James Butler · Need a lord on the board ?: Mandelson and the Lobbyists

lrb.co.uk · Feb 23, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Consequences​ are rare in British politics. A well-handled resignation can be temporary. If you’re resourceful enough, exit from Westminster can be parlayed into directorships and consultancies, or the media circuit might beckon. Such soft landings aren’t available to Peter Mandelson, whose long-deserved fall is finally absolute. Mandelson was fired as ambassador to the United States in September, after the release of an initial tranche of files relating to the sex criminal and financier Jeffrey Epstein. These files demonstrated that the friendship between the two was deeper and more enduring than Mandelson had claimed: he is found encouraging Epstein to ‘fight for early release’ from his eighteen-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor. A second tranche of more than three million files, released on 30 January, revealed a series of emails from Mandelson seeking self-advancement through Epstein’s devices, grubbing for cash to pay for his partner to take a course in osteopathy, and passing confidential government material to Epstein and his banker associates. This second wave of documents, which made clear that his description of the relationship had been deceitful, prompted Mandelson’s exit from the House of Lords and the Privy Council. It may also have initiated the Starmer government’s death spiral.The Epstein files reveal the existence of a network of wealthy and powerful men who speak openly and frankly about power and its exercise. Epstein’s proclivity for underage girls does not faze his correspondents. The scale of the release was a piece of technical good fortune: the conversations were conducted by means of unencrypted email. That much has changed. Similar networks today communicate largely through encrypted, disappearing messages, so exposure is much less likely – unless like Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defence, you add a journalist to the group chat.Mandelson claims he was ‘kept separate’ from Epstein’s sex crimes because he is gay. He initially said the only people he encountered at Epstein’s properties were ‘middle-aged housekeepers’. (A humiliating photo from the second release shows Mandelson in white Y-fronts and a T-shirt talking to a young woman in a bathrobe.) It’s just about possible that Mandelson didn’t notice the abuse – the girls simply didn’t matter to him – but like most of Epstein’s circle he knew that squalid innuendo and sexual jokes were the currency of friendship. In an email about the 2010 general election Mandelson says he’s ‘praying for a hung parliament. Alternatively, a well hung young man.’ His messages mostly read like those of a social climber trying to fit in and maintain his contact, but there are hints of something darker. In October 2009, Epstein asks whether Mandelson has ‘made any decisions’ about a ‘cuban-american’, to which he replies ‘desp for CuAm’, but Gordon Brown’s precarious mental state keeps him in London. Earlier that year he implores Epstein not to go away: ‘You are the only person who knows everything about me.’Money, rather than sex, seems to have been the chief motive for Mandelson. There are direct gifts from Epstein: $75,000 in 2003-4, and an unclear amount (probably in the tens of thousands) to pay for the osteopathy course in 2009-10. (Mandelson says he has ‘no recollection’ of receiving the first amount, and that he believed the second was a bursary. Epstein reminded Mandelson at the time to call it a loan to avoid tax.) But it was the lucrative post-ministerial gigs that really fired his imagination. His question – ‘need a lord on the board?’ – is one that many peers ask. Eleven days after Labour lost the 2010 election, Mandelson sought Epstein’s advice on landing a gig at the mining conglomerate Glencore. He wondered about a senior role at BP, then in crisis as Deepwater Horizon gushed hundreds of millions of litres of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. He asked whether his political experience and connections meant he could ‘come in fireman role as highly paid adviser etc?’ They considered leveraging his offer of a million-pound retainer at Deutsche Bank against Glencore. Being unable to monetise his connections and experience was a long-term frustration for ‘Petey’. During the European sovereign debt crisis in 2012, his primary concern was not the collapse of social democratic rule, the political problems of a plurinational currency union, or the vast social misery imposed by austerity. ‘Europe is in meltdown, bringing down the global economy, I am ex EU minister and I cannot make any money talking about it?’Avarice and moral flexibility are not unusual qualities in former politicians. But solicitousness for the wealthy was also a characteristic of Mandelson’s time in office. Immediately after the financial crisis, while first secretary of state under Gordon Brown, Mandelson forwarded confidential advice given to the prime minister to Epstein (‘what salable assets?’ Epstein asked). He conspired with Epstein, as well as J.P. Morgan’s chief executive, Jes Staley, to ‘mildly threaten’ the chancellor, Alistair Darling, over a proposed tax on bankers’ bonuses. He acted as a pipeline for private and potentially market-altering information: the following year he passed on information about proposed restrictions on US banks. These actions amounted to conscious betrayals of his country in order to protect and impress the powerful. Whether or not Mandelson is successfully prosecuted for misconduct in public office, that betrayal will remain his political epitaph.In the introduction to his autohagiographic memoir from 2011, The Third Man, Mandelson defends his choice of friends. He is, he says, ‘a restless soul’,drawn to individualists, to people whose achievements and strong personalities make them interesting company. I am more interested in what people do and think than their ideologies, and I judge them by their character, by their personal qualities, rather than by how they are perceived. There is no escaping the fact that people who are successful in politics, business, journalism, fashion or the arts give off energy, have thought-provoking insights and attract dynamic company around them.This passage summarises the Mandelsonian ethos. The people who matter are successful, and their success is proof of their qualities. It is essential to be inside the charmed circle. The memoir shows that for Mandelson the cast of people who matter is very narrow, he is always the betrayed rather than the betrayer, his press critics are always acting in bad faith, and he is never adequately rewarded or appreciated. Needless to say, Epstein makes no appearance. Other diarists of the period are less flattering. In May 1996 Alastair Campbell mentions Mandelson’s ‘ridiculous social life’; at his 43rd birthday party later that year, hosted by the ‘social-climbing Tory’ Carla Powell, Campbell is put in mind of ‘Peter’s absent friends, the ones he used to have before he entered a new magic circle’. In 2008 Chris Mullin was forthright on the danger of Mandelson’s return to government: ‘He has a tendency to go gaga in the presence of rich men.’There is a way of reading the Mandelson story as a tragedy. The wheedling and ingratiating tone of the emails reveals a man who is never certain that he really is on the inside. His own success brought him into contact with the truly powerful and wealthy, but he had no real money of his own; his tendency to deceit and double-dealing cut short his tenure in every big political office he held, with the result that he left no significant legacy. His desire to be useful to Epstein – his reassurance that he was ‘on the case’ – was a determination to stay on the right side of power. No single piece of information he passed on was of the highest grade, but betrayal is usually a matter of small increments. Epstein was a socially adept manipulator: his complaint that their relationship had been ‘a one way street … jeffrey can i have, jeffrey can you give jeffrey can you organise’ must have terrified Mandelson.In October 2002, Campbell observed that Mandelson was a ‘wasting talent’ (he had been forced to resign from the government for the second time in 2001), and wondered if he could be found another job. This didn’t happen, but in 2004 he went to Brussels as EU trade commissioner. The Mandelson affair is certainly a case of talent wasted. His initial desire (in his own account) to widen the social and electoral base of the Labour Party beyond ‘sectional interests’ turned into a willing infatuation with the very highest reaches of oligarchy. The Third Man mentions his early determination to rid politics of the distorting effects of donor money. It is not an ambition the later Mandelson would recognise. Political obituarists remark on his unparalleled insight, but the recent messages released by Wes Streeting don’t show much evidence of it. Banality (the government should have an economic policy) is combined with boilerplate: the solution to Israel’s annihilation of Gaza is to make the Palestinian Authority less corrupt. The impression is of a man whose mental map has refused all updates since the mid-1990s.Most of the schemes he cooked up with Epstein failed: Glencore never called back. Mandelson’s lobbying firm, Global Counsel, founded in November 2010 with his former staffer Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, proved the best vehicle for his ambitions. Global Counsel acts as a concierge service for large corporations, arranging meetings with politicians and advising on weakening or circumnavigating regulations. It does not disclose its client list, though it has acted for a multitude of corporate villains, including Shell, Palantir, TikTok and privatised water companies (these are just the clients that surfaced through the UK’s laughably weak regulatory regime for lobbyists). Its reported revenue last year was £21.6 million, but the new revelations prompted a client exodus and the firm called in administrators on 19 February. Only famili