The Erstwhile Ambassador, the Fallen Prince, and the U.S. Epstein Morass
The stunning arrest of the former British ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson will produce a blast radius in the UK that may be even bigger than Jeffrey Epstein’s. If you are drowned by the volume of the Epstein emails, just wait for the leaking of all the Mandy memorabilia, which will undoubtedly include revelations and scuttlebutt from 30 years at the beating heart of British politics. There is no one Mandelson hasn’t advised, conspired with, gossiped with, and, god help us, texted with in his high-flying life as a political homme du monde as much at home on oligarchs’ boats as at dinner parties at Chequers and 3100 Massachusetts Avenue.
The strategic architect of Tony Blair’s new Labour was dubbed the Prince of Darkness for his sinuous skills as a media spinmaster. He’s been up and he’s been down, but up to now, he’s never been out, and may not be yet as the charge of misconduct in public office is notoriously knotty to prove. Before he was sacked as ambassador last September, Lord Mandelson was forced to resign twice from cabinet positions: for failing to disclose an improper loan in 1998, and again, three years later, for helping a wealthy Indian donor to the Millennium Dome get a British passport. He kicked up more dust in 2005 when, as EU trade minister (admittedly, the world’s most boring job), he flew from Davos to Siberia with his friend Nat Rothschild to join the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska for a banya sauna session. Inappropriate was Peter’s middle name. But he always surfed back because the depth of his strategic know-how was unrivaled. It kept him relevant among power elites who valued his acerbic expertise. Even PM Gordon Brown, who hated him, gave him the post of business secretary. Brown is now incandescent at how casually Mandelson, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, was allegedly leaking real-time, market-moving information from their private meetings to Epstein.
It was considered a risky move in late 2024 for the usually excruciatingly cautious current Labour PM Keir Starmer to hand Mandelson the prized diplomatic post of representing the UK as His Majesty’s ambassador to the US. It’s amazing now to think that Mandelson, then running a lucrative advisory agency, was in such cocksure form that he was simultaneously lobbying to be Chancellor of Oxford (he lost out to former Tory leader William Hague), and even had the nerve to think he could serve as both ambassador and chancellor. The outgoing US ambassador Dame Karen Pierce argued strenuously against choosing Mandelson to succeed her, but there was logic to the appointment that few want to recognize now. As a longtime appreciator of Peter’s gifts, I thought it was somewhat brilliant myself. It was precisely because of Mandelson’s iffy ethics and affection for money—he famously said he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”—as much as his sophisticated understanding of global trade, that the Prince of Darkness was seen as such an excellent fit for Trump-era Washington. And indeed he was. In his brief seven months in the post, he navigated the minefield of Trump tariff threats, closed a long-sought UK/US foreign trade agreement, and unexpectedly struck up a useful rapport with JD Vance. Mandelson was an instant star host at that most glamorous of embassies, with his urbane younger Brazilian husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, and his endearing “ambassadog,” the border collie Jock. I had tea with Mandelson in London after he was ejected as ambassador, and found him wounded but resilient, focused—I thought unrealistically—on finding a foreign benefactor who needed steerage through the corridors of power. But when the second Epstein tranche revealed Mandelson’s apparent breaches of official confidence, his loyal circle was properly gobsmacked. Bad judgment to maintain his friendship with Epstein, yes. But the whiff of semi-treasonous information sharing? Whoa! And for what? To prove his worth to the most worthless man on the planet?
Picture Perfect
Mandelson’s arrest was the second news meteor to hit British national life in a row, after last week’s historic apprehension of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The iconic news shot of Andrew slumped in the back of the Range Rover, with an expression of traumatized panic after a day in a police cell, gave the British public something that Americans are thirsty to see: a legal reckoning. After years of palace dithering and the murky 2022 payoff of Virginia Giuffre authorized by his protective mother, King Charles’s statement that “the law must take its course” made him look morally impeccable and decisive. It felt good, didn’t it, to see Andrew’s thick hide of royal prerogative finally being ripped away, his veil of ultimate privilege pierced at last. And it was gratifying that the photographer who caught the shot that was splashed on every front page in the world was the unpretentious Reuters journeyman Phil Noble, who, on a tip from a colleague, had driven six hours to Norfolk and raced to the unexpected location of Aylsham police station, where he caught the just-exiting car of Andrew’s security detail, pointed his camera at the back seat, and got the news moment of the year. In case there is anyone deluded enough to feel sympathy for Andrew, I submit the anecdote Paul Page, Andrew’s onetime royal protection officer, told in a 2022 documentary. When a random party girl not listed on the official log showed up at the palace to visit Andrew and was asked to wait for security clearance, the portly prince apparently blasted one of the guards on the phone as a “fat, lardy-assed c–t,” for not letting her through. Whether or not Queen Elizabeth’s epically dreadful second son ends up in the clink, Phil Noble’s picture was a thrilling karmic win for the people versus Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Double Jeopardy
The two stunning arrests in the UK have cut through the endless inconclusiveness of the DOJ morass on the US side of the Atlantic. It’d be pretty incredible if, after all the sleaze oozing out from the Epstein files, the only judicial scalps are a hapless royal buffoon and a woefully heedless British ambassador. Over here, fourteen elite leaders, from Wall Street titans to celebrity scholars and white-shoe lawyers, have been shamed and cast into professional purgatory, but no one yet has been arrested, except the pixie-haired society pimp with the cut-glass British accent awaiting Trump’s pardon in the Bryan federal prison camp in Texas.
Perhaps the contents of the just-discovered six storage units Epstein owned across the US will give us something more tangible than a sinkhole of reputations. Thanks to enterprising Telegraph reporters who noted payments to the locker companies on Epstein’s credit card bills in the files, we can now expect the rotting effluvia from all the stashed hard drives, computers, and photographs, hidden by Epstein’s private detectives from the FBI raids on his multiple mansions. Remember when he told the 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre, “I own the Palm Beach police department”? It was easy for him to be tipped off that a law enforcement sweep was coming. Perhaps the only time Epstein told the truth was in his answer to Steve Bannon’s startling question, “Do you think you’re the devil himself?” With his customary Cupid bow smirk, Epstein replied, “No, but I do have a good mirror.”
Maybe Epstein was the mirror himself. But his reflection gave an x-ray of other people’s moral weakness. In a society built on credit and credibility, a single evil actor who grasps the fallibility of his fellows can entangle all.
Tina, wordsmith par excellence! Terrific account of these startling events!!
Amazing times, what a sordid story , I never had time for any of the people above, but to see all of this is truly staggering…. Fantastic coverage. Love to you Tina 🤍Daphne