As it stands, Lord (for now) Mandelson is out on bail, and ex-prince Andrew is back home after his arrest five days ago. Everywhere you look there is a whiff of corruption
Both Mandelson and Andrew are under police investigation for alleged misconduct in public office, related to their links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Is there something rotten in the heart of Britain? Everywhere you look in the highest reaches of public life, there is a whiff of corruption.
And it all goes back to the 1980s, when Mandelson, then head of media for Labour, identified young, charismatic Tony Blair as the man to become Labour’s first Prime Minister since James Callaghan’s defeat by Thatcher in 1979. After Blair’s 1997 landslide victory Mandelson was the power behind the throne – a key adviser to the Prime Minister.
Four years later the then Duke of York was appointed International Trade and Investment Envoy following retirement from the Navy in 2001. He held the “unpaid” role for almost a decade, costing the taxpayer an estimated £4 million, including exotic expenses for “massage,” which in the Middle East covers a multitude of sins.
It was inevitable that the playboy prince and the politician who liked to live on the edge would together drift into the toxic orbit of Jeffrey Epstein, attracted by the allure of big money and high-powered political influence in the USA. Pictures show how much they enjoyed the jet-set life, confident that their titles and the tycoon’s wealth would shield them from prurient media intrusion.
With Labour out of power in 2010, Mandy disappeared from front-line politics, but not from political intrigue. His protege Morgan McSweeney founded Labour Together, ostensibly a “think tank” but actually a party-within-a-party, dedicated to ousting Jeremy Corbyn from the leadership and successfully replacing him with Sir Keir Starmer.
Together with “my friend and former aide” Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Mandelson also formed the blue-chip lobbying firm, Global Counsel, now bust over the Epstein scandal, to keep the Right-wing Blairite flame burning.
And behind the scenes, he insinuated himself into up-and-coming Sir Keir Starmer’s entourage, rightly judging that as leader after Jeremy Corbyn, he was the best bet to keep Labour as the Blair Continuity Party.
Once again the Svengali of a Prime Minister, he urged his claim for a return to high office. A grateful Starmer fell for his evil charms and appointed him Ambassador to the USA. Believing the word of this inveterate liar was the worst, and the potentially fatal, decision of his premiership.
But it wasn’t the only one. By allying himself so closely with the Blairite political plotters, he is now dragged into the scandal of Labour Together’s bid to smear journalists who exposed the outfit’s secretive funding. Starmer has been compelled to order an investigation by his standards adviser into whether Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons, former head of the “think-tank” broke the ministerial code by ordering the controversial probe.
And there will be many more questions about Mandelson’s links with Andrew after MPs yesterday demanded the release of all documents relating to the ex-prince’s 2001 envoy appointment. The paper and email trail just gets longer, and the first tranche of possibly-incriminating government papers is due to be published as early as next week.
The storm will break again before then. Starmer is certain to be monstered in Prime Minister’s Questions by Tory politicians determined to bring down a decent man who came too late to politics to spot a wrong ‘un where he saw one.
But in the end, the whole, sordid story of sleaze and scandal goes right back to the Blair Era, when brash, over-confident, too-clever-by-half young men, dazzled by the prospect of power (and perhaps wealth) took control of a Labour Party so exhausted by years in the wilderness that it fell for the fatal seduction of spin.
And despite the ousting of McSweeney, the disgracing of Labour Together and downfall of Milord Mandy, their influence is still there, in the spreading tentacles of the Tony Blair Foundation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and in the minds of the true believers. In 1996, Tony Blair declared :”My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson.” Never can a love affair have ended so disastrously.
