LONDON – The U.K. government agreed Wednesday to release documents casting light on the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States, despite his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, as it tries to stem mounting anger over the revelations.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced the wrath of opposition lawmakers, and his own Labour Party backbenchers, after acknowledging that he had known at the time of the 2024 appointment about Mandelson's friendship with the convicted sex offender.
Recommended Videos
Starmer said that he was unaware of the depth of the relationship, and that Mandelson had “lied repeatedly” about his ties to Epstein.
A trove of documents about Epstein released last week by the U.S. Justice Department has finished off Mandelson’s long political career — and left Starmer facing angry questions about his judgment in making him Britain's envoy to the Trump administration, the country's most important ambassadorial post.
Starmer's judgment questioned
Starmer fired Mandelson, 72, in September after emails were published showing that he maintained a friendship with Epstein following the late financier’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses involving a minor. Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019, while awaiting trial on U.S. federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing dozens of girls.
At a question-and-answer session in the House of Commons dominated by the Epstein revelations, Starmer said that Mandelson had “lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein before and during his tenure as ambassador.”
“Mandelson betrayed our country, our Parliament and my party,” Starmer said. “I regret appointing him. If I knew then what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government.”
The opposition Conservative Party said that explanation wasn't good enough, and called for a vote in Parliament calling for the release of emails and other documentation related to Mandelson's appointment.
Starmer said that he would ensure that "all of the material" is published, except for documents that compromise Britain's national security, international relations or the police investigation into Mandelson's activities.
Opposition lawmakers — and some from Starmer's Labour Party — said that they worried the government would use national security as an excuse to keep embarrassing documents secret.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the government should publish all relevant files, “not just the ones the prime minister wants us to see.”
“The prime minister is talking about national security. The national security issue was appointing Mandelson in the first place,” she said.
After hours of House of Commons debate, a vote was averted when the government gave in to lawmakers’ anger and agreed that the Intelligence and Security Committee — made up of parliamentarians from several parties — would decide what papers should be published, rather than a senior civil servant as Starmer had proposed.
It's unclear when the documents will be released.
Police investigation
Documents released last week by the U.S. government suggest Mandelson may have shared sensitive information with Epstein when he was a government minister around 15 years ago.
In 2009, he appears to have told Epstein that he would lobby other members of the government to reduce a tax on bankers’ bonuses, and passed on an internal government report discussing a potential sale of U.K. government assets. The following year, he appears to have tipped off Epstein about the imminent bailout of the european single currency.
The newly released files also suggest that in 2003-2004, Epstein sent three payments totaling $75,000 to accounts linked to Mandelson or his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva, now his husband.
Since those disclosures, Mandelson has resigned from the House of Lords and faces a police investigation for alleged misconduct in public office, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Opening an investigation doesn't mean Mandelson will be arrested, charged or convicted.
London's Metropolitan Police force urged the government not to release “certain documents” that it said could undermine its investigation.
Starmer said that the government was working on legislation to remove the noble title, Lord Mandelson, that the ex-ambassador still holds. He will also be removed from the Privy Council, a committee of senior officials that advises King Charles III, for bringing “the reputation of the Privy Council into disrepute,” Starmer said.
An email requesting comment on the documents was sent to Mandelson through the House of Lords.
The European Union is also investigating potential wrongdoing by Mandelson when he was the bloc's trade commissioner between 2004 and 2008. The U.K. was an EU member until 2020.
“We will be assessing if, in light of these newly available documents, there might be a breaches of the respective rules with regard to Peter Mandelson,” European Commission spokesperson Balazs Ujvari said. “We have rules in place, emanating from the treaty and the code of conduct that commissioners, including former commissioners, have to follow.”
___
Sam McNeil contributed to this report from Brussels.
___
A previous version of this story was corrected to show that the EU is investigating Mandelson, not Epstein.