Sky News Presenter Trevor Phillips Torches 'Greedy And Duplicitous' Lord Mandelson

A Sky News presenter described his friend Peter Mandelson as “greedy and duplicitous” over his links to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Trevor Phillips, who said he was a longstanding friend of the disgraced peer, said “this is the end” of his long political career.

He made his comments in a monologue on his Sunday morning show hours before Lord Mandelson resigned his Labour membership to avoid causing the party “further embarrassment”.

That followed fresh revelations about Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein, including claims that he received $75,000 from him in three payments 20 years ago.

Phillips said he and Mandelson had first met on an anti-apartheid march 50 years ago.

“It’s no secret here in Westminster that over the next three decades, he and I worked together, first as student activists, then as television journalists and as elected politicians,” he said.

“He’s appeared more than once on this programme. We were, and are still, friends.

“His political career was long and illustrious, mine was brief and disastrous. It’s a friend’s privilege to tell you you are ill-suited to s role, even that you are a complete idiot.

“Twenty years ago Peter was honest enough to make it clear to me that my lack of tact and distaste for compromise meant that I’d be better suited to journalism than to party politics.

“I have not spoken personally to Lord Mandelson about the release this weekend of documents, messages, photographs and videos related to the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.”

Phillips added: “There’s no suggestion that Lord Mandelson has done anything unlawful. But I would claim the friend’s privilege to tell Peter that he has been, at best, naive and foolish; at worst, greedy and duplicitous.

“Whatever is true, as far as politics and public office is concerned, for Peter Mandelson, this is the end.

“The question now is whether the price of his misjudgment is to be paid only by the man himself, or whether those who trusted him and elevated him to the peerage and to one of the highest diplomatic posts available should also share in his ignominy.”

Mandelson was given his peerage by former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown in order to make him business secretary in his government.

Controversially, he was made Britain’s ambassador to Washington a year ago by Keir Starmer, but was sacked just months later over his links to Epstein.

The Tories have called for a “full and thorough independent investigation” into the Mandelson affair.