I Saw the Roots of Mandelson’s Rise and Fall
“The people whose company I enjoy most are those from a strictly bourgeois background,” Peter Mandelson wrote to his childhood friend Steve Howell in 1973. It was, Howell observes, deeply ironic that these connections would ultimately bring him down.
For almost 40 years, Peter Mandelson stood in the shadows of Labour governments, exerting influence over their policies through undemocratic means. By exchanging access for money and status, he represented the worst tendencies of British politics. (Niall Carson / PA Images via Getty Images)
When Peter Mandelson was a teenager, he made no secret of his political ambitions. His grandfather, Herbert Morrison, had been deputy prime minister and school friends like me wondered if he would go one better. On one occasion, he showed me a copy of Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince and was clearly smitten with its tales of intrigue and treachery. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, Mandelson’s dramatic fall from grace has been triggered by the release of emails with Jeffrey Epstein that have more than a whiff of the Italian’s subterfuge about them.
Rise and Fall
For nearly forty years, little has happened in Britain’s Labour party without the seventy-two-year-old Lord (as he still is) pulling at least some of the strings. From early ally of Tony Blair to Britain’s ambassador to Washington, he has enjoyed enormous success and heavily influenced political discourse. But now he’s a pariah, disowned even by protégés and long-term allies, and facing three investigations: one into his role in Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s appointment as a trade envoy in 2001; a second into possible fraud while a member of the European Commission from 2004 to 2008; and a British police probe into misconduct in public office.
Meanwhile, Mandelson’s lucrative consultancy business, Global Counsel, has collapsed leaving his 21 percent stake worthless after clients bailed in droves. He had stepped down as the consultancy’s chairman in May 2024 as part of a restructuring that saw Jim Messina, the former Barack Obama aide, join the board when his own firm, Messina Group, took a 20 percent stake in a deal valuing Global Counsel at around £30 million.
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