The fall and rise (and fall again) of Peter Mandelson

0:00How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow. Coming up on The Daily, our first spin doctor, the Prince of Darkness, ambassador to the United States. Peter Mandelson returns from Washington in disgrace, sacked over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

0:43So who is he? How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway and in each episode of my new podcast Stuff Matters I take an object, crack it open and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow. Hi everyone, Neil Patterson back with another of our profiles and given the week he's had, we thought we'd focus on Lord Mandelson. Peter, as he's better known to his many, many friends, including, of course, Geoffrey Epstein.

1:30I'm not answering any questions about him. He was in jail at the time for soliciting prostitution from a minor. My knowledge of him is something that I regret. I wish I'd never met him in the first place. Why did you have an association with him? Why did many people meet him? He was a prolific networker and I wish I'd never met him in the first place. Was it an error of judgement, sir, or was it more than that? And it's that relationship that brought his time as our ambassador in Washington to a very abrupt end. This is the third time he's been unceremoniously dumped from politics, none of which is to say he doesn't have the skills or charm to succeed.

2:09He's been a backroom strategist, a minister, a political consultant, even an EU trade commissioner. I last encountered him during the 2010 election campaign after he'd been brought back by Gordon Brown. The journalists on the Labour battle bus had a rare day with nothing to do. Peter Mandelson was tasked with keeping us occupied and out of mischief. So he decided to take us all to Blackpool for the day. You're all going to buy ice creams. They need the business. Do your bit for the Blackpool economy. Absolutely. You can put it on expenses, you know about that. Is there anything more I can do with this ice cream?

2:49It would make you any happier than you already are. Certainly, a day I'll never forget. And we'll be delving into Mandelson the Operator in just a little bit with our former political editor, Adam Bolton. First, though, Lord Ricketts, who served as the UK's first national security advisor. Later, our ambassador in Paris. Peter, look, can we start by just pulling back the curtain a little bit? What exactly is it that an ambassador does? And in particular, ambassador to the most powerful country on earth? particularly you've got to be credible I think I mean you've got to be credible in that you must have a good relationship back to your own prime minister and foreign secretary you've got to know your issues you've got to be competent in getting across the British government's agenda but yes also you've got to attract the eye of the president and work through all the various tensions and frictions that no doubt surround the oval office to work both with the president and their close advisors you as an ambassador then have huge responsibility and with that huge responsibility comes great power.

3:48So the vetting process had better be good. Just describe how we ensure the people that we put in these positions are capable of doing so. A professional who comes to the job of an ambassador like I did will have had 30 years of experience in the civil service, deep track record, very much a known quantity to his employer, her employer. The vetting, what's now called developed vetting for those who have access to sensitive security information, it's actually very detailed and often takes weeks. So you have to fill in a very detailed questionnaire, what aspects of your life. There are criminal records checks, there are financial reviews, there's a credit check.

4:26The security agencies run you through their systems to make sure you haven't had links with extremists on left or right. There's a very detailed interview on your personal finances, apart from anything else, to see whether others might have some kind of hold over you. And then also they take references. So they go to people who know you well and interview them as well. So it's quite a detailed process. Quite a lot of it, I think, depends on the declarations you make. I mean, you're expected to make declarations of anything that could be of relevance and people work from that. And so it does depend a lot on you being honest in what you say.

5:04But that's the typical process. I don't know whether that's the process that Peter Mendelsohn went through. But I suppose then one has to ask, you know, what is the degree of involvement of Downing Street, of number 10, of the Prime Minister? Yes. I mean, the process inside this diplomatic service for appointing ambassadors, for the most senior ambassadors, is that the Permanent Secretary makes a recommendation to the Foreign Secretary, who then makes a recommendation to the Prime Minister. So the Prime Minister would sign off, Ambassador to Washington, Paris, the EU, Beijing. And therefore, yes, if the Prime Minister has an objection to somebody, they won't get the job.

5:39For a political appointee, clearly there often isn't time for very detailed checks. But again, it's an exercise of prime ministerial judgment. Are the risks of appointing someone, you know, outweighed by the advantages in having their talents there? And where do you fall as a career diplomat yourself, as someone who's spent decades within the civil service? I mean, does it slightly put your back up when you see people being brought in from outside the tent? As a diplomat, you'd expect me to say that I think the professionals, you know, there are advantages in them. But there have always been occasional political appointments.

6:13I mean, going right back to Churchill and the Second World War, who sent his foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, to Washington. So they can be very effective. And of course, a political appointee brings with them skills, experience, networks that professionals don't have. They also, of course, bring with them all the baggage they've accumulated over years of political life. Thanks, Peter. Well, let's pick up on that with Adam Bolton, political commentator, Sky's former political editor, and my old boss. Adam, when did you first encounter Peter Mandelson? I encountered Peter Mandelson, I think, in 1983, when the long march, if you like, to modernise the Labour Party began.

6:53Peter Mandelson came in as a very young man. and he'd actually been a TV researcher before that, as a press officer and advisor to Neil Kinnock. And he was the man, for example, who brought in the red rose symbol for the Labour Party. But the move to change Labour, to modernise it, actually began under Neil Kinnock. And certainly from the early stage, it was true that Peter Mandelson was a key part of that, working very closely at the time with two new young MPs who shared an office called Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Tell us then a little bit more about his time in the backroom before he became a politician himself.

7:37I mean, this was the point at which he became known as a spin doctor, as the Prince of Darkness. Peter Mannerson came in as a press officer, set about saying if Labour was ever going to get back into power, it at least had to have decent relationships with the Tory press. others, but also took a very aggressive attitude towards journalists, that if they wrote stories that he didn't like, he would come down on them and take it out on, you know, argue it out in public with them. He was the first person known as a spin doctor in British politics, an American phrase. I'll just give you one example.

8:15In the 1987 general election, when he was working for Neil Kinnock, I was working for a television station and I got involved, along with the presenter Anne Diamond, in an altercation with Dennis Healy, in which he punched me in front of a leading gossip columnist. So that was front page news. Now, Peter Mandelson rang me up and told me that I was going to be banned from Labour Party headquarters on the night of the election, which is what I was due to be covering, because quite rightly, he thought my presence might be seen as a bit of a distraction. And, you know, we had a very, as they say, full and frank exchange of views, but he never held it against me subsequently.

8:59And indeed, I remember having a conversation with him after that election saying, what are you going to do next, Peter? And he said, rather to my surprise, I want to become a Labour MP. And I said, oh, that's very interesting. You're a Labour councillor at the moment. are you going to go for a Labour seat? And he said, oh, no, no, no, it's far too much of a nest of vipers. I think I'll look for a seat up in the north of England, as indeed he did getting elected in Hartlepool. How much of the 1997 victory, historic victory for Labour, was down to Mandelson? I think it was down to what he created, although by that stage he was an MP, so he was certainly in headquarters and offering advice, but he also had to fight for his own seat.

9:45And memorably, when he got elected in Hartlepool, a lot of people were saying, you know, here's this Southern smoothie, who does he think he is? Wasn't there a comment about mushy peas at some point as well? Well, that was associated with Peter Mandelson. That was actually a story. I mean, they're such nice people in the Labour Party. That was a story that Neil Kinnock used to tell about him, which was that allegedly the story was Peter Mandelson went into a chip shop in Merseyside during a by-election and said, oh, could I have some fish and chips? And could I have some of that guacamole? Now, Peter Mandelson has always denied this.

10:25And those who've gone into this forensically know, actually, that it was an American researcher who said that, not Peter Mandelson. But it kind of fitted with the sharp suited image that the mustachioed Peter Mandelson had at the time. And so it did stick with him. And as I was saying, that's one of the reasons why when he was elected in Hartlepool to be the candidate, he celebrated quite deliberately on camera by dining a pint of bitter in one just to show he was a man of the people. The scandals that emerged during his political career did tend to involve money and did tend to involve lots and lots of money.

11:05I think that's absolutely true. And in his private life, I think it's fair to say that while Peter Mandelson was liked by everybody he worked with, as far as I can tell, he was a social climber and he did enjoy luxury and the company of rich people and what they had to offer. And if you look at now the three disasters in his career, each of them had a connection to rich people. The first one was when he took an undeclared interest-free loan of over£300 ,000 from a wealthy Labour MP, Geoffrey Robinson. and when that became public he was challenged on what he told the mortgage company on his first property and he had to resign from government.

11:57The second time was connected to his friendship with the Anglo-England billionaire family the Hindujas. He was accused of acting improperly on their behalf to help them get a passport. His rivalry if you like with Alistair Campbell, who was then head of Tony Blair's Press, led Campbell to force Peter Mandelson's second resignation. Subsequently, he was exonerated. But again, there was that rich person connection, as there was, of course, now with Jeffrey Epstein, you know, the billionaire networker. And there was this thought at the time, you know, that's it. That's the back of him. We won't be seeing Peter Mandelson again.

12:38I remember the day that it happened back in 2008, when we heard that Gordon Brown had brought him back into government. Do you remember that time? And that was very interesting. What happened, Peter Manson had to resign from the first government over the mortgage. He then fought re-election in 2001 and famously came out with that phrase, I'm a fighter, not a quitter. It was said that I was facing political oblivion, my career in tatters, apparently never to be part of the political living again. Well, they underestimated Hartlepool and they underestimated me because I am a fighter and not a quitter.

13:28So he fought back. Then in the second Blair government, he came back into the government and then this Hindujia affair blew up. He was pushed out because of that. And a lot of people thought that high office was going to be closed to him. What did Peter Mandelson do next? He was appointed to be the British commissioner in Brussels. And in fact, he became the trade commissioner. And that, I think, was, you know, testament to, it's not less talked about Peter Mandelson, that he is extremely professionally competent and is generally, he's left a good impression behind in every ministry or department he's held.

14:10And of course, he stayed in office through transitions in government. And he also, and this I think is, you know, quite crucial to him being brought back as ambassador to the UK. He not only was the European commissioner, he was the European trade commissioner and the chief trade negotiator. I mean, he just did have this skill of whoever he's dealing with of building up a kind of personal intimacy. But then again, when he was in this post over in Europe, we see this fascination with the rich and the well-connected and some criticism followed that as well. People use this expression, movers and shakers, and I think Peter Mandelson certainly believed that there are movers and shakers, that there are people who can make a difference and it's worth getting to know.

15:00He was active on that, and there were certainly some people who criticised him for that. Adam, just in his role as ambassador, he pitched up and was faced with an awful lot of criticism from those within and without the White House in Washington. But he has been generally accepted to have done a pretty decent job as ambassador, hasn't he? As he said himself when he was appointed back this February, the job of the government, as Keir Starmer saw it, was to maintain very close relations with the president. Now, this was quite interesting because some in MAGA had dismissed him as a socialist and a lefty and not someone that they were likely to do business with.

15:40Now, with his charm and his application and the assistance of the staff already in place in Washington in the British Embassy, he got around that pretty quickly. And much more importantly, he managed very rarely to establish a personal relationship with Donald Trump. In my view, as the Prime Minister has said, just shows what two countries who trust each other, who are confident in each other and are familiar with each other, can do not just for ourselves, but for those in the rest of the world who need to benefit from a bigger and better international trading system. Thank you very much. That was beautifully stated.

16:21What a beautiful accent. I'd like to have that accent. My mother would be proud. Thank you very much. Now, all of that, we may find a bit cringy, but that is how Donald Trump works. He works on personal relationships and personal warmth. And there's no doubt at all that he felt that towards Peter Mandelson. But let's talk very specifically about Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship with Peter Mandelson. Nobody could have foreseen the row which emerged about the so-called Epstein file and the disclosure to the public of that pretty damning 50th birthday book in which Peter Mandelson had sort of 10 pages of praise.

17:02Equally, it was on record that Peter Mandelson had had a relationship, a friendship with Epstein. And that was declared when he was appointed and when he was vetted for the post of Washington ambassador. What I think we didn't know was quite how creepily flattering Peter Mandelson was in his communications with Epstein. Can I throw another observation into the mix? And it is that Downing Street, the Prime Minister, they threw their support behind Peter Mandelson, despite presumably knowing that there could be more to come, that this situation could become more complicated. And I suppose that says an awful lot about the regard in which Downing Street held Lord Mandelson.

17:48I think it does. Yet another Labour leader, and this time Keir Starmer, found Peter Mandelson to be a useful person. It's often said of Peter Mandelson, he's brilliant at advising others and hopeless at advising himself. And he clearly won the confidence of Keir Starmer. reportedly he also crucially had won the confidence of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer's chief of staff. So that was very strong support at the heart of government. What appears to have happened is that subsequent revelations didn't really expose anything we didn't know about his friendship with Epstein, but they gave more kind of gruesome, uncomfortable detail.

18:33And I think there was a clear move within the parliamentary Labour Party MPs and even within the cabinet that this was one more embarrassment that the government couldn't put up with. I mean, is that it? Is that the last we will see of Peter Mandelson as regards, you know, active involvement in frontline politics? Well, Peter Mandelson is still a member of the House of Lords. So that to a certain extent is a potential platform. I would have thought that three strikes and you're out does apply. I can't see him being appointed to another high level post. But I do think that Peter Mandelson is absolutely committed to the Labour Party and to public service.

19:18But the fact of the matter is, from very early on, certainly from the first time he left the government, there have always been people saying Peter Mandelson is too dodgy to be trusted in high office. I mean, in that sense, you know, he is an Icarus figure who has flown close to the sun. And yeah, again, the wax on his wings have melted. Thanks, Adam. And that's it for The Daily for this week. Do have a listen out to some of the other profiles we've done recently. A few examples. Zach Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party. We've taken an in-depth look at Brand Beckham. Also, the man who faked his own death to try and avoid jail, Nicholas Rossi.

20:01Do hope you have a cracking weekend. count. We are back again Monday.

20:07How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.