Peter Mandelson’s secret email contacts with Jeffrey Epstein while he was in Government could constitute a ‘crime’ and was ‘a betrayal of everything we stand for as a country’, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today.
His comments come as Met Police said on Saturday they had concluded the search of two homes linked to Lord Mandelson over allegations that he leaked sensitive government information to the billionaire paedophile.
An outraged Mr Brown said that emails which appeared to confirm an imminent bailout package for the Euro the day before it was announced in 2010 could have caused ‘huge commercial damage’.
Mr Brown, who brought Mandelson back into Government as Business Secretary in 2008, said: ‘There’s no doubt this would be seen as a financial crime if police were investigating it, I see it as a financial crime.’
His intervention comes as Sir Keir Starmer is engulfed by a growing scandal over his appointment of Lord Mandelson as US ambassador.
Labour MPs are in open revolt after Sir Keir finally admitted to the Commons on Wednesday that he had agreed the appointment despite knowing about Mandelson’s post-prison ties to Epstein. Many say that it is now a matter of ‘when, not if’ the Prime Minister is forced to step down.
A furious Mr Brown – who has been engaged in a love/hate political feud with Lord Mandelson for nearly 35 years – told the BBC’s Today programme he felt ‘shocked, sad, angry betrayed, let down’ when he saw the messages to Epstein released by the US Department of Justice.
He said: ‘This was financially secret information, it meant Britain was at risk because of that, the currency was at risk, some of the trading that would happen would be speculative as a result of that and there’s no doubt that huge commercial damage could have been done and perhaps was done,’ he said.
Mr Brown also demanded immediate ‘constitutional reform’ to clean up corruption in politics and the House of Lords and ‘let in the light and send the princes of darkness on their way’.
He also blamed the long delay of many years for uncovering what Mandelson had been up to on ‘systemic failures’ in the system.
Mr Brown said he wanted to ‘express his revulsion’ about what has been uncovered about Epstein’s behaviour and influence on UK politics.
While ‘he betrayed us’, Mr Brown said his ‘biggest betrayal’ was to Epstein’s many victims and the young women and girls who were abused by his network.
But he refused to condemn the Prime Minister for appointing Mandelson as Washington ambassador even though it has been revealed that he was aware of Mandelson’s continued links with Epstein.
He said Sir Keir Starmer had, like him, been ‘misled and betrayed and lied to’ by Mandelson although he admitted the PM had been ‘too slow to act’ but said he was now the right man to clean up British political life, saying work on this must start immediately or ‘all people in public life will pay a heavy price if we don’t’.
‘Look in his eyes and you see a man of integrity,’ he said, ‘He has been too slow to act, but he will try and clean up the system’.
He also warned that abuses by ‘global networks’ of powerful and rich men were probably still happening and slammed the abuse of women and girls by Epstein’s circle as ‘the most egregious abuse of power’.
In a separate interview with today’s Guardian, he said the news that the Labour grandee and mastermind of New Labour was passing information to Jeffrey Epstein when he was supposed to be helping with the global financial crisis was ‘a betrayal of everything we stand for as a country’.
Mr Brown said he took ‘personal responsibility’ for bringing Mandelson back into government, but said there were ‘no reports at the time’ that the now disgraced former ambassador to Washington was involved with Epstein and his record were ‘unblemished’.
‘I have to take personal responsibility for appointing Mandelson to his ministerial role in 2008. I greatly regret this appointment.’
Mandelson had previously quit as an MP to become EU trade commissioner.
Mr Brown, who was prime minister between 2007 and 2010, said he made the appointment despite Mandelson being ‘anything but a friend to me’ because he thought ‘his unquestioned knowledge of Europe and beyond could help us as we dealt with the global financial crisis’.
‘I now know that I was wrong. He seems to have used market-sensitive inside information to betray the principles in which he said he believed, and he betrayed the people who believed in them – and him.’
Now the former premier said the revelations would ‘corrode trust’ in all politicians and were ‘acid in our democracy’.
Police are investigating Mandelson for passing potentially market sensitive information to the paedophile financier while he was in Brown’s Cabinet.
Mr Brown’s comments came as the latest revelations from the Epstein files showed Mandelson, whose homes in London and Wiltshire were searched by police last night, offering to secure a holiday home for Epstein in southern Italy to host ‘guests’.
Met Police provided an update on Saturday confirming that the searches had now concluded.
Mandelson has not been arrested and enquiries are ongoing, the force added.
A spokesperson said: ‘This will be a complex investigation requiring a significant amount of further evidence gathering and analysis.
‘It will take some time to do this work comprehensively and we will not be providing a running commentary.’
In an email dated August 2010, the disgraced peer tells Epstein he has ‘found a great place to stay’ on the Amalfi coast ‘offering privacy and rooms for your ‘guests’.
The email address was redacted in the files, but a BBC and Bureau for Investigative Journalism has traced the email to Mandelson.
The recent release of a further three million pages of documents from the Epstein files revealed fresh details of Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein, during and after his imprisonment in 2008 for procuring a child for prostitution.
They also suggested Mandelson and his now husband Reinaldo da Silva had received money from Epstein and had leaked market sensitive information to him.
In response to a Tory Commons motion, Sir Keir has agreed to the publication of all documents, emails and messages connected to the appointment.
Government officials said yesterday that while the total number of documents remained unknown, it was believed to be in the ‘high tens of thousands’.
Embarrassing revelations could now leak out over weeks and months as officials will have to check every document for potentially sensitive information, with any relevant ones passed to parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) for checking.
