Mandelson files: Starmer admits ‘I made a mistake’ – The Latest

0:00Archie Bland:This is The Guardian.

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0:46Lucy Hough:I made a mistake in appointing Peter Manderson and let me follow that up with an apology to the victims of Epstein. What we've seen is a much more detailed picture of the process. the way that Keir Starmer and his most senior political aides overruled the warnings about reputational risk. And then we also see some of the fallout from what happened after Peter Mandelson was fired.

1:09Archie Bland:Keir Starmer has admitted it was a mistake to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and has apologised again after new documents revealed he'd ignored warnings about Mandelson's links to Jeffrey Epstein. From The Guardian's today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Holt. Joining me is Archie Bland, the Guardian's head of national news. Thanks so much for coming up to the studio, Archie. So yesterday we had the drop, if we can call it that, of the Mandelson files, government documents that give more information about the decision around his appointment as US ambassador at the end of 2024.

1:45Archie Bland:And then in the second half of the documents, his sacking from that position over his ties with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. So we know that Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, has previously stood up in the Commons and said that he knew about Mandelson's links to Epstein. What more have we learned about that knowledge from the files we saw yesterday?

2:05Lucy Hough:So one thing that we've got from this Toronto Files, and we should say that it's not complete, that there are more coming in later batches and that some have been held back at the request of the police at this stage. But what we've seen is a much more detailed picture of the process leading up to Peter Mandelson's appointment, the way that Keir Starmer and his most senior political aides overruled the warnings about reputational risk that would be incurred by appointing Mandelson. And then we also see some of the fallout from what happened after Peter Maddelson was fired. Taken together, part of it is just that you see in black and white the kinds of warnings that were set out.

2:41Lucy Hough:And you have a clearer sense of the kind of information that Starmer and his team were working with. And there are other specific details that are interesting and telling, which I'm sure we can get into. But it just paints a much clearer picture than we had before yesterday of how this process worked in detail.

2:56Archie Bland:Yeah, and that is crucial, isn't it? Because there was a specific section about Mandelson's relationship with Epstein that was handed to the Prime Minister around the time that he was being appointed as ambassador, not least the fact that Mandelson, the documents read, stayed in Epstein's house while Epstein was in jail over that conviction of soliciting an underage girl, that Mandelson continued his relationship with Epstein after that in the period of 2009 to 2011, including when Lord Mandelson was business secretary.

3:27Lucy Hough:Yeah, and what we can see then is, first of all, we knew that Mandelson's Epstein links were raised and that the government decided to go ahead nonetheless with the appointment. We're told that some of the information that's being held back will perhaps present a more favourable picture for the government than it does at the moment.

3:47Archie Bland:Which is basically that Starmer had questions based on the information that he was given and that he raised with Mandelson. But those documents, the evidence of those conversations is currently being held back because it could have implications for the Metropolitan Police investigation that's still ongoing.

4:03Lucy Hough:Right, and Peter Mandelson denies any kind of wrongdoing in relation to any of this. And so there is a question that remains about whether the evidence that eventually emerges there will indeed endorse what the government says about the due diligence that Keir Starmer in particular did. But there are also interesting things that come up here that suggest maybe just a lack of really deep concern over the kinds of problems that potentially were going to arise with Mandelson, like the fact that it appears that he was offered high-level security clearance to look at documents before the vetting process was complete.

4:36Lucy Hough:That would seem, I think, to most people, like it kind of flies in the face of the vetting process. We also see that Jonathan Powell, the National Security Advisor, said that he thought that this whole process had been carried out at a weird speed, that it happened too quickly. so when you put those things together even though we already knew that Epstein's links had been known by the Prime Minister I think it also reflects in a more detailed way that this appears to have been a politically driven process without perhaps the kind of care and attention that the civil service might have naturally applied to it

5:07Archie Bland:Yeah, like you say it becomes a question of political judgement Jonathan Powell, it's interesting we should say perhaps that he was Chief of Staff to Tony Blair so therefore Lord Mandelson is someone that he would know well through work. But he said that he felt the process was weirdly rushed, which implies that the people making that political decision at that time really felt that Mandelson was the right choice for the job to be the US ambassador with the incoming Donald Trump administration, a decision that Keir Starmer has said again today that he deeply now regrets with the benefit of hindsight.

5:42Lucy Hough:Yeah. And, you know, I think at the same time as that observation from Powell being in there and indicating perhaps that he saw more clearly than Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister's most senior aide at the time, or the Prime Minister himself did, the fact that Maddelson might present an issue. I think another theme that comes through when you look at these documents is the euphemistic way that the civil service sometimes provides its advice. And there's a really clear distinction to me in the materials before Maddelson was fired and the materials afterwards and when these issues are being raised they are typically being raised in terms that you have to squint at quite hard to understand that they are suggesting that there is a real problem here.

6:23Lucy Hough:Nobody appears to be saying in a front-footed way you have a real problem. They simply say to the Prime Minister here are your options you can make a political appointment this has some upsides and some downsides there will be some reputational risk attached to Peter Mandelson but those things do not amount to a very clear observation that this presents the kind of serious problem, which actually it should have been possible to understand at the time that it did. On the other hand, when you go to the documents that cover the period after Maddelson was fired, it feels a lot more like everybody is saying then, well, we've got to get rid of him and everybody knows that.

6:55Lucy Hough:And you sort of wonder why that kind of clarity of thinking wasn't available in the first instance.

7:00Archie Bland:Well, it's a good question and one that you hope is being asked in the Cabinet Office and elsewhere this week. But the second part of the documents relate to the decision to You'd sack Lord Mandelson at the end of last year after the extent of his relationship with Epstein became known and the severance pay that was negotiated with him. It's reported or the documents suggest that Mandelson was looking for a figure of upwards of 500k, so half a million, but that the figure that was eventually settled on was 75 ,000, which has proved bad optically, hasn't it? that that amount of money would be paid to someone sacked from a senior diplomatic position for links to a known child sex offender.

7:42Lucy Hough:Yeah, and we should say the allies of Mandelson dispute the idea that this 500 ,000 plus was something that he ever seriously thought that he would get. We don't know the answer to that. And, you know, you may say that he might have initially expected to be paid for the full term, that he would have been ambassador had this not happened. I think most people would reasonably say you can't expect that when you've been fired. And it would have been an extraordinary sum of money. I think it's only in the context of that kind of negotiation that 70 something thousand pounds looks like a reasonable sum to most people in this context.

8:16Lucy Hough:And that may be indeed one of the reasons that it finds its way into this document. The civil service talks in it about why it represents value for money. And one of the reasons that they give for it representing value for money is that the initial counteroffer was so much higher. you slightly suspect therefore that if you're telling somebody that something's cheap you always want to have what the other price would have been that they didn't have to pay and I think there may be a little bit of optics going on there there is now pressure on Mandelson to donate that payoff that he got to charity um we'll see whether anything like that happens and and indeed we already knew that he had had a payoff but I think seeing all of these figures set out and an argument for why they're a good idea obviously brings it into quite sharp relief yeah and and in the

8:56Archie Bland:Commons yesterday was very interesting points being raised by opposition MPs, but also from Labour MPs about the optics of all this and what it tells us about these kind of networks of power. £75 ,000 is well in excess of the UK national salary will seem like a huge amount of money to most people. And yet, and it just doesn't cut through as a reality to most working people.

9:20Lucy Hough:Yeah. And on the other side of that, you will have people in the kind of Peter Mandelson universe who will think that it's not that much money and that that just goes to indicate how you know that's that's kind of part of why i think that's particularly ugly here is it's not just like we're talking about mp salaries when this kind of stuff comes up quite a lot we're talking about somebody with links to this specific network of people in a kind of a super rich rarefied elite who are also doing unspeakable things and i think all of that as a backdrop

9:50Archie Bland:makes it seem especially heinous yeah and and one that will continue to rumble on because as you said there we've only seen the first tranche of documents there are more that are being held back as the Met Police investigation goes on. Mandelson who we should say again has denied any wrongdoing including misconduct in public office for which he was arrested last month has been released on from bail but is still under investigation but it's likely to be some time we think before we see that the full documents.

10:20Lucy Hough:Yeah they will continue to come in tranches and we don't know the exact timing of those yet what i would say about it is that what we have seen so far are all quite formal communications they're either quite a large portion of uh yesterday's was released was just like terms and conditions of you know telling him where the collector's security passed when he became ambassador did you read that in full archie i'm afraid i did yeah it's exciting i was actually on a day off and um anyway it just i think that suggests that this is the more formal part where people will have been considering quite carefully what they have to say.

10:52Lucy Hough:We may see in further documents released down the line things that people say when they're being a little bit more informal and that might suggest that there is a lot of trouble potentially ahead for everybody involved in this.

11:04Archie Bland:Yeah and also what was kept in written form as documentation and there are all sorts of conversations that happen in private rooms in the corridors of power that we may never see the light of day of but Archie thank you so much for your time on what we know at this stage.

11:17Lucy Hough:Thank you.

11:19Archie Bland:That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Archie Bland, the Guardian's Head of National News. And for more on how all this played out in Westminster, do listen to our sister podcast, Politics Weekly. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest, the new evening edition of Today in Focus. Today in Focus will be back with you as usual tomorrow morning. The latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. It was produced by Annie La Vesper. The senior producer was Ryan Rangobin. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

11:51Lucy Hough:This is The Guardian.

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