort of just don't care enough about the titles. And I think the problem with where we've got to now on the Epstein files, and we understand what's happened over the weekend. There's been a drop of three million pages. And we understand that's only half the amount. And it's sort of bamboozling because you don't know who to start with. You don't know where to start. You don't know whether it's the chronology. You don't know whether it's the it's the association. You don't know whether it's the crimes. It's very hard to find your way through this. But I think the trouble is you kind of get taken down sort of rabbit holes.

13:23Maybe you don't think they're rabbit holes. And I understand why you feel very strongly about the sort of importance of the royal titles in this. But what I would say is, you know, every time you're having that argument, you're not having the argument about people actually facing the power of the law in this. And we've got all this way. We haven't mentioned the victims. We haven't mentioned the women. We haven't mentioned the children at the time. And we haven't mentioned the fact that apart from Ghislaine, who's in prison, rightfully so, and Andrew, who has been kind of disgraced and fallen from public life, very few people have had any ramifications from this whatsoever.

14:01and it does seem to me that the urgency now is to get anyone and I'm not saying they are guilty I'm saying let's just hear what they know let's just bring them before congress or let's just hear them testify so we understand what they can actually tell us well I mean look I agree with you in one sense that the title stuff is a sideshow but I think the titles are a cipher to all a wider issue which is that well for a start the only reason that these people were of interest to Repsidine in the first place was their title and was their position and the fact that someone like Mandelson is a member of the House of Lords.

14:34Influenced and not title, influenced. Yes but I think these two things are very you know closely to the fact that Andrew was a prince and remains being a duke and I do think that the palace has quite deliberately conflated and sort of muddied the water slightly about this question because they haven't wanted to go through the act of parliament and I'll just say what I mean is is that what I think this whole thing reveals what's the common denominator behind this story, which I think is basically behind the title question. It is about a culture of opacity and a lack of transparency time and time again.

15:02We see that in politics. We see it in the royal family. You know, when allegations about Andrew first emerged, there was no contemporaneous transparency. We've seen there's been no independent inquiry from the palace. We're talking all about this now, about what the political implications should be for number 10, and we're talking about what it will be for Parliament, whether Mandelson should use his peerage. Let's not forget, the royal family They have never had, as far as we know, any inquiry into Andrew and who knew what when or any institutional inquiry, as far as we know, either. And a complete lack of opacity throughout.

15:32So I think that the titles are important because I think that they advert to a wider culture of secrecy and a lack of transparency. I do think that further to your point, Emily, that if Peter Mandelson is asked to go before the oversight committee at the House of Representatives and doesn't, and Andrew doesn't, I think it would be a shameful decision. because as you say, there are victims of all of this. There is one person in prison, Ghislaine Maxwell, and that is it. And Epstein committed suicide, according to official records. Maybe he was killed, who knows? But there is so little accountability for all the things that have happened.

16:17And if there are two people who knew Epstein well, and what these files and this disclosure of these millions of documents show is that both Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor were very close to that circle, then they owe it to the victims to go before Congress and say on oath what they know, what they were aware of, what happened and why. Well, let's talk to Dan Needle now. He's a tax expert with a forensic eye for detail, and he has been going through the Epstein files relating to Mandelson. And he has found stuff that starts with tax and takes us into a whole different sphere. Dan, just talk us through what you found.

17:02So December 2009, we'd gone through the first pile of financial crisis and there was a popular feeling the banks had to pay. And in response to that, in December 2009, the government announced a tax on bank bonuses. This, of course, created a tsunami of lobbying by the banks against this proposal. And Lord Mandelson was involved in this lobbying. Nothing unusual for someone to be involved in lobbying. But of course, he was a member, a senior member of the government at that point. He discussed with Epstein whether the bank payroll tax could be amended to become less damaging to J.P. Morgan. And it's clear from the emails that Lord Mandelson had been discussing this with Jess Staley, who was then a senior JP Morgan executive with close links to Epstein.

17:49So that's the first that we see. And that feels inappropriate for a government minister to be advising a bank how to lobby against government policy. Then it goes further. Dan, if you were being generous, could you just say it is the role of the business secretary to be the ear to all businesses about policies that concern them? and try and work out what the best government policy is to kind of keep them on side. You can absolutely say that. And this email is almost that it seems to go a bit further because it's behind the scenes. Because presumably when Lord Mandelson then spoke to Alistair Darling, then Chancellor, he didn't say, and I've been asked to make this point by JP Morgan.

18:30So it feels an inappropriate version of that, but it is a version of that. I suppose, Dan, the other point is to bear in mind here, the reason why many people are questioning this is because clearly the other thing that we know from the FT's reporting on this over the weekend, is it appears, although Mandelson is saying that he has no record or recollection of it, it appears that through the 2000s and beyond, Mandelson and his partner were in a receipt of funds from Epstein. And so clearly there is a potential conflict, a profound conflict of interest there. Yes, there is. What I'd describe as a lawyer is very clear evidence that in 2003 and 2004, payments totalling$75 ,000 were made by Epstein to Mandelson.

19:10We have the bank statements. I know what bank statements look like. They look legitimate, unless it's an extraordinarily careful and well-planned fake. That was 2003-2004. But then around the time of these discussions in late 2009, Epstein agreed to fund Mandelson's partner's osteopathy course. The total amount he funded isn't clear, but it was somewhere over$10 ,000. So yes, that also makes this not normal behaviour for someone acting as the ear of business for government. Two days after those emails around lobbying the government, Epstein sent Mandelson an email, this is 17 December 2009, asking, should Jamie, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, call Alistair Darling one more time?

19:57So Epstein is asking Mandelson advice on how JP Morgan should lobby government. And Mandelson responds, yes, and mildly threatened. And that is extraordinary. And when Peter Mandelson told us this weekend that he had no recollection of those payments and didn't believe they were true, but he would carry out an investigation himself, what would your response be to that? It reminded me of OJ Simpson saying he was going to find the real killer. Yes, I'm sure Peter Mandelson will be closely investigating these 75 ,000 that he can't remember. That seems very plausible to me. You just don't believe it?

20:32No, it's ridiculous. I remember, maybe I was too young to remember clearly, but I remember Peter Madison being good at this sort of stuff. The denials he's coming out with now wouldn't fool a precocious 10-year-old. They're ridiculous. And then there's this email, which the Times has dug up, where he leaks what looks like confidential government information about selling off what he calls saleable assets from the government and he leaks that to Epstein. What I'm trying to ascertain, I guess, is, I mean, in your head, does this amount to criminal behaviour if it's proved right? So there is a criminal offence of misconduct in public office, and that is not my area of expertise.

21:15I can say what the offence is. It's committed if you have a public officer, which Mendelssohn was, acting as a public officer, which I think he was when he forwarded the emails. I don't know if he was during those discussions around lobbying government. They willfully misconduct themselves or recklessly misconduct themselves to such an degree as to amount to an abuse of the public's trust and without reasonable excuse or justification. And it's not my area. I can't tell you if that offence is satisfied by the facts here. But I can say that it looks a serious enough point that someone who has expertise, preferably in the Crown Prosecution Service, should be looking at it.

21:52And that is something that you could be jailed for? Yeah, it's a serious criminal offence. And whilst it's couched in Victorian language and it's a common law offence rather than written in statute, it's absolutely used most commonly against corrupt councillors. There's no reason it can't be used against a minister. Sorry, Dan, do you think he should be investigated by the police? Yeah, I think, well, first of all, the Crown Prosecution Service should confirm if the law potentially applies to the facts as they appear to be. And then it should be investigated. Dan, thanks so much. Thank you. Hey, no, no, no.

22:24Thanks. Thanks, Dan. Look, Mandelson will be in agony over this. He thought he would do an interview with Laura Kunzberg. He thought that would clear the air. There were many people who advised him against it, saying you don't know what else is going to come out. And sure enough, a hell of a lot has come out. Peter Mandelson wanted a rehabilitation into public life. You know, he was telling friends, there is another peg I want to be able to hang my coat on. And he has got a list of villains in all of this that, you know, Downing Street panicked and the Foreign Office were against him. And he even talked, you know, he even talked about the sisterhood in the Labour Party being against him, whatever that means.

23:04And I think that Mandelson must now be realising that any hopes of this rehabilitation are in absolute tatters right now, given what we have learned, given the questions that remain unanswered. And rather than the kind of questions diminishing, there's just an ever-growing number of questions, and each question begs more questions. And so I think that, you know, for Mandelson, he must be reappraising everything right now. I have to say my blood runs cold when you talk about the sisterhood getting the blame, because if men realised how hard women question themselves before they go into public life, because they think about all the shit they're going to get and all the harassment and all the scrutiny and all the sort of focus.

23:58and most of the time, as we know, they think it's not worth it and they don't do it. And then you get somebody like Peter Mandelson who goes back time and time again because there is absolutely no sense of impunity, that it doesn't matter if you took a loan without declaring it, that it doesn't matter if you or your partner have taken money from a paedophile billionaire, that it doesn't matter if you're staying in a convicted paedophile's flat, presumably rent-free, that it doesn't matter if you want to be ambassador to the US, whether or not you've had this ongoing relationship with him, that none of that really should be held against you, that somehow it's the sisterhood of your own party that is trying to bring you down because they just wish you ill.

24:45They don't want you to succeed. I'm sorry, it just beggars belief to hear that phrase. well I think one of the ironies of all of this and in a way Mandelson's own future is of such trivial importance by comparison to all the things you've just said Emily and obviously the sort of wider questions that are posed by Epstein and his relationship with so many global political business commercial royal elites which we'll talk about a little bit in a minute but I think it is obviously one of the sort of deepest darkest ironies of all of this is that you know people have talked about Mandelson as being one of the most effective political and media operators of his generation of the last 30 years.

25:19And I think one thing that we are seeing with all of this, not least in how he has responded to it repeatedly in the most extraordinary, and I think many would say occasionally outrageous way, shows that if that reputation was once deserved, it is no longer. Absolutely tone deaf. We'll be back with more just after this.

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26:12The News Agents. Moving away from the specifics of Peter Manilson and even Andrew, I think one of the things that just kind of like was hammered home to me once again, Emily, and you've been following this in more detail for longer than me, so maybe this didn't hit you quite as much as it did me, but every time these tranches appear now from the DOJ, and of course we only should remind ourselves, we're only seeing these documents because of an act of Congress that was passed, compelling because it's become such a kind of core celeb on the MAGA right, compelling the Department of Justice to publish these millions and millions of documents.