A senior cabinet minister has admitted that “political considerations” about Peter Mandelson’s “outstanding singular talents” meant security concerns about the Labour peer being made ambassador to the US were ignored.
Business secretary Peter Kyle repeated the claim on Sky News and BBC on Sunday morning that “new information” coming to light over Lord Mandelson’s relationship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein led to his sacking on Friday.
Last week The Independent revealed that Sir Keir pushed through his appointment earlier this year despite failing security vetting by MI6. Mr Kyle refused to say if the prime minister spoke to Lord Mandelson directly to let him know he was sacked, nor whether the appointment had been a mistake in the first place.
Mr Kyle told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News it was not correct that Lord Mandelson was appointed ambassador to the US before security checks were completed.
He said: “The Cabinet Office did an independent inquiry into the appointment, as they do in every public appointment of this nature, and the information… was presented to the prime minister.”
But he admitted that political considerations trumped security concerns about Lord Mandelson, which included not only his relationship with Epstein but also his links to China. In January, The Independent revealed that the same concerns almost led to Donald Trump refusing Lord Mandelson’s credentials.
Mr Kyle said: “The second process was obviously a political process where there are political conversations done in No 10 about all the other aspects of an appointment of this nature. Now, both of these things turned up information that was already public, and a decision was made that, based on Peter’s singular talents in this area, that the risk of appointing knowing what was already public was worth the risk.”
But he added on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning BBC show that Lord Mandelson’s appointment had achieved a lot for the UK.
He said: “[At the time of the appointment] global norms were turned upside down. The relationship between Britain and America was in a perilous state because of the threat of tariffs. What was happening economically, trying to repurpose and rethink the special relationship. Britain needed somebody with outstanding, singular talents, experience which was very hard to come by.”
Explaining the “new information,” Mr Kyle claimed the vetting did not pick up emails that came to light this week showing Lord Mandelson advising Epstein on tackling his conviction, and calling the financier his “best pal”.
He added: “Of course we have seen the emails which were not published at the time, were not public and not even known about, and that has changed the situation.”
“They had what was public, which was extracts of the emails and… immediately, upon having been alerted to extracts of emails, the Foreign Office contacted Peter Mandelson and asked for his account of the emails and asked for them to be put into context and for his response. That response did not come before PMQs, and then, after PMQs, the full emails were released by Bloomberg in the evening.
“By the first thing next morning, when the Prime Minister had time to read the emails in full… almost immediately… Peter was withdrawn as ambassador.”
Mr Kyle stressed that the media had the “same information that we had at the time” of the appointment.
Opponents said it was “astonishing” that Lord Mandelson’s talents would take precedence over both security concerns and Epstein’s victims.
Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake said: “It is astonishing that the new business and trade secretary has openly admitted that Downing Street chose to prioritise Mandelson’s ‘singular and outstanding talents’ over the rights of Epstein’s victims. Even more damning, this cover-up appears to have continued for a further 48 hours this week as more and more revelations came to light.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said she would demand that the prime minister make a statement on the fiasco to the Commons on Monday.
She said: “Our weak prime minister is hiding, sending out ministers to answer for his terrible judgement. The last time we saw Starmer was Wednesday, when he told me he had confidence in Mandelson. The PM needs to come to Parliament tomorrow and tell the truth about what he knew and when.”
