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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Everyone is shocked and no one is surprised. When Wes Streeting, the health secretary, declares mournfully that Peter Mandelson “is not the person we thought he was”, that’s not quite true, is it? Mandelson turns out to be exactly the person many thought he was, just more so than they realised.
The latest revelations about Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein are so damaging to Keir Starmer precisely because they don’t come out of the blue. All the former Washington ambassador’s erstwhile friends knew his weaknesses, they just didn’t believe they extended so far as working against his ministerial colleagues and leaking financially sensitive government emails to a child sex offender.
And for what? Yes, he craved the multimillionaire lifestyle, enough to turn a blind eye to Epstein’s crimes. But fundamentally Mandelson wanted to prove his worth to the pal he hoped would help secure his future after Gordon Brown’s probable election defeat in 2010.
For the current prime minister, this is truly grim. Starmer’s public admission that he already knew of Mandelson’s continued post-conviction relationship with Epstein when appointing him to Washington raises questions about his ethics as well as his judgment. Fingers point at Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff who championed Mandelson, but the final blind eye was Starmer’s.
It is hard to see how this ends well for the prime minister. Starmer’s defence is that the Trump ascendancy demanded the calculated risk of a bold political ambassador able to surf the swamp and that Mandelson lied when questioned on the extent of his contact with Epstein. But even so, the ex-prosecutor’s pitch was that he is a process guy. And in any case, risks have to work.
Mandelson’s appointment and its consequences further expose the shallowness of Starmer’s project. Devoid of people or ideas, he came to rely on a job lot of old Blairites whose modern disciples will now be contaminated.
The scandal also poses larger questions of how politics can protect itself from those who would corrupt it. One government figure says Epstein “had three circles: a money circle, a power circle and a sex circle”. The value for him lay in the intersections. But while the squalid third circle may be rare, the other two are all too recognisable.
This extreme case is overshadowed by Epstein’s monstrous crimes, but the essential point is that money will always find weaknesses to exploit. This is what the Epsteins of this world understand. Like hackers probing a network for vulnerabilities, money seeks out the weak spots in the body politic, the people it can seduce, tap for information, the person who can help with an introduction, the guy who will champion its cause.
Often this stays the right side of legal. Governments need to hear the views of business. But politicians are also targets for the quiet networking and little favours that litter the porous boundaries of lobbying and the law. David Cameron described the challenge 15 years ago: “We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisers for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way.”
There have always been scandals. But two shifts heighten the challenge. The first is how much this has become internationalised. Older scandals were more likely to be domestic and smaller; a British business figure corrupting the odd MP or council chief. Now the money and opportunities are global and greater.
Second is the increasing precariousness of politics as a profession. Careers end earlier and there are far fewer safe seats in the UK. Most politicians are honourable people but one only has to look at the number of Tories struggling for employment since the last election to see why MPs focus on their futures. Hence the networking and playing up of any marketable expertise. All of this leaves you more vulnerable. And there are always wealthy supporters whose generosity brings access. Remember the clothes gifted to Starmer pre-election.
Politics is struggling to keep up. The obstacles to stripping Mandelson of his peerage illuminate gaps in the system’s defences (appointments to the House of Lords remain an open wound on the body politic). There are regulations and committees on standards and rules about jobs after politics. But those who set the rules also know they will soon be on the other side of the revolving door.
Mandelson would probably argue now that the leaks looked more dramatic than they were. It was in his interest to play up his importance and value.
The other disaster of this scandal is that it plays into every populist critique of politics. Mandelson’s actions will reinforce the image of an amoral, self-serving, global elite. In reality, populist movements are every bit as prone to this form of sleaze. One has only to consider the Trump administration, with its barely hidden pay-to-play ethos and favours for business pals.
This is easier to diagnose than cure. Rules can be tightened, sanctions increased, more transparency demanded, but there are no simple solutions. This is a never-ending fight that relies on those in the system to safeguard its integrity. That has to mean leaders setting the tone with vigilance and an unforgiving line on those whose weakness corrupts it — a challenge Starmer seems to have failed.
This scandal may be a disgusting outlier, but the overarching lesson is the general. A system is only as strong as its weakest links, and money never sleeps.