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Last week, Peter Mandelson was giving his comeback interview to the Times, scheduled to be published later this month. He posed for cosy pics with the dog as he explained how hard done by he had been and how much the country could benefit from his largesse and expertise.
Late on Sunday night, that interview was crowbarred into a hastily rearranged one to take in Mandy’s sudden resignation from the Labour party after seemingly more revelations of Peter taking money in the recently released Epstein files. Mandelson appeared to take it in his stride.
He had done plenty of sleazy things in the past and survived. He would survive this one too. There was no big deal. Never apologise, never explain. Time for everyone to move on. If it hadn’t been for a few awkward emails coming to light, he would still be swanning around in Washington. Mandy has never shown contrition.
That curious two-part interview ran on Tuesday morning, by which time it was already out of date. What we all wanted was Mandelson 3.0. “I’ve done nothing wrong” had morphed into “OK, I was a wee bit silly but that’s just me” had morphed into “no comment”.
We were now into the realms of a potential criminal prosecution. Not just apparently helping himself to $75,000 of handouts – Mandy had no idea what the money was for, and who wouldn’t forget that amount of cash? – but, it seems, leaking market-sensitive government information to a convicted sex offender.
For most of Monday the government had looked as if it was playing catchup. But come Tuesday lunchtime it had gone into overdrive. Hell hath no fury and all that. After more than 30 years in his gilded cage on the inside of New Labour, Mandelson was to be thrown to the wolves.
A tough call for Keir Starmer as he tried to work out how he let Morgan McSweeney persuade him that Mandy would make a great ambassador to Washington. What had he been thinking? Less so for other Labour old-timers. Harriet Harman observed that he had been untrustworthy since the 1990s. Possibly since birth.
First off, Starmer announced he had handed over Cabinet Office documents to the Metropolitan police. Mandy was dead to Keir. Dead to Labour. If the Met found there were any parts of the documents they didn’t quite understand, Starmer had plenty of his team on hand to help out.
The condemnation was universal.
Even Robert Jenrick, Reform’s new signing, was calling for a police investigation. In Honest Bob’s newfound devotion to transparency, perhaps he could ask the cops to give the once over to the planning permission he granted to the Tory donor and erstwhile pornographer Richard “Dirty” Desmond while he was a junior minister in the Tory government. The way many of us remember it is that Honest Bob ignored the council’s recommendation and gave permission hours before Dirty Des would have been liable for a £50m tax bill. But I’m sure the police would be happy to jog our minds. It can’t really have been like that.
Next on Tuesday lunchtime, Starmer announced he would be looking at changing the law to remove Mandelson’s peerage. A no-brainer surely. Not that hard when you’ve got a massive majority and all the country is right behind you. Well, most of the country. The Tories seemed a bit squeamish about the whole thing. While they didn’t condone Mandy in any way – natch – they didn’t want to set a precedent for picking on individuals. Anyone might think they were worried we might all want to start coming after some of the more questionable peers created by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.
Meanwhile, Mandelson was at home in Wiltshire trying to piece things together. Just how could things have escalated quite so quickly? From stage-managing a return to public life to pariah status. Surely Tony Blair would not give up on him? Tony would reach out privately. He had always had a soft spot for wrong’uns.
Maybe it would help if he just explained things a little more clearly. He had never forwarded market-sensitive information to Epstein so he could make gains. That had never been the nature of their relationship. At heart, Jeffrey was a really trustworthy sex offender. If anything, Jeffrey was hoping to do the British government and the EU a favour. Checking their homework so he could point out if anything was likely to go wrong.
So much had been taken the wrong way. People who didn’t like him and had been thrilled to jump to unpleasant conclusions. It just wasn’t true that he was attracted to rich people. If anything, it was the other way round. They were attracted to him. Kept begging him to come on their private yachts and villas just to entertain them with funny stories about Gordon Brown. There were all those dinner parties where “poor little me” just couldn’t get away from being the sense of attention. He’d told Bill Gates to back off several times but Bill just wouldn’t take no for an answer.
And, yes, there had been some money coming his way. But it would be wrong to suggest it was for a quid pro quo. Far from it. This was chickenfeed to people like Epstein. Peter had come to think of it as more of a tip from a grateful billionaire. Just Mandy’s due reward for being the most handsome and most interesting person at every party he went to. He couldn’t help being the Special One.
Looking back, were there things he might have done differently? Perhaps. But not many. Let the haters hate.
