JJ ANISIOBI: The sudden assault of ethical readability over Peter Mandelson is transparently bogus.
JJ says Keir Starmer’s apologies will solely get him up to now (Picture: Getty Photos)
There are scandals in politics that arrive like a bomb, after which there are those who creep up slowly, stinking the place out lengthy earlier than anybody pretends to note. Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein fall firmly into the latter class.
Let’s be completely clear – Peter Mandelson knew precisely who Jeffrey Epstein was and what he was. Epstein wasn’t some mysterious billionaire whose previous solely later got here to mild. He was a convicted paedophile. That was a public report, and but Mandelson nonetheless selected to stay in his orbit, as a result of Epstein provided what actually mattered to him: cash, entry, affect and entry into the murkiest, strongest circles on the planet. Morality didn’t come into it.
So sure, Keir Starmer is true to apologise for appointing Mandelson as Ambassador to the US. Nonetheless, an apology solely will get you up to now when the unique resolution was so jaw-droppingly silly. Mandelson isn’t only a controversial determine – he’s lengthy been generally known as the “Prince of Darkness”, a person repeatedly dogged by scandal and reportedly flagged by MI5 as a nationwide safety threat.
Handing him one of the vital delicate diplomatic jobs on the earth wasn’t a lapse in judgement, it was a full-blown abandonment of it.
What actually grates me, although, is the sudden outbreak of ethical readability sweeping by way of the Cupboard. Wes Streeting has accused Mandelson of betraying the nation amid allegations he leaked delicate info to Epstein.
Honest sufficient, Wes. However right here’s the awkward query: did Wes Streeting not learn about Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein earlier than all this? After all he did. Anybody with a telephone, wi-fi and a functioning search engine knew. Mandelson attracted controversy like flies to faeces. And but Labour MPs stayed publicly silent, mouths shut, fingers clear, careers intact.
Each single one in all them ought to have been screaming to maintain Mandelson as distant from the occasion as doable. They didn’t. They regarded the opposite method.
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I’m advised by a former MP that Downing Avenue Chief of Workers Morgan McSweeney performed a big position in Mandelson getting the gig. In response to my Westminster insider, McSweeney was “fairly the acolyte of Mandelson” and seen him as a mentor. If that’s true, then he too owes the general public a grovelling apology. Mentorship isn’t an excuse for monumentally dangerous judgement.
There’s a bitter irony right here too. Mandelson, the person as soon as praised for modernising Labour and serving to usher within the New Labour period, could now be the architect of this authorities’s undoing. The Prince of Darkness giveth, and ultimately, he taketh away.
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