Why the Mandelson files mean more trouble for Keir Starmer

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:11The Mandelson files are out, so Keir Starmer should be worried. And this is why.

0:24Lord Mandelson, sir did you tell Keir Starmer everything about the nature of your relationship with Geoffrey Epstein? Hi everyone, Neil here a very big breaking news day on This Is Why and as everyone in Westminster dives headfirst into the Mandelson Files we're going to try and give you a flavour of what's emerging a couple of hours after a session of PMQs in which, guess what, nobody mentioned the Epstein in the room, the data was dumped. The documents specifically relate to the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States and the discussions that subsequently led to his dismissal.

1:00Darren Jones filling a big Keir Starmer-shaped hole in the Commons there, the Prime Minister finding he had other business to attend to. So it's very convenient that this document was published after Prime Minister's questions today, when the man who made the decision, the man whose judgment is in question, could have been put under scrutiny by honourable members. Just to remind you, a few weeks ago, MPs voted for the government to release all communications, emails, documents and so on, relating to Peter Mandelson's appointment as ambassador to the United States. He lost that job because of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship that lasted way beyond Epstein's first conviction.

1:38And that has, of course, raised plenty of questions about Keir Starmer's judgment. He lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein before and during his tenure as ambassador. I regret appointing him. If I knew then what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government. We're recording this around four o 'clock, so undoubtedly there is more to come. But Sky's Rob Powell is here with what we know so far. Rob, first things first, just remind us, what is being released by the government today and why?

2:12Rob Powell:So what has been released is the first set of documents related to Peter Mandelson's appointment as US ambassador. And the reason why they are being released is because of essentially parliamentary shenanigans that the Conservative Party pulled about a month ago, where they used this ancient process called the Humble Address to come into the Commons and basically hold a vote which passed that forces legally, that binds the government's hands to basically do whatever the hell the Tories are wanting them to do, which in this case was to release all of these documents connected to Peter Mandelson's appointment.

2:51Rob Powell:But it goes a lot further than what we've had today. This is just the first set, which basically covers him being offered the job, some of the due diligence that went on around him, some of the official papers around him being appointed, and then him essentially being sacked and the severance payment too. I am assuming that some of the documents have not been released because of that Metropolitan Police investigation. And I suppose this is as good a time as any to say that Peter Mandelson has consistently denied any criminal wrongdoing, particularly about the stuff that is under investigation.

3:24I mean, what are we not getting today?

3:26Rob Powell:In terms of what we're not getting, there is a lot. The wording of the humble address, as it's called, is at the front of this dump of documents. And I was going through it earlier. And there are things like WhatsApp messages, correspondence between Lord Mandelson and the Chief of Staff in Number 10 at the time, Morgan McSweeney, WhatsApps between Peter Mandelson and special advisors in the government, any information that was provided by Peter Mandelson to basically reassure the government as well. It asks for minutes of meetings that Lord Mandelson had while he was US ambassador. So it is really, really expansive what the Conservatives have basically forced the government to disclose.

4:05Rob Powell:Part of the reason for that, as you say, is because there is this Metropolitan Police investigation. They wanted, I think, the government to get some of this stuff out about a month ago, but they had to put the brakes on because the Met started an investigation and basically said, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, we need to make sure nothing you put out into the public domain could jeopardise our case. The other aspect of this as well is that the humble address, the thing that forces this release, has a clause in it that says if there's anything that is detrimental to national security or international relations, it will go through a separate committee of MPs first.

4:38Rob Powell:So there is a lot more to be released. I think this is probably the minority of what's going to be released. There's probably a lot more compared to even what we've got today. I would say, and we'll probably come into this later, the most crucial thing to my mind that's not been released is the questions that Number 10 asked Lord Mandelson specifically about Jeffrey Epstein after they got the due diligence report. Because that's, I think, what for many people this hinges on. Did they really go far enough in asking, searching questions of Lord Mandelson? Because we know the Prime Minister said, look, Lord Mandelson basically kept the truth from us.

5:13Rob Powell:But I think the question is, did you really go searching for the truth? And whilst they put a lot of stuff in here around that due diligence process, they haven't put the questions that they asked Peter Mandelson. I will say it again, Lord Mandelson denies any criminal wrongdoing. What did we learn, though? We got a document that was basically prepared for Downing Street, essentially, that was a due diligence check on Peter Mandelson that I assume would have come from the proprietary and ethics team, although I know it would have come from the proprietary and ethics team in the cabinet office.

5:44Rob Powell:What this basically is, is an exercise in sort of scraping public information that is out there on the internet already, putting it all together in one document so that it can be looked at by the people that are managing this appointment in a political capacity. So I'll be honest with you, there's not a lot in there that we didn't know already. It is basically a sort of compendium of anything and everything that might mean there is a reputational risk to the government of appointing Peter Mandelson. So it's basically a trawl through, to be blunt, all of the various scandals that have sort of followed Peter Mandelson around in his time.

6:19Rob Powell:So you have things like his resignations from the Blair Brown administrations as well and the reasons behind that. You have some of his business interests as well. And of course, you have a section in here about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, in which it says it cites a report from 2019 that was commissioned by the bank JP Morgan that found that Jeffrey Epstein appeared to maintain a particularly close relationship with both Prince Andrew and Lord Bandleson. And it basically goes into detail around that, flags up some of the reporting that took place before the appointment, before he took up this ambassadorial post as well.

7:00Rob Powell:But as I say, this shows that, you know, these things were swilling around in the government system at the time of the appointment. It doesn't necessarily give us anything that we didn't know before, though. Can I just be clear then? When the Prime Minister appointed Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the United States, he was well aware that his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein had continued beyond his conviction. And more than that, that actually there was a relationship there that was such that he could stay at Jeffrey Epstein's house, his£7 million townhouse, whilst Epstein was in jail for the first time.

7:38The Prime Minister knew that when he appointed him.

7:39Rob Powell:Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at a piece of paper that is in this dump of documents, which the first word on it is advice to the prime minister, official sensitive. Look through it to the Jeffrey Epstein section and it says about him continuing his relationship after the conviction of Jeffrey Epstein. So that's in there. You have also got what's called a box note. It's basically a piece of paper that is prepared by the prime minister's private secretary that goes in the red box that you see ministers and the prime minister carry around. It's what often when there's interviews with prime ministers, they say at the end of the day, they sit there having a cup of tea and doing their box.

8:13Rob Powell:That's what it means. And it says in here, we have sought a due diligence review from PET, proprietary and ethics team, the checkers basically, at the cabinet office. And your chief of staff has discussed Peter's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. So that's Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff at the time. Your director of communications is satisfied with his responses to questions about contact. And that director of comms at the time is Matthew Doyle. So it shows the Prime Minister being told about the relationship, being told that questions have been asked about the relationship, being told that the relationship continued past his conviction, which, as I say, we knew anyway, courtesy of the Financial Times years ago, and going ahead with it anyway.

8:54Rob Powell:But as I say, we sort of knew all this already, but this is the gory detail, if you like, that shows that they really knew. I mean, in amongst that gory detail, are we discovering that there were any individuals close to the Prime Minister inside Number 10 or the adjoining buildings that had concerns about this particular appointment? Yes, Jonathan Powell, the National Security Advisor. Remember, the Chief of Staff under Tony Blair in Number 10 as well. So someone that, you know, wouldn't have been a stranger to Peter Mandelson, given his time in the new Labour years. What we also have in this box of documents is basically a note of a fact-finding call that Jonathan Powell took part in on the 12th of September 2025, where the summary says that Jonathan Powell found the appointment process unusual of Lord Mandelson.

9:40Rob Powell:He found it weirdly rushed and he raised concerns about the individual and reputation. And he raised them to Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff. So Jonathan Powell, we know, had some concerns here. We know as well that the Prime Minister, in a note written by the Cabinet Secretary at the time, was told that if he went ahead with a political appointment, so basically if he chose someone sort of from outside of the civil service foreign office machine, then that could potentially be a greater risk for him if it all went belly up, not the exact words they used, because it would be linked back to him.

10:15I think back, though, to the speculation around his appointment before it was even made. And rather than people focusing on Jeffrey Epstein at that time, my recollection is it was rather more about his business interests, Russia and China and so on, that people were focusing on. And we get a bit more on that in the Mandelson files.

10:32Rob Powell:Yeah. So the due diligence document that was prepared for the prime minister did also go into detail about his various business interests as well. It talked about him being president of Global Council, basically a lobbying firm. But intriguingly as well, it also talked about how he was seen as an advocate for closer UK-China relations, talking about a speech he gave at the University of Hong Kong, where he claimed that the rule of law and independence of the judiciary remain intact there. And it also talks about his interests on the board of a Russian company, which was the majority shareholder of another Russian company that helped make missile warning systems until 2017.

11:09Rob Powell:And of course, that's important because it is long after the annexation of Crimea, when Putin came in and basically carved Crimea off Ukraine. So, look, it's a fairly lengthy due diligence document that stretches into several different aspects of Lord Mandelson's life. But what comes across from it was that the political judgment being made by those around the Prime Minister, and obviously by default, by extension, the Prime Minister himself, was that despite this all being flagged, it was worth appointing him anyway. The line from Darren Jones, the MP who stepped in for a secure stammer that we heard from earlier on the podcast, appears to be that because Peter Mandelson didn't expose the depths of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the appointment was absolutely fine.

12:00The prime minister's done nothing wrong, move along, nothing to see here. I'm not sure I entirely get that argument. What more did he need to know about the relationship? What more has emerged about the depth of their relationship since the appointment?

12:15Rob Powell:Well, I suppose it would be those emails that Bloomberg initially published that led to the Prime Minister sacking him, which, you know, really, I think you could probably argue they really fleshed out a relationship that does seem fairly obvious from reading this due diligence report. report. Those were the emails where you had the birthday book that Peter Mandelson prepared for Jeffrey Epstein. You had the emails as well that were sent to Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction as well. I mean, you're right in that you have in this due diligence report evidence of a close relationship. What those Bloomberg emails revealed was basically the gory details of that close relationship.

12:59Rob Powell:You get the sense reading this, that this was a case of they were fairly, very clear eyed about the reputational risks here. But, and I think, you know, I think back to an interview that I remember Peter Kyle giving before the business secretary, before Lord Mandelson was sacked, where he essentially made the argument, which I think is probably the honest argument that most in government would make about his appointment, that they were trying to get someone into that role who they believed would do a good job in a Washington and with an unusual White House like the one we are dealing with right now.

13:34Rob Powell:And essentially, they believed it was worth the risk. I mean, you know, it doesn't say that in black and white in these files, but reading it in totality, that's what I take away from it. So at the time of his appointment, his ability to trump whisper meant that his appointment was pushed through despite the fact that they're in black and white were the civil service advising that there was a reputational risk to this appointment. They prioritised that over the fact that they already knew this was a man who was such close friends with Jeffrey Epstein that he stayed in his house whilst he was in prison.

14:08Rob Powell:Yes, I think they did. And I think it's interesting going back when this all blew up about a month or so ago, I went back to look at some of the reaction that had been coming from members of the commentariat, but also from Westminster and politicians as well about Peter Mandelson's appointment. I think it's interesting because if you bear in mind that a lot of the stuff in this due diligence report, it's all taken from public sources, right? So that Financial Times article was published way before his appointment as US ambassador that went into the detail about him remaining friends with Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction.

14:45Rob Powell:Actually, the comments that were coming from some conservative figures, this wasn't criticised staunchly by the conservatives on appointment. And even some of the sort of more establishment candidates, the kind of career civil servants, career ambassadors, could sort of see the logic of going for someone like Peter Mandelson to deal with President Trump. I think the difficulty is, is that this isn't just a political, in my view, the place where the friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after conviction takes this to is out of the realm of it being a political judgment and into the one of it being a moral judgment.

15:17Rob Powell:Because if you're a government that is saying, as we hear from government ministers and the prime minister every time the Epstein scandal is brought up, that what should be at the front of our minds is the victims. Like if that means anything than just words, it means that when you're faced with a situation where there are clear political upsides to appointing someone into an ambassadorial position, you say, we're not going to be able to pursue those political upsides because the moral downside of appointing someone that has these connections is too much. And I think that's where, you know, because, you know, let's be honest, people get appointed to jobs in politics and outside all of the time because the upside outweighs the downside.

15:57Rob Powell:The difference is, is that this has an incredibly acute moral dimension because of what Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of and because of what he did. And, you know, and I think that that's the sort of most damning part of this in terms of the Prime Minister's judgment. Very well put. I mean, the thing that stuck out for me, Rob, was the fact that, you know, he basically went and asked for a ton of money for having been sacked in disgrace, didn't he? Yeah, what we're also getting in this dump of documents is an exchange of emails between civil servants, essentially discussing the severance pay, the payoff that Peter Mandelson was going to get.

16:33Rob Powell:Now, it landed at around£75 ,000. £40 ,000 of that was payment in lieu of a notice element. So that was essentially to get rid of him immediately rather than giving him a notice period. And then a special severance payment of£34 ,000 just over that, subject to a tax exemption on the first£30 ,000 as well. And what we're getting in these emails essentially is senior civil servants civil servants trying to judge, saying why this is good value for money, in part because Peter Mandelson opened his negotiations, asking him to pay him out of his contract, which was half a million pounds. So he was asking after he had been sacked for half a million pounds of payoff.

17:14Rob Powell:And then that was brought down to£75 ,000. The government has since said, Darren Jones in the chamber has said that he thinks that Peter Mandelson should either give that back or donate it to charity. The other interesting thing going through Peter Mandelson's contract of employment here is that he of course was sacked after he was in the job for seven months. He was working a six month probation period. So if the government essentially and the Prime Minister had acted a month, month and a half, two months early, they would have been able to get rid of him without potentially paying him off. Rob, where does this go next?

17:44Where does the Prime Minister go next? We are only a few hundred pages into what I think is more than 100 ,000 pages of documents. There's more to come. It's going to keep running. It's going to be a thorn in the side, isn't it?

17:56Rob Powell:Yeah, I think so. I mean, when you're looking at the political danger that something like this poses, I sort of try and kind of appraise that by thinking about who it's doing political damage with. So I guess it's sort of two groups of people, isn't it? It's the voters and it's unhelpful for the... I don't see how any of this is helpful for the Prime Minister, despite Number 10 saying, we wanted this out immediately because it sort of shows that we did our checks. It puts it back in the headlines, it puts the spotlight back on to Keir Starmer appointing someone and then having to sack them over scurrilous allegations, something that before he became Prime Minister, he promised he wouldn't do.

18:29Rob Powell:There is no way that is politically helpful for the Prime Minister at all. So that knocks more of a sort of electoral chunk out of him with the voter base. Maybe the more important question, though, in terms of the short term is what does it do to Labour MPs? Because we saw after this blew up a month or so ago, it looked like Keir Starmer genuinely was under threat before the cabinet rode in behind him. And this is where maybe Keir Starmer ends up on safer ground, because I don't necessarily believe anything in these tranche of documents escalates anxieties enough in the parliamentary Labour Party to raise questions about Keir Starmer's future.

19:05Rob Powell:I think that that could come, but I think when that comes, it will probably come because of an electoral trashing, such as in May, such as in the local elections in the Welsh and Scottish elections. But I think, look, they've got the easy stuff out first. I think the more difficult stuff will be those WhatsApp messages between Peter Mandelson and special advisors and Morgan McSweeney. That could get just very, very gory and very, very embarrassing. Rob, many thanks. Do make sure and give the podcast a follow and be sure to be in touch with your comments. You can email me directly, why, at sky.uk.

19:40And do keep your ears peeled for Sky News politics, podcasts, electoral dysfunction and politics at Sam and Anne's. They're going to have plenty to say once the dust is settled. We're back again tomorrow.