Bulletin from London: The British PM and the dark prince
Known quantity: Peter Mandelson, left, was appointed US ambassador by Keir Starmer despite his well-publicised failings. Photo / Getty Images
According to IMF forecasts, the UK is due to be the hardest hit of the world’s advanced economies by the effects of the Iran war. One reason for this is the UK’s dependency on imported energy, which has reignited the debate about using North Sea oil and gas reserves.
Some parts of the government are pushing to lift restrictions on domestic drilling, while others insist it will set a bad precedent in the battle against climate change.
There is also an ongoing argument about increasing military spending to combat Russian and Chinese expansionism, as the US threatens to abandon Nato allies. And there are the usual troubles of growing national debt, a demoralised NHS, an ever-expanding welfare bill, migration concerns and a widespread sense that the country’s best days are disappearing into the rear-view mirror.
But none of these issues has caused Prime Minister Keir Starmer as much grief and political scrutiny as his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to the United States in December, 2024. The fallout from that fateful appointment seems to have the radioactive half-life of uranium-235.
So far, casualties include Mandelson, sacked last September for his links to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Starmer’s chief of staff and his top civil servant at the foreign office. Many observers believe Starmer will be the next to go, particularly if this month’s local election results are as bad for Labour as everyone expects.
The question though, that no one, least of all Starmer himself, can answer is why the PM took such a risk with someone with Mandelson’s track record. He twice had to resign as a government minister over misconduct scandals. His friendship with Epstein was well known. His weakness for the private jet-owning class was legendary. And his connections to dubious Russian businesses through his PR firm scarcely hidden.
What could have persuaded the risk-averse Starmer to plump for a man almost universally referred to as the “Prince of Darkness”?
Many years ago, when I started out in national newspapers, I had lunch with “Mandy”. He was one of those people whose natural mode of conversation is intimate, conspiratorial, flattering. He could strike a pose of rapt interest that suggested your banal observations were of world-historical importance.
You knew it was an act, but an effective one all the same. This was before his first fall from grace in 1998, the consequence of taking an undeclared loan from a wealthy Labour MP and benefactor. But I wasn’t surprised when those details emerged or about his later ousting for his involvement in an Indian billionaire’s passport application.
What has been common to all his travails is the sense that the rules can be suspended for the elite class. He famously once said he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes”. He complains if that quote is ever shortened to omit the bit about taxes, but in reality the people he cosied up to were all savvy about off-shore tax avoidance.