What possessed Lord Mandelson, the so-called high priest of the black arts of political spin, to give that toe-curling, ill-judged and tone-deaf interview to the BBC‘s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday?
Did he really think it would wipe the slate clean over his long friendship with the world’s most famous paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship that cost him his beloved job as ambassador to the US?
Arrogant and clumsy in equal measure, he first flatly refused to apologise to Epstein’s victims, some of whom were as young as 14.
‘If I had known if I was in any way complicit or culpable, of course I would apologise for it,’ he declared. ‘But I was not culpable, I was not knowledgeable of what he was doing.’
This was straight from the playbook of the former Prince Andrew – the boorish royal also refused to apologise in his now infamous BBC interview with Emily Maitlis which abruptly ended his career in public life.
But there was worse to come from Mandelson, 72, a man who has the dubious record of being sacked three times, twice from the Cabinet and once as ambassador, by two Labour prime ministers.
He pleaded total ignorance of Epstein’s notorious proclivities, claiming he knew nothing of them because he is gay.
‘I think the issue is that because I was a gay man, in his [Epstein’s] circle I was kept separate from what he was doing in the sexual side of his life,’ claimed the former minister, who has been in a relationship with his civil partner Reinaldo da Silva since 1998.
A photo shows Peter Mandelson with the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein
Mandelson called Epstein his ‘best pal’, and sent him the above birthday message
I am gay myself. But this nonsense made my skin crawl and my blood boil.
It’s one of the most pathetic excuses from a political heavyweight I have heard since I first started reporting on Westminster in 1988, back when Mandelson was forging his reputation as a skilled and ruthless media operator. He’s clearly lost his touch.
The truth is that his fawning relationship with Epstein continued for years after the American’s conviction for procuring a child for prostitution in 2008.
The victim in that 2008 case was 16 years old when the offences began. However, the initial police investigation was prompted by the parents of a 14-year-old girl who claimed in 2005 that the billionaire had molested her.
By 2008, Mandelson was the powerful EU Trade Commissioner with a huge public profile in Britain and Brussels. Yet rather than distance himself from Epstein after the financier had been charged, he urged him to ‘fight for early release’.
In a cache of leaked emails from the Epstein Files, he went on to declare he was his ‘best pal’, adding: ‘Your friends stay with you and love you. I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.
‘I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. You have to be incredibly resilient.’
He even offered advice on how to fight the prosecutors, telling Epstein, whose nickname for Mandelson was ‘Petie’: ‘You need strategy, strategy, strategy. Remember The Art Of War.’
Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail but was released on probation in 2009 after serving 13 months.
Join the debate
What’s YOUR take on Mandelson’s claim?
Mandelson in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump as British ambassador last year
A shameless Mandelson stayed in one of Epstein’s homes while he was behind bars even though ‘Petie’ was by now the Business Secretary, with a peerage, in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet.
Why was Mandelson so convinced of his friend’s innocence. Did he talk to the prosecutors? Epstein’s defence lawyers? Read the court transcripts? Try to contact Epstein’s school age victims?
Or did he refuse to believe that Epstein was guilty because he was so in thrall to his unbelievable wealth?
Perhaps the answers lie in the gushing messages he wrote to his billionaire friend.
They were included in a 50th birthday book of tributes to Epstein compiled for him in 2003 by Ghislaine Maxwell. She is now, of course, serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse underage girls.
In one message, Mandelson, whose fatal attraction has always been other people’s riches, waxes creepily about the ‘glorious homes [Epstein] likes to share with his friends (yum yum)’.
Another message, accompanied by a photo of an airborne yellow parachute, says: ‘Once upon a time, an intelligent, sharp-witted man they call ‘mysterious’ parachuted into my life.
‘You would spend many hours just waiting for him to turn up. And often, no sooner were you getting used to having him around, you would suddenly be alone… again.’
The ‘Prince of Darkness’ with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in Washington DC last year
Mandelson is interviewed on the BBC by Laura Kuenssberg
I find it impossible to believe that Peter Mandelson did not know what was going on, certainly after Epstein was convicted. Whether he is gay or not is irrelevant.
Can we really accept the claim that an intelligent and sensitive man like him blithely ignored the possibility of what the known paedophile might be up to?
Apparently so, for he maintained his friendship with Epstein. In 2010, when Mandelson was still Business Secretary, and after the financier’s release from jail, he allowed Epstein to help broker a deal for JP Morgan to buy part of a commodities firm from the UK government-owned RBS bank.
It was nine years later that Epstein killed himself in jail in 2019 while awaiting further charges of trafficking young girls.
Over the years I’ve had many run-ins with Mandelson.
He made dark threats about my family when I revealed the name of his partner Reinaldo several days after he had been outed as gay on the BBC by the former Tory MP Matthew Parris.
A little over two years ago I had just arrived at a swish champagne reception for Mandelson’s international lobbying firm Global Counsel at the Labour Party conference.
It was in the aptly named Liverpool restaurant The Alchemist. I then heard a familiar voice hissing the question: ‘What’s he doing here? Get him out.’
The noble Lord Mandelson had no intention of allowing me to observe him schmoozing senior Labour politicians who were rubbing shoulders with the wealthy clients of his lobbying firm who had helped him acquire his millionaire lifestyle.
There are many more unpleasant episodes I could recount which underline Mandelson’s reputation as a bullying control freak who always liked to be in charge.
In February, shortly before he took up the ambassador’s post, he was questioned by a reporter from the Financial Times about his relationship with Epstein.
His reply was classic Mandelson. ‘I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all f*** off. OK?’
Yet it was the Epstein relationship that caused his humiliating public dismissal from the ambassador job seven months later.
In my view, no one should believe that Mandelson, once seen as one of the most consummate political operators, failed to ask serious questions of Epstein or his associates during a friendship that spanned two decades. Or that he failed to notice anything because because he is ‘gay’.
No one doubts Mandelson’s quick wit and perceptive intelligence but his attempt to present himself as the innocent shows yet again he has no judgment.
The BBC interview was an unmitigated disaster, and damagingly condemned by Labour ministers. One associate of Mandelson told me: ‘It was intended as the start of the long road to yet another comeback.
‘But if there was ever a remote chance of his coming back for a fourth time, this graceless interview has put paid to that.’
