It has been difficult to find the words to write about the revelations about Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein that have emerged over the past week.
My thoughts have jumped from revulsion about the revelations themselves, to trying to process what they will mean to those who have experienced abuse by Epstein and other perpetrators. Then they have reawakened memories of my own run-ins with Mandelson going back over 30 years. Put together, it has got me thinking again about what it all says about the culture of self-justified impunity that power brings with it.
But I have finally tried to write down my thoughts in some sort of order. Here they are. They start with a few reflections about what Epstein did and some of the things it should teach each us – both in relation to his actions and more widely about misogyny and power. The second section is about my own history with Peter Mandelson. The third part tries to draw some conclusions about the dangers of monopoly power in politics and its relevance to today.
First about the impact of Epstein’s vile actions.
Many people have already said that we should not allow headlines about the political fallout of the Epstein–Mandelson scandal to dilute the priority anybody gives to the women and girls who were put through hell by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. They are right. It is not only that we must not allow the history of what they went through to be obscured. It is also about standing with the survivors in their ongoing quest for accountability.
In one of his few public statements since his dismissal as Ambassador to the USA, even Peter Mandelson expressed his regret at the way the US criminal justice system had failed Epstein’s victims. If that was not yet another lie on his part, he must act on his words and agree to testify to the Committee of Inquiry established by Congress in the USA. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor must do the same. Buckingham Palace should make it clear that the Royal Family believes it is his responsibility to do so, in addition to cooperating with any police investigations here in the UK.
In a powerful piece in The Guardian last week, columnist Marina Hyde provided a perspective that all of us – particularly men – should keep in mind.
Let’s also remember that the impact of revelations about Epstein’s crimes will be being felt today by a lot more women and girls than those who were abused by him and the other men directly involved.
Everyone who has experienced or who still endures abuse by men whose power protects them will also feel the impact personally and viscerally. It is not only the US criminal justice system that has failed the survivors of Epstein’s crimes. Here in the UK we all need to ask ourselves why it is that many women see little point in bringing abuse that they are going through to the attention of the Police, or they stay silent because they don’t think they will be believed by work colleagues, friends or family. Indeed, many of them will know that it is precisely work colleagues, friends or family members who are themselves the perpetrators of the abuse they are suffering. And we need to ask ourselves why there is so little ongoing support available for survivors of abuse. The trauma lives with them long after the abuse itself is over. But where can survivors turn for support – especially if they are not in a position to pay for it?
Doing right by Epstein’s victims also means addressing these things here in the UK – in the way the criminal justice system operates, in tackling the chronic shortage of affordable trauma-informed support and in how far we are each prepared to open our eyes to what may be going on around us at work, at home or in the personal lives of people we love.
So what about Mandelson and me?
Peter Mandelson and I have history. We were both elected to Parliament in 1992, and we had both lived through Labour’s long years in opposition during the 1980s. He was always a much more influential figure in Labour than I was. I was simply an activist in the West Midlands who had unsuccessfully stood for parliament in a safe Conservative seat in the 1987 general election. We came from different wings of the Party but we had both recognised the need for Labour to make big changes to confront the dominance that Thatcherism had exerted over politics in the UK during the 1980s and win the kind of credibility we needed in the eyes of the electorate if we were going to stand a chance of again forming a government.
I disagreed with some of the policy changes that Mandelson and others urged on the Party during those years but differences over individual policies were not what that concerned me most about his approach. It was much more that, for Mandelson, there appeared to be no “bottom lines”; no points of principle that were fundamental to what made us Labour. The only thing that seemed to matter was the pursuit of power.
By 1995, Tony Blair had succeeded John Smith as Labour leader and my concerns deepened. The New Labour brand that had been crafted was doubtless bringing a breath of fresh air to politics in contrast to the dying days of John Major’s premiership. That was not the problem. The thing that worried me was the encouragement of an atmosphere in the Party that seemed to suggest that the election of Tony Blair as Leader had been a kind of “year zero” for Labour. It was a political environment that celebrated an organisational culture in which Labour’s political direction was to be entirely controlled from centre. If you were outside the inner circle surrounding the leadership, your job was to stay “on message”.
After all the damaging internal divisions that had helped keep Labour out of office for so many years, the desire for unity was both understandable and necessary. But what was happening was more than that. It went beyond an expectation of loyalty to shared objectives. It was a demand for obedience. I thought a democratic party should be better than this and I thought it also raised a fundamental question. If total obedience was to be the order of the day, who was going to be able to speak up if things went wrong? Who was going to ask if the emperor was wearing any clothes?
It came to a head in the hot summer of 1995 when I was one of the MPs who went to work in a key by-election taking place in Littleborough and Saddleworth, near Oldham. What I found there shocked me. The Labour campaign seemed to be a grotesque exercise in gutter politics designed to personally discredit the Liberal Democrat candidate who was regarded as our main competition. It was the kind of unprincipled campaigning that we had always criticised in other parties (ironically including the Liberal Democrats). When I voiced my concerns, I was brushed aside. If this is what it took to win the seat, I was told, then it was fine. The result was the only thing that mattered and it was certainly not my place to question those who knew how to achieve that result.
As it turned out, we didn’t win the by-election anyway. But the experience got me thinking – not only about how we had sunk to a place where we substituted smears for politics but also about how, as a party, we seemed at ease with doing so.
A week or so later I wrote a piece for the New Statesman and Society exploring these issues. I suggested that, while Labour had been right to learn the importance of engaging with mainstream public opinion if we were serious about forming a government, we had got ourselves to the point where we seemed to believe only our leaders or those chosen by them could be trusted to identify what that engagement should look like. Indeed, it was getting to the stage where some of those at the centre had begun to believe that they were themselves the embodiment of mainstream public opinion. As a party we were starting to believe that anything the centre told us was in our interests as a party must by definition also be in the interests of the people we were in politics to represent. I tried to warn that this was a very dangerous road to go down.
To say that the article caused a furore during August 1995 would be an understatement. A leak to a national newspaper provoked lurid and often misleading headlines about what I was trying to say. That was partly my own fault. In those days I was pretty naive about how to engage with the papers, TV and radio. And, of course, because social media did not yet exist, I had no mechanism for getting my views out directly.
Back at Labour’s HQ there was no such naivety. I was subsequently told there were two schools of thought amongst those close to the leadership about how to respond to the news headlines my article had provoked. One was simply to distance the Party from what I was reported to have written – saying that I was entitled to my views but that I was wrong. The second was to pour yet more fuel on the fire – to attack me personally and destroy my reputation, not only to defend the New Labour brand but also to make an example of me – as a warning to other MPs who might be tempted to step out of line.
The second school of thought won out. Briefings to the press in the days following publication of my article alleged I was motivated by failed personal ambition and even questioned my mental health. Fabricated stories appeared in national newspapers dishonestly claiming that I had apologised for what I had written. Within the Parliamentary Labour Party, the reputational damage to me lasted long after the headlines in the papers had moved on. One Shadow Minister told me that after he internally voiced disquiet about the Party’s direction on a particular issue some months later, Peter Mandelson had taken him aside to darkly warn him that he risked becoming “the next Richard Burden”.
Was Mandelson solely responsible for all the above? No he was not. But he was one of the principal architects of this kind of culture. Perhaps more serious though was the fact that so many more people bought into it, convincing themselves that the end of securing a Labour Government justified the means. So much so, in fact, that some even stopped noticing what means were being employed or whether the purposes for which we wanted to see a Labour Government elected were in danger of being compromised.
Looking back, I wasn’t right about everything I wrote in that 1995 article or in the follow-up published several weeks later. The Blair and Brown Governments of 1997–2010 did a lot to change Britain for the better. I think they could have done more and they got some things very seriously wrong – perhaps most obviously over Iraq – but some of the worst fears I expressed in 1995 fortunately proved to be wide of the mark.
But I think I was onto something about what happened to the culture of the Party during the mid-1990s. We did indeed get to a stage where power became so centralised that those close to the centre could easily have started to think of themselves as untouchable – particularly when leadership of a political party in opposition transformed into control of the levers of government.
The early years of New Labour in government seemed to symbolise a new spirit of optimism and change not only in the UK but in world affairs. There was much to applaud in that but one of the consequences for at least some of those involved is that they became too comfortable participants in elites of power and influence, both in the UK and internationally. Was Peter Mandelson one of those who slipped into that environment too readily and easily? I believe he was.
And I suspect there is a thread between this and the sequence of events that ultimately led to his self-destruction three decades on. I have seen very little of him for the past fifteen or so years so I can’t back up my opinions here with hard evidence. But my gut feeling is that he was so beguiled by the glamour of the environments he came to inhabit as three-time government minister, EU Commissioner and political celebrity that he lost the perspective to be able to see beyond it. In building New Labour he had embraced the myth that if you were one of the chosen, you were untouchable. In fact it would not have seemed like a myth at all. Even if you fell from grace (as he twice did as a government minister) your influence and connections would open up new opportunities for you. Somewhere along the way, his sense of entitlement deprived him of whatever moral compass he might otherwise have had about his own actions or those of people to whom he was close. If something was in his or their interests, it must be OK.
We don’t yet know all the facts about what will come out of the Epstein files, but could a mindset like this mean Mandelson genuinely saw nothing wrong in passing confidential government papers to Jeffrey Epstein – someone he described as his “best pal”? Even more sordidly, was it the same mindset that meant he felt comfortable staying in Epstein’s flat even after he had been convicted of paedophile crime and sharing misogynistically lewd banter with him over e-mail once he was released?
Whatever led Mandelson to behave the way has done over so long is no excuse. He deserves the consequences his actions now look like they may finally bring to him.
What does all this mean for Labour and for politics today?
One of the reasons I am writing about all this now is to examine what lessons it holds for the rest of us in public life, and particularly for those of us involved in progressive politics.
First of all, let me make clear that when I say Peter Mandelson either never had a moral compass or lost it in the course of his political career, I am not suggesting that other architects of the New Labour years are the same.. That his personal behaviour sank to the depths it did says something about flaws in his own character. Journalist Andy McSmith may be accurate in his observations about that in The Guardian this week.
Whatever led Mandelson to behave as he did, the horror and sense of personal betrayal that Mandelson’s former friends or close colleagues have expressed in recent days are genuine.
But I am not trying to compile a list of heroes or villains. What I am trying to get at is how organisational and political cultures can enable the creation of elites with a sense of entitlement that can collectively corrode the political parties or other organisations involved. In extreme circumstances, that culture can create a special kind of blindness, even leading political leaders and commentators to treat the known personal behaviour of people like Mandelson as second-order issues compared what is seen as the “bigger picture”. They only notice the blindness when they later walk into a wall or over a cliff edge.
How else could the appointment of Mandelson as Ambassador to the USA have gone ahead in the first place? Sure, there probably were shortcomings in the formal government vetting process, but we already know there were warnings about Mandelson in there. Maybe Keir Starmer really was not personally aware of the closeness of Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein, even after the latter had been convicted. Prime Ministers are busy people and maybe he had never personally read the press and other reports about that friendship that were already in the public domain. But others around him must have known. Why did they think Mandelson’s skills as a political operator and his standing amongst the ranks of political royalty were more significant than his friendship with a serial abuser and paedophile?
Starmer has admitted he made an error of judgement in response to the incomplete information with which he was presented. But why did he not interrogate the information he had been given more closely? Why did he not notice the red flags? If we are going to learn lessons for the future, the key issues are not the errors of judgement themselves but what they say about two other issues. The first is why there was so little real-world perspective about fundamental questions of right and wrong when the appointment was being considered. The second is why there was nobody around when it mattered to remind the Prime Minister and his advisors about those questions of right and wrong. Why was there nobody there to tell them that they were looking at the bigger picture through a faulty lens?
Earlier in this post I gave some examples about how a centralisation of power during the early years of New Labour years created a culture where the limits of debate and discussion were defined by those at the top and where obedience was demanded, whether or not loyalty was earned.
I see worrying parallels with what has happened to Labour under Starmer’s leadership. In both cases, Labour was trying to win back credibility with the British people after a string of election defeats. In both cases the result was an election victory. And in both cases, success seemed to have allowed those close to the leadership to claim a monopoly of wisdom about what Labour should and should not do, and about where its priorities should lie. Views that threatened the orthodoxy would not be tolerated.
There are of course differences too. I know from my own experience in the 1990s that the response could be brutal if you stepped out of line with New Labour. But despite the press briefings, character assassinations and political marginalisation that I and others experienced, there was never a sense that New Labour would try exclude dissenters from the Party altogether. There was a self-confidence about the architects of New Labour that meant they never felt any need to be so openly draconian. Maybe they understood that, although they wanted a monopoly on its political direction, the broad church that Labour had always been should not be lost along the way. To go down an openly disciplinarian road would at best have been an unnecessary distraction. More seriously, it could have taken the shine off the newness of New Labour and its image as breath of fresh air on the British political scene.
There has been no such confidence evident in the centralisation of power that has accompanied Keir Starmer’s leadership of Labour. There is a brittleness about it that has led to wave upon wave of suspensions and expulsions in recent years. Sitting MPs have had the party whip withdrawn for voting the wrong way and sometimes even for saying the wrong thing. Before the last election, several credible local parliamentary candidates were summarily debarred from standing and were replaced by others more favoured by Labour’s HQ.
Often, these decisions have been made on flimsy pretexts, with few reasons being given and with scant regard for the principles of natural justice. Although partly designed to give the impression of a strong leader with authority over his party, this approach often had the opposite effect for Keir Starmer. It was just not sustainable when things started to go wrong. Down the line, Labour MPs, once cowed by instructions about what they were allowed to say or do, have started to force policy U-turns from government. Not surprisingly, Labour’s poll ratings have slumped.
For all its faults, New Labour’s electoral strategy in the 1990s understood the importance of winning both hearts and minds. It projected a vision of hope that Britain could build a new kind of future – as Tony Blair put it at the time, “to be a young country again”.
The Starmer strategy before 2024 could not have been more different. It shunned vision in favour proclaiming that Labour would be effective managers who could get things done. The elimination of perceived negatives in the Party’s image was regarded as central to the project, and creating an image of Starmer as a disciplinarian leader was thought to bolster his reputation as a strong and effective manager. Combine these things with saying as little as possible on issues thought to be contentious and the implosion of the Conservative Party, and you have a winning combination. Or so the strategists thought. In the short term it did the job too. In the circumstances of July 2024, Labour won a landslide number of seats. But we did so on just over 33% of the vote. It was the collapse of the Tory vote that carried us through, not a groundswell of support for Labour.
Under Britain’s archaic first-past-the-post voting system, you can win elections that way. But what happens thereafter? Faced with far worse economic conditions than Tony Blair faced in 1997, the challenges for the incoming Labour government were huge and they remain so. At times like this you need not only credible policies to meet the challenges you face but also a guiding set of principles that are transparently your lodestar. You need people outside to believe in you and, even where they disagree with you on individual issues, they should understand that you have a sense of mission to which they can relate. Labour spurned crafting such a sense of mission before the election, and its continued absence has contributed to appalling errors of judgement in some of the policies announced by government – and then sometimes jettisoned a few months later.
It is a muddle that threatens to ease the path of Nigel Farage to Downing Street. His politics divides communities and stirs up hate. That kind of politics will never command majority support amongst the British people, but Reform could win enough seats to form a government via the same electoral system that worked for Labour in 2024, particularly when the Tories remain in disarray. His core message is that he is offering something new, that he is not like the other lot and that he stands for something. It reeks of dishonesty. Farage is as entitled and arrogant as they come. But he knows that the message he is peddling will resonate in an era of profound public alienation from parties that have long dominated political life in the UK. The prospect of a Trump-like government taking office in the UK is terrifying and the danger is real.
So why am I using an article prompted by the Mandelson–Epstein scandal to say all this? It is because I think elements of the same political culture that enabled Mandelson to become what he was over the years and to retain his standing as political royalty within transnational power elites is also a key cause of the problems Labour is facing in Government today.
As far as Mandelson himself is concerned, the old saying that power corrupts is self-evidently appropriate. But power also breeds a culture of entitled monopoly influence that in turn creates a culture of impunity. The consequences go much wider and deeper than bolstering the character flaws of people like Mandelson.
It’s not only an issue for Labour either. The politics of entitlement can corrode political parties from within and undermine the standards people have a right to expect in their politicians and in their governments. It was there in the breathtaking culture of impunity that Boris Johnson displayed over Partygate – at ease with there being one set of rules for him and his associates, and another for everyone else.
The Starmer government is not guilty of the blatant dishonesty evident in Johnson’s behaviour during Partygate. We should not lose sight of that. Even so, the groupthink that monopolised the way Downing Street considered Peter Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment left Keir Starmer unable to see the significance of what should have been staring him in the face. This has done lasting reputational damage to the Starmer government.
New institutional safeguards could help prevent governments falling prey to some of the destructive consequences of monopoly influences, as former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has perceptively set out in The Guardian.
Institutional reforms like those suggested by Gordon Brown are important.
But Labour needs to also look deep inside itself too. We need to learn the lessons and move out of the cul-de-sac that we have allowed ourselves to be taken down by blinkered strategists whose monopoly of influence has left them incapable of comprehending that they don’t always get it right.
Some of those lessons are about our political direction. Labour needs to rediscover its core sense of purpose and craft an ideological cutting edge that – working with others – can take on and defeat the threat that Far Right politics pose to our country.
As we do so though, we must remember not to recreate yet another culture of political monopoly that excludes those who may want to draw inconvenient truths to our attention, whether they are within our own parties or outside them.
The fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes is as relevant to shining a light on the operation of power elites today as it has ever been.
