LONDON (AP) — A year ago, Peter Mandelson was Britain’s ambassador to Washington, the latest high-profile post in a rocky but consequential political career.
Friendship with Jeffrey Epstein cost him that job. Now, after new revelations, Mandelson — like other powerful men including King Charles III's brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — is facing demands he come clean about his relationship with the late sex offender.
Mandelson resigned from the governing Labour Party on Sunday following new claims he received payments from Epstein two decades ago. Mandelson said he was stepping aside to avoid causing “further embarrassment,” even as he denied the allegations stemming from a trove of more than 3 million pages of documents relating to Epstein released by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who fired Mandelson from his ambassadorial job over earlier revelations about his Epstein ties, now faces pressure to get Mandelson to testify in the U.S. about what he knew of the financier's activities.
On Monday, Starmer urged Mandelson to resign from the House of Lords — Parliament's unelected upper chamber of politicians, donors and assorted notables — to which he was appointed for life in 2008. That would also mean relinquishing the noble title, Lord Mandelson, that he received at the time.
If he refuses, ejecting him would be a lengthy process requiring Parliament to pass legislation — a process last undertaken more than a century ago to remove the titles of aristocrats who sided with Germany in World War I.
“The prime minister believes that Peter Mandelson should not be a member of the House of Lords or use the title,” said Starmer spokesman Tom Wells. “However, the prime minister does not have the power to remove it.”
Mandelson — like Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew — is also facing calls to testify about Epstein in the U.S.
Cabinet minister Steve Reed said Monday that both men have a “moral obligation” to help Epstein’s victims.
“If anybody has information or evidence that they can share that might help to understand what’s gone on and bring justice for those victims, then they should share it, whether that is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, whether it’s Lord Mandelson, or whether it’s anybody else,” he told Sky News.
Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on U.S. federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing dozens of girls. Years before he had avoided federal prosecution by pleading guilty to state charges in Florida of solicitation of prostitution involving a minor and another charge.
New allegations about ties to Epstein
The latest release of Epstein files includes hundreds of text and email messages exchanged between Mandelson and the financier, revealing the British politician's warm relationship with the man he called “my best pal” in 2003.
Several documents appear to refer to payments from Epstein to Mandelson or his partner, Reinaldo Avila da Silva. The Financial Times and the BBC reported that what appear to be bank statements from 2003 and 2004 suggest an Epstein account sent three payments totaling $75,000 to accounts connected to Mandelson.
Mandelson has questioned the authenticity of the bank statements. In a letter to Labour resigning from the party, Mandelson said he had no recollection of receiving that money and would investigate.
“While doing this I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party and I am therefore stepping down from membership of the party,” he wrote.
Mandelson added that he wanted to “repeat my apology to the women and girls whose voices should have been heard long before now.”
The documents also include an email exchange from 2009 in which, Mandelson, then a U.K. government minister, appeared to tell Epstein he would lobby other members of the government to reduce a tax on bankers’ bonuses.
Also among the files is a photo of Mandelson in a shirt and underwear, standing near an unidentified woman in a bathrobe.
The end of a turbulent career
Mandelson, 72, has been a major, if contentious, figure in the center-left Labour Party for decades. He is a skilled — critics say ruthless — political operator whose mastery of political intrigue earned him the nickname “Prince of Darkness.”
The grandson of former Labour Cabinet minister Herbert Morrison, he was an architect of the party’s return to power in 1997 as centrist, modernizing “New Labour” under Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Mandelson served in senior government posts under Blair between 1997 and 2001, and under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2008 to 2010. In between, he was the European Union’s trade commissioner.
Mandelson twice had to resign from government during the Blair administration over allegations of financial or ethical impropriety, acknowledging mistakes but denying wrongdoing.
He later returned to government, and was back on the political front line when Starmer named him to the key post of ambassador to Washington at the start of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. Mandelson’s trade expertise and comfort around the ultra-rich were considered major assets with the administration. He helped secure a trade deal in May that spared Britain some of the tariffs Trump has imposed on countries around the world.
But Starmer fired him in September after emails were published showing Mandelson's friendship with Epstein continued even after the financier's 2008 guilty plea.
Now he has also left Labour, and Starmer and others are calling for him to be ejected from the House of Lords.
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This story has been updated to correct that the Justice Department says the release contains more then 3 million pages of documents, not more than 3 million documents.