The sacking of Peter Mandelson – Today in Focus extra

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:06This afternoon, why a friendship with Geoffrey Epstein has cost Peter Mandelson his job.

0:21He's one of the few unelected figures in British politics to have become a household name. Famously claimed as the architect of New Labour, he has served under three prime ministers across three decades. Powerful? Yes. Influential? Definitely. Yet Peter Mandelson has had to resign in scandal from the government not once, but twice. And so becoming Britain's ambassador to the US last year didn't come without controversy. But the PM stood by his pick. Until today. In the last week, excruciating details of Mandelson's close friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have been splashed all over the news.

1:07A man so toxic, he toppled Prince Andrew from public life, who, even dead, is proving to be one of Donald Trump's biggest headaches. So what did Keir Starmer know? And what does it say about his judgment? From The Guardian, I'm Narsheen Iqbal. Today in Focus, how will Keir Starmer spin his sacking of Peter Mandelson?

1:34Kieran Stacey, you're The Guardian's policy editor, and today in Focus, regular when it comes to explaining what on earth is going on behind the scenes in 10 Downing Street. So, Peter Mandelson, what's just happened? Well, Peter Mandelson has been, until Thursday, our man in Washington, our ambassador, over to the administration of Donald Trump. But over the last 48 hours, really, it's become a bit clearer just how close a relationship he had with the convicted, now deceased, paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. We always knew that Mandelson and Epstein had been friends. He'd been honest about that and said he regretted their relationship.

2:15We also knew back from 2023 that they'd continued to remain friends even after Epstein had first been convicted of having sex with a minor. And so if that was known, what tipped this story into a sacking? What we didn't realise, I think, until really quite recently, the last few days, was just the depth and the strength of their relationship even after Epstein went to jail. So this all came about because over in the US, there is a congressional committee, which has a file of papers, which were submitted by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein's former girlfriend and accomplice. And in this file of papers, there's all sorts of information about his friendships, his relationships, notoriously the now infamous birthday book of messages signed by high profile friends on the occasion of his 50th birthday.

3:02One of which is from Peter Mandelson. And this message includes several photos of Mandelson either with Epstein or in locations owned by Epstein, including one of him in a white dressing gown, laughing along with Epstein. Another one of him just in a pair of shorts, looking out into the middle distance from what appears to be the balcony on one of Epstein's villas. And he sent this message, and I'll quote it to you in full because it is extraordinary. And it's the tone of this that I think has really done for Peter Mandelson in the end. This message read, once upon a time, an intelligent, sharp-witted man they call mysterious parachuted into my life.

3:38You would spend many hours just waiting for him to turn up. And often, no sooner were you used to having him around, you would suddenly be alone again, leaving you with some interesting, in quote marks, friends to entertain instead. Or just some dogs to keep you company. He wasn't always so keen on them. But then he would parachute back in, very occasionally taking you by surprise in some far off places or in one of his glorious homes he likes to share with his friends. In brackets, yum yum. But wherever he is in the world, he remains my best pal. You can tell why those words really give us much more of a sense of this friendship.

4:14Makes it up a bit. Yeah, wincing juicing, I think is probably the right phrase. That was, you know, over the weekend, that was breaking. Then on Monday, Mandelson does an interview with The Sun's Harry Cole over in Washington where he says, I expect more of this stuff to come. And the reason for that, we then found out, is because he has been contacted by journalists at Bloomberg with a huge file of messages between him and Epstein that they were about to report. He knows it's coming. He doesn't quite know what's in their story. He tries to get ahead of it by doing this interview, but it doesn't obviously stop Bloomberg publishing their story.

4:47And it was just yesterday that the PM was defending Lord Mandelson in PMQs. The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for his association with him. He's right to do so. I have confidence in him and he's playing an important role in the UK-US relationship. And now he's sacked him. What's changed in less than 24 hours? What's changed in the last 24 hours is, you know, we're speaking on Thursday morning and we now have just hundreds of messages between the two men, including messages sent just as Epstein was on his way to jail for the first time, saying things like, reminder, you are fighting back.

5:28You need strategy, strategy, strategy. Remember the art of war, talking about the Sun Tzu book. He was offering his counsel to a then convicted sex offender. That's right. And this is another message he wrote. I think the world of you, he said, and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain, which is a fairly extraordinary thing to say. And it's these extra messages which the government now says it didn't know about, which we're led to understand even Peter Mandelson may have forgotten about, that led to his extraordinary sacking on Thursday.

6:02Stephen Doughty, one of the foreign office ministers, stood up in the House of Commons and said that because Number 10 hadn't had full view of those emails before he took up the job, that that was the thing that had changed. And that was the reason they were now letting him go. In particular, Mr Speaker, Lord Madison's suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein's first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information. And in light of that, Mr Speaker, and mindful as we all are of the victims of Epstein's appalling crimes, he has been withdrawn as ambassador with immediate effect. And Kieran, what does it say or what does it mean that Starmer has sacked him ahead of this major visit, this Trump state visit next week, which is imminent?

6:48I think one of the things that we were all asking here in political journalism circles over the last couple of days is if Peter Mandelson remained in post, what was the Trump state visit going to be like? What would he get asked when he was confronted by members of the press during that visit? presumably a lot of it would be about Jeffrey Epstein, which is one subject that Donald Trump really, really does not want to talk about. There was some concern that by sacking him, it could look somehow like it was casting aspersions in the direction of Trump himself, given Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

7:21But in the end, I think it was a bigger danger to have this hanging over the whole relationship while that visit was taking place. And so I think it was felt in the end that he had to go before that. Of course, that's not going to stop anyone asking about Jeffrey Epstein when Trump does turn up next week. Before this week, what had Mandelson said about his friendship with Epstein? And since these revelations have come to light, what has he said since? Well, it is quite extraordinary. Peter Mandelson has never denied being a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. He couldn't really. But until very recently, he's always been very aggressive in response to questions about it.

7:56He gave an interview to the Financial Times recently, where he was asked by the FT's political editor, George Parker, about his relationship with Epstein. And he said this, I regret ever meeting him or being introduced to him by his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. I regret even more the hurt he caused to many women. I'm not going to go into this. It's an FT obsession, he said. And frankly, and I'm quoting here, you can all fuck off. Okay? That was the tone that Peter Mandelson was using just a few months ago. it was a very different tone with which he spoke to the son's Harry Cole earlier this week where he kind of expressed much more remorse about it he also described the whole affair as an albatross around his neck as if somehow the big scandal and the real victim in all of this is Peter Mandelson rather than the victims of Jeffrey Epstein but yes he has now sought to kind of portray a much more penitent figure unfortunately all those quotes are still out there about just how aggressive he was being in rebutting these questions just a few months ago.

8:53Is there any evidence that Mandelson ever used his power and influence to benefit Epstein or vice versa? One of the most extraordinary details I think that has come out in the last few days is details of a deal that was done in 2010 when Mandelson was business secretary, when he reportedly allowed Epstein to help broker the sale of a UK government-owned business to a US bank. We don't exactly know what Mandelson's role in this was, but we do know that he met Epstein shortly before this deal was done. And then, you know, we have details from a set of documents stemming from Barclays Bank about exactly how Epstein then helped get that deal over the line.

9:37That is exactly the kind of trading and deal making, first of all, that Peter Mandelson is very good at, but second of all, that you shouldn't be doing if you are business secretary in the UK government.

9:50And so, Kieran, this isn't the first time Peter Manderson has made a disgraced exit from a government post. It is his third, in fact. How would you explain his career and influence in public life? I mean, Peter Manderson was born into Labour aristocracy. He's the grandson of Herbert Morrison. And he really was steeped in party politics almost from the moment he was born. He became a councillor in South London, in Lambeth in 1979. That's how far back his political career goes. And then joined Labour HQ in the 80s and became basically campaign director over the course of several elections. He was absolutely instrumental in the formation of new Labour.

10:33He was, as he says it in his book, the third man, along with Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in kind of forming that movement. And a lot of what they did in the kind of mid to late 1990s was coming from the strategy of Peter Mandelson. So that's kind of his background and that's where his influence comes from. What was extraordinary is he then worked for Blair for a long time, had to leave government twice. His then, by then, arch nemesis Gordon Brown becomes prime minister and absolutely incredibly brings Peter Mandelson back in 2008 in a move that stunned observers here in Westminster. And the reason for that is because he kind of felt that he lacked people who'd been around for a long time, lacked people who could strategize their way out of the various crises that Gordon Brown faced at the time.

11:21One thing that comes up in my conversations with sources over the last couple of days is Peter Mandelson is absolutely fantastic at speaking plainly, often quite amusingly, and not feeling shackled by the same kind of barriers that other people tend to feel in Westminster. You know, he's quite happy to be quite rude about people in private and sometimes in public. He's very clear in his thinking. He sets things out as he sees them and he can think several steps ahead. And that is very, very compelling. But it is that exact willingness to push barriers and maybe to do things that other people wouldn't.

11:56That's the kind of danger that he also brings with him into these jobs. and the reason that he's now either been sacked or had to resign from three separate government posts in three separate decades under two different prime ministers. Quite extraordinary, really. Kieran, presumably there's a lot of vetting for these posts and presumably Starmer knew much of Mandelson's history and he would have known a degree of what his relationship or his friendship with Epstein looked like. So why would he have appointed him in 2024 as this, you know, surprise political comeback? Why would he have made that decision anyway?

12:28Do you know, it's a question I've been asking sources about all of today. We all knew in Westminster that Mandelson and Epstein had been friends. And so I think it was kind of certainly with raised eyebrows that a lot of people in Westminster viewed his appointment as Washington ambassador. An accident in waiting was basically how a lot of people saw it. Before anybody takes up a position like that, they get quite carefully checked by a team called the Propriety and Ethics Team in number 10. Now that's him is supposed to liaise with the secret services to really go over someone's background with a fine-tooth comb and find out any skeletons in the closet that might come out once they've got the job.

13:08From what we understand, Peter Madison maybe didn't remember all of these emails that have come out in recent days, especially ones where he sympathized with Jeffrey Epstein following his 2009 conviction and suggested that it was wrong. There is a question about exactly why the vetting team weren't able to find it. Could they not get access to those servers? Could they not find a way to track those emails down? So exactly as you ask, why then was Keir Starmer so keen for him to get the job? Well, you know, on the face of it, he wanted a heavy hitter. He wanted somebody who had shown that they could maneuver in the corridors of power, not just in London, but also, of course, he held the position as EU commissioner in Brussels for a long time.

13:53this was somebody who knew everybody who is everybody fantastic at networking so he did have those strengths but I think really what's at the heart of his appointment as ambassador is his relationship with Morgan McSweeney who is Keir Starmer's chief of staff now Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson go back quite a long way and the two men are very close political allies but Mandelson gave Morgan McSweeney one of his first jobs at Labour HQ in the attack and rebuttal unit. And it was Morgan McSweeney, we're told, who was advocating for Peter Mandelson to come into government as the ambassador.

14:26And we're also told has been trying to save his job in the last 24 hours, unsuccessfully, as it now appears. And so, Kieran, I feel like we ask this every other day. We are supposed to be in phase two of Starmer's government, his big reset mode in which he promised us growth, delivery, delivery, delivery. and yet we seem to be lurching from one catastrophe for him to another. How bad does all this look for Starmer? The problem is with stories like this is they have massive cut through. If you ask people, you know, your average voter in your average town in Britain, what political stories they remember from the last couple of weeks, I doubt they will remember the internal number 10 reshuffle of just a week and a half ago.

15:11I doubt they will remember the fact that the government has increased the amount of free childcare that parents can access, which also happened around the same time. They almost certainly will remember the fact that Angela Rayner resigned from government after being found to have underpaid her taxes. And they definitely will have heard of Peter Mandelson and his relationship with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And the problem is when you're trying to reset your government, stories like this just knock everything else out of the water. Now, what does it tell us about Keir Starmer? First of all, what did the Prime Minister know about all these messages?

15:42What did he ask about all these messages before Peter Mandelson was appointed? And crucially for me, how much was this Keir Starmer's decision in the first place? And how much was he put in this position by his powerful chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney? And what does that tell us about his own role and his own clout and his own political judgment within Number 10? Well, quite. And so it begs the question that when it comes to replacing Mandelson and hiring a new ambassador to the US, Who will Starmer turn to now? I think the general feeling is that the PM is likely to turn to a career civil servant this time, rather than a formally elected politician.

16:17One name that keeps coming up in conversations that we're having is that of Richard Moore, who is the outgoing head of MI6. He's very well respected in the Foreign Office. He was previously the ambassador to Turkey, where he was regarded to have done a very good job. And he's said to be a very good communicator with good relations inside Number 10. It will have to be, of course, somebody who can appeal to the Trump administration and is able to cultivate relationships in the Republican Party. That might mean that the prime minister calls again for Karen Pierce, the former ambassador, who was regarded as being very good at talking to Donald Trump and his allies.

16:53In fact, she was regarded as something of a Trump whisperer. Now, if Starmer does decide to call back for Karen Pierce, she currently has a job in the Foreign Office back in London, it will probably be only on a temporary basis. but that might at least give the Prime Minister some breathing space to find something else that he wants to do it for the long term. Well, there's lots more to see, I'm sure. Kieran, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. That was Kieran Stacey, policy editor for The Guardian. My thanks to him. You can follow more from this story at theguardian.com where you can also find out more on the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in the US.

17:29That's a story that's also been covered by our sister podcast, Politics Weekly America. You can find that wherever you listen to this. This episode was presented by me, Nosheen Iqbal. It was produced by Ivor Manley. The executive producer was Humer Khalili. We'll be back again tomorrow.

17:49This is The Guardian.