Picture shows Lord Peter Mandleson in House of Lords regalia.
Lord Mandleson the scandal magnet has resigned with immediate effect from the House of Lords. Mandleson can no longer play any direct part in British Parliamentary politics via the Upper House. The revelations from the United States regarding his association with financier and sex offender Jeffery Epstein have proven too toxic even for the British political Establishment to tolerate or indulge Mandleson any longer.
What Mandleson is alleged to have done by taking money of Epstein and apparently supplying sensitive internal UK government information to Epstein has created one of the biggest political scandals in recent British political history. When Britain was dealing with the aftermath of the Great Financial Crash of 2008 Mandleson was allegedly leaking information from inside the UK government headed by Gordon Brown to Epstein. These leaks may have hurt the United Kingdom and could have either enriched Epstein and his friends or at the very least ensured that they didn’t lose money.
The comments online in various places regarding Mandleson’s alleged actions are increasingly being seen as a form of treason to the British nation. At a time when Britain was struggling to deal with the enormity of the 2008 financial crash, Mandleson was feeding information about these struggles to Epstein.
However this scandal is not one that is tainting Mandleson alone. Gordon Brown, who has come out fighting against Mandleson recently following the information leak revelations, is going to face questions as to why he allowed Mandleson back into the SW1 fold when Mandleson’s reputation was already pretty murky. The current Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is also going to be dragged into this scandal because of allegations that Mandleson’s appointment as Ambassador to the United States was approved by both the PM and by the Foreign Secretary at the time David Lammy. Rumours continue to circulate that Mandleson was given the Ambassador job in order to sell the Chagos Islands deal to an American administration that might have been reluctant to see the Chagos Islands move from Western control to the control of nations allied with the Chinese.
The bad judgement call of Mandleson choosing to continue to associate with Epstein even following Epstein’s conviction for sexual crimes go far beyond Mandleson’s individual bad choice of associations. Instead it is starting to draw in a lot of political figures who tolerated and promoted Mandleson within the Labour Party and within Government and attention is now being turned on them including people like Morgan McSweeney the Downing Street chief of staff and a man described as a protege of Mandleson.
The gravity of the situation regarding Mandleson is now so great that Starmer has to a large extent been forced by circumstances to hold an inquiry into Mandleson’s actions although there is a get out clause in this inquiry as it will not have access to information that might be considered as prejudicial to national security. As usual the Government will probably attempt some sort of whitewash, as Labour did with the Iraq War inquiry, but whether they will be successful is another matter as this story is now out in the wild now in both the USA and the UK. We should remember that in a contest between the British government and the freedoms offered by the US First Amendment then the First Amendment is likely to win. There’s going to be a drip drip drip of information coming out of the USA that Starmer might try to plug but may well fail to do so.
This scandal is not just one involving Mandleson but one involving the Labour Party and several former and current Labour governments and those in high positions within them. Even if Starmer’s government do try to draw a line under this issue by pushing for Mandleson’s Peerage to be removed (something that can be done under current legislation but it is unusual as Peers are created by the Monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister) the stench of the Mandleson scandal is going to hang around this government like dog poo on a shoe.
Unlike many political scandals of the past, such as the Westland Affair of the mid-1980’s, which was primarily an internal political spat that didn’t impinge on the public much, the Mandleson affair has cut through to the general public. At first the public from what I can gather from comments on social media were primarily interested in Mandleson’s lack of moral compass when it came to who he chose as friends but now the interest seems to be in the leaks that Mandleson is alleged to have made to Epstein. I can recall the Westland Affair and concern about it was mostly confined to political anoraks and within the political commentariat. That’s not the case with the Mandleson scandal as Mandleson’s actions have cut through to the general public.
The Mandleson Affair is likely to have much more of an immediate effect on British politics than the Westland Affair did. Westland might have paved the way for the leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher in the early 90’s but the Mandleson Affair might have more immediate effects. It’s quite possible that McSweeney might be removed from his post if it turns out he’s had involvement with Mandleson and the fallout from this scandal might be the nail in the coffin when it comes to the Gorton and Denton by-election which is coming up. If the scandal envelopes both Starmer and Lammy with regards to his approval as Ambassador to the USA or other dubious work with Mandleson then it might hasten the removal of Starmer as Labour leader and his replacement with either Angela Rayner or Wes Streeting and this leadership change could happen very swiftly far more quickly than Westland helped Thatcher to fall.
Mandleson might have left the House of Lords but the smell Mandleson is leaving behind in British politics is not going away any time soon. This is a scandal that has its tentacles deep into the British political Establishment and it could bring down more politicians than just Mandleson himself.
Link
The Westland Affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_affair