BY PAUL T HORGAN
Anything connected with Peter Mandelson seems to inevitably send shockwaves around Westminster and beyond. This is what Mandelson does. As Labour spin-doctor in the 1990s, his job was to disrupt the media landscape and reshape it to an approximation of his design. He did this by commoditising news. After Black Wednesday in 1992, simply everyone in the media seems to have wanted access to the Labour Party, which was cast, after the collapse of the central plank of John Major’s economic policy, as a government-in-waiting. Thus Mandelson was able to play favourites by providing scoops, and to house-train the media pack using the prospect of dissenting journalists being blocked from Labour events and exclusives.
While Mandelson (together with Alastair Campbell) was effective in communications, which not only involved getting Labour’s message across, but also suppressing elements of the ‘broad church’ from contradicting it, he was less so as a government minister. After the (by modern comparison) inflated scandals that were confected as ‘Tory sleaze’, New Labour had certain minimum standards of probity. It was therefore unfortunate that Mandelson repeatedly fell foul of measures developed in reaction to ‘Tory sleaze’ by being exposed as quite sleazy himself. Mandelson had to resign from Tony Blair’s government not one, but twice during Tony Blair’s first term of government due to scandals connected to a perceived lack of probity.
His return to Gordon Brown’s government was a panic measure. Mandelson and Brown were not the best of pals after Mandelson backed Blair for the Labour leadership after the unexpected death of John Smith in 1994. Brown’s stock was sinking fast in 2008/9, and ministers were in open rebellion. While Labour rules have been crafted in such a way as to make the party leader almost invulnerable to a challenge, the state of Brown’s government after the banking crash ran the risk of bucking this trend with David Miliband seen as a plausible contender. Mandelson saved the day. Brown limped along to be toppled in the only way possible, by a defeat at a General Election.
The rest of Mandelson’s career after 2010 need not concern us here. However amidst all the new revelations that Mandelson was given the position of our ambassador to the USA, there is an unanswered question. Instead all the current hoo-hah, which has at the time of writing claimed the job of the Sir Humphrey who worked at the Foreign Office, Olly Robbins, is about the process. It is about asking how such a sleazy rogue such as Mandelson could be appointed to represent this country to the USA.
That is not the most important question. The process is not as important as the outcome.
The outcome was that Peter Mandelson was given access to the Oval Office and to President Trump.
It was Palmerston who identified the driver behind national policy thus:
“Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
So, the question I pose, which I believe no-one else is posing (and if they are, good luck at getting an answer), is:
In whose interests was it that Peter Mandelson was given this official access to Donald Trump?
Was it in the British national interest?
Sir Keir’s (then-) interest?
The Civil Service’s interest?
Some other interest? If so, which and whose?
The one thing everyone knows that Mandelson and Trump have in common is an association with the paedophile rapist Jeffrey Epstein. Of course, Epstein, whose mysterious fortune allowed him to socialise amongst the rich and famous, associated with numerous people of note. So this may be coincidence and nothing more.
What we know now about Mandelson, something that neither MI5 or MI6 seemingly did not determine, was that Mandelson was actually an agent of Epstein’s, willingly leaking confidential information to him at apparently every opportunity. Mandelson’s loyalty, while a British government minister, was not to this country and his priority seems to have been to serve this pervert millionaire. So when he was ambassador, it is open to debate whether or not he was serving British national interests. Epstein may not have been the only shady individual that this shady individual happily and willingly served.
Perhaps Mandelson suggested that it was in British national interests that he was the man to represent our country to Trump and he was able to provide some highly specific reasons for this. Certainly the media and commentariat were groomed (a word that seems appropriate in this context) to find Mandelson an acceptable choice. After all, the scandals that blighted his ministerial career took place almost a quarter of a century before he was considered for the ambassador position, and Mandelson had apparently acquitted himself as an EU trade commissioner and minister in Brown’s government, although we now know better.
But, given that Mandelson failed the necessary vetting for such a sensitive post, but was still put forward, the question should not be about this botched process, but in whose interests was the process bypassed. A senior civil servant has had to fall on his sword, but he may have been motivated by untraceable verbal instruction that Mandelson positively had to be the man to grace the Oval office.
So far the media is focusing on the what. They need to focus on the why, because when they do, they will find the whom.
Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.