By their Friends

You know Keir Starmer is on a sticky wicket when Kemi Badenoch made him squirm, disassemble, and throw out whataboutery like confetti at Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions. The publication of Peter Mandelson's cringeworthy correspondence with the disgraced billionaire and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, shines an unwelcome light on a politician who revels in his dark reputation. It's a moment that highlights Starmer's double standards, considering how others have gone for far less.

In the letters, Mandelson calls Epstein his "best pal". On the occasion of the financier's birthday, he gushed "Once upon a time, an intelligent, sharp-witted man they call 'mysterious' parachuted into my life." Awkwardly, in 2010 Mandelson was able to leverage this chummy relationship after Epstein's conviction for child sex offenders to offload a UK state-owned bank on the cheap. And even worse, Mandelson apparently urged his "best pal" to fight for early release. When a leader says they have full confidence in an appointee, as Starmer has done, conventions suggests that the US ambassador's days are probably numbered.

Mandelson and scandal goes together like noughts with crosses. On the one hand, his personal conduct is less than above board. For instance, while he was busy scheming and plotting the removal of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader "every day", he failed to declare interests and dishonestly badged his consultancy firm as a something that does not dispense political advice to avoid public oversight. He provides friendly counsel to union-busting firms, and happily cultivated the Tories while they were in office and provided jobs for former ministers. During the New Labour years, he famously took out a personal loan from Geoffrey Robinson - against the rules - to buy a desirable Notting Hill pad. When he returned to government it wasn't long before he was forced to resign again, this time for sorting out a passport for one of the Hinduja brothers after they donated a million pounds to the Millennium Dome project. They were facing allegations of their own around weapons and corruption at the time. After leaving office and finding his feet as an EU trade commissioner, he was noted for his friendship with Diego Della Yalle, an Italian fashion magnate who, entirely coincidentally, benefited from Mandelson's decision to slap tariffs on Chinese shoe imports. He was known for his links with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an "entrepreneur" who made billions from plundering state owned assets in the chaos following the USSR's dissolution, and over whom Epstein-esque allegations currently hang.

Having read Mandelson's The Third Man, it's quite obvious that, like so many Labour figures before him, he used the party as a vehicle of social mobility. But perhaps none, save Tony Blair, have been as successful in getting wealthy off the relationships built between billionaires and businesses, and successive governments. Mandelson isn't unlucky in being a scandal magnet. Being a grasper, and filling his boots hanging around with financiers, tycoons, and self-styled entrepreneurs, means encountering moral vacuums is one of the occupational hazards. Anti-social psychopathy is a well known trait among billionaires, what with their senses of exalted importance and suicidal hubris. Mandelson, having not come from money, has used his skillset and contact book to insinuate himself into their lives and has become an indispensable retainer. So when Badenoch asked Starmer about whether he was aware of the extent of Mandelson's relationship to Epstein, the unspoken answer was "yes, of course". It was precisely because of his ability to schmooze and flatter plutocrats that the Prime Minister packed him off to Washington in the first place. Small wonder he still has full confidence in Mandelson being able to carry on with his role.

Image Credit