Peter Mandelson reportedly revels in his nickname ‘the Prince of Darkness’. It has never seemed so appropriate.
Documents made public in America show that the current British ambassador in Washington and former Labour Cabinet minister regarded convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein as his ‘best pal’.
If Lord Mandelson is the Prince of Darkness, Epstein – who apparently committed suicide in a New York prison in 2019 as he faced charges of sex trafficking – was an apostle of Satan.
Politicians inevitably meet rogues in the course of their duties. This is different. The so-called ‘birthday book’ compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, which has now been released by the US Congress, depicts an extremely close relationship between the two men.
In a ten-page tribute to Epstein, Mandelson does not merely describe the billionaire deviant as ‘my best pal’. He ladles out praise and flattery as a courtier might towards his master.
Epstein is described in the handwritten note as ‘mysterious’ and ‘an intelligent, sharp-witted man’ who had ‘parachuted into my life’. How profoundly touching!
Mandelson then pulls out the stops to the point of infatuation: ‘You would spend many hours just waiting for him to turn up. And often, no sooner were you getting used to having him around, you would suddenly be alone… again.’
People of a sensitive disposition may wish to avert their eyes when confronted by the accompanying photograph supplied by Mandelson that shows him in a bathrobe, his face wreathed in smiles, chatting with the paedophile. A back view picture of a topless Mandy in swimming shorts gazing out of a balcony is scarcely less unsettling.
Probably most disquieting of all is the photo of Mandelson standing by what looks like a dining-room table. He is a few feet from a young woman wearing a white vest and black underwear. A common occurrence in the Epstein household, no doubt, but unusual in the lives of most of us.
Mandy’s torrent of sycophancy finishes off with a final accolade: ‘Happy birthday, Jeffrey. We love you!’ The birthday book was put together by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting young girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
It also includes a bawdy letter written to Epstein framed in a female silhouette that bears Donald Trump’s name.
His press secretary Karoline Leavitt has dismissed it as a fake. I’m in no position to judge.
However, we are interested here not in the American President’s ill-advised association with Epstein but in the seemingly much closer relationship that our very own Prince of Darkness had with this wicked man.
Why? Epstein evidently loved seeking the company and friendship of powerful men. As is well known, he ensnared Prince Andrew, and allegedly laid on the 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre for him on three occasions – a charge the Prince vehemently denies. Giuffre killed herself at the age of 41 in April.
There is of course no suggestion whatsoever that Jeffrey Epstein laid on anything of that nature for Mandelson, whose tastes are anyway well known to lie in the opposite direction.
Other factors must explain the pervert’s attractions to Mandy. His vast wealth? His charm? His array of rich friends? Only His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to Washington can truly know the answer.
Whatever the reason, it was a reckless friendship. In 2003, at the time of the birthday book, Mandelson was a mere Labour MP. But he had in the recent past twice been a Cabinet minister – being sacked by Tony Blair for misdemeanours both times – and was about to become Britain’s European Commissioner in Brussels.
It is true that in 2003 the police had not yet begun their investigations into Epstein. Those started in 2005 after a mother alleged that he had sexually assaulted her 14-year-old daughter. In 2008 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for procuring for prostitution, and served almost 13 months.
Even before this, he was plainly a sleazy character, to whom a prudent and morally punctilious person would have given a very wide berth. Rumours of illegal behaviour may have swirled around him. A woman has alleged that in 1996 she told New
York police that she had been raped by Epstein, but nothing was done.
We don’t know for how long after the 2003 birthday book Mandelson remained close to Epstein because he won’t tell us. Questioned by a Sky News reporter earlier this year after rumours of his involvement first broke, the Prince of Darkness refused to say whether he had stayed in Epstein’s apartment when he was in jail in 2009.
What he did say is that he wished he ‘had never met him in the first place’. But why? Because the scandal is tarnishing his reputation and becoming politically embarrassing? Or because he now genuinely regrets having had so much to do with such a dreadful man? The former, I would guess.
Certainly, there isn’t the slightest suggestion that Lord Mandelson recognises that he let down himself and his party by fraternising with such a seedy chancer – and then displaying a monumental lack of judgment by extolling him in a toe-curling manner.
Mandelson’s flaw – what would be called his ‘tragic flaw’ if he were a character in a Shakespearean tragedy – is his fondness for very rich men. He announced over a quarter of a century ago that he was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes’. He never spoke a truer word.
He was chummy with the multi-millionaire Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson, from whom he borrowed £373,000 interest-free for a mortgage without declaring it. That was why he was turfed out of the Cabinet on the first occasion.
Mandy was apparently bedazzled by the wealth of the Indian billionaire Hinduja brothers, on behalf of one of whom he intervened with a fellow minister to expedite an application for a British passport. Blair sent him packing a second time.
While a European Commissioner, Mandelson attracted controversy when it was revealed that he had been a guest on the yacht of Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, which at the time was at the centre of an EU investigation.
Another chum was the extremely wealthy Nat Rothschild. Mandy spent time on his yacht, and as European Commissioner flew in Rothschild’s private jet from Switzerland to Moscow, and then on to Siberia as a guest of Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian industrialist.
He is naturally no less interested in power than money. Once a severe critic of Donald Trump, as ambassador he seldom misses an opportunity to shower him with praise, averring that his presidency will be ‘one of the most consequential’ in modern times.
Is there a single socialist bone, or even a tiny socialist corpuscle, lurking in Peter Mandelson’s well groomed, expensively attired, malleable frame? I very much doubt it.
Love of power and money – and who knows what else – took him far too close to the abhorrent, corrupt human being that was Jeffrey Epstein.
If Mandelson were still a politician, he would be drummed out of office – yet again. As he is a diplomat, he may think he is immune, but he owes the British people – who keep him in very fine style as our ambassador in Washington – an explanation.
Why in God’s name did the Prince of Darkness become best pals with the Apostle of Satan?
