The Mandelson files: Labour Svengali’s parting gift to Starmer

High drama continues in Westminster, as Keir Starmer ordered the release of files relating to his government’s appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

Mandelson was sacked from his US posting last September after emails emerged showing him continuing his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein as the American faced charges of soliciting a minor. This week, newly released Epstein files revealed that, when Mandelson was business secretary in 2008, he leaked Downing Street emails containing market-sensitive information to Epstein. The Metropolitan Police has formally launched a criminal investigation.

These latest revelations have left many Labour figures “seething with disappointment and boiling with betrayal”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason. The “gravity of what is alleged” could build “to perhaps one of the biggest” political scandals “for a generation”, and calls into question Starmer’s judgement in sending Mandelson to Washington a year ago.

What is in the files?

Starmer has said he will release emails, documents and messages relating to Mandelson’s appointment – as long as they do not prejudice national security or damage diplomatic relations. The decision pre-empts the Conservatives’ plan to use a House of Commons debate today to try to force the publication of the records, including details of what Mandelson told the prime minister and his powerful chief of staff Morgan McSweeney about the nature of his relationship with Epstein.

“Attention will turn swiftly” now to that proviso for exempting documents and “which ones aren’t in scope”, said Politico. There will no doubt be “debate about whether WhatsApp messages sent on private phones will be included”. And it’s not yet clear “who is in charge of the process” and “which senior officials” have oversight.

The government has signalled its “intention is to be transparent”, while avoiding a situation where every single piece of communication is published, said The Guardian. The documents identified for release will also need to be assessed to check if they first need to be seen by the police. This process will take time and, as has been seen with the release of the Epstein files in the US, will inevitably lead to further political wrangling and accusations of a cover-up. Expect this story to run and run.

What does it mean for Starmer?

With most political scandals, “there is an agreed full stop, a time for the circus to move on” but, for Downing Street, Mandelson “risks being a headache that simply will not end”, said The Guardian’s senior political correspondent Peter Walker. How on earth did “the team around Starmer” think it was such “a good idea to appoint a tarnished, if well connected, figure to be the ambassador to Donald Trump’s court”?

Some Labour MPs are focusing their anger on McSweeney, “a former protégé of Mandelson”, who is believed to have pushed for his appointment as ambassador. But, as we have seen in previous administrations, “changing the team around the leader will buy you only a small amount of time if” most of your backbenchers, “and the electorate more widely”, think that “the problem is not the team but the person they advise”.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, seen by many as a potential challenger for Starmer’s leadership position, today defended the prime minister’s decision to appoint Mandelson, and rejected the idea that it could cost the PM his job. That would “let Mandelson off the hook”, Streeting told LBC. “This is his misjudgment, his misconduct, his irresponsibility.”

One factor that could play in Starmer’s favour, said Politico, is that he has never got involved with the Labour dinner circuit, like Streeting or McSweeney, and he has never been as close to Mandelson as McSweeney. “You could suggest that the PM has less to lose than others in government if cosy Labour texts to Mandelson end up in the public domain.”