The most high-profile casualty so far of the recent data dump of Epstein e-mails is Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US, who is sometimes endearingly referred to as the “Prince of Darkness”. Together with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Mandelson was one of the three main founders of the New Labour project in the late 1990s.
The leaked files not only confirm that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein had continued, and even flourished, after the financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, but also reveal that Mandelson in 2009 gave Jeffrey Epstein advance notice of a €500 billion bailout to save the Euro.
Lord Mandelson gave Jeffrey Epstein advance notice of a €500bn bailout to save the Euro
He messaged Epstein about the bailout on the evening of May 9, 2010
It was formally announced the following morning pic.twitter.com/btejzVTvxV
— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) February 2, 2026
That information could, and probably was, used for the purpose of insider trading, including quite possibly by JP Morgan Chase. A NYT investigation revealed in December that the US’ largest lender “spent years supporting — and profiting from — the notorious sex offender.”
The leaked emails also reveal that Mandelson played a key role, as UK business secretary, lobbying on behalf of Epstein and JPM to soften bank reforms on both sides of the Atlantic in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. At one point, he even suggested to Epstein that JPM CEO Matt Dimon should “threaten” the UK Treasury over proposed banker bonuses.
From The Banker:
The correspondence shows Mandelson, then UK business secretary, agreeing to press Larry Summers, head of Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, to meet JPMorgan executives including Staley to discuss the lender’s opposition to US proposals to tighten banking regulation through the Volcker reforms.
Epstein urged Mandelson to intervene directly, writing: “I would like you to ask Larry Summers if he would meet directly with Jes.” Mandelson replied: “I can say this to him.”
Emails and internal government memos indicate that Mandelson sought and used talking points supplied by Staley in his discussions with Summers, the FT reported. The documents also show that he shared confidential UK government readouts of high level meetings with Epstein.
One of the few positives to come out of the resulting scandal is that Mandelson is now surely a spent force in British politics. Granted, this is the third time he’s had to resign in disgrace, but this scandal if of a whole different magnitude. This is about something even darker than corruption and venality; it is about the systematic use and abuse of children for the benefit of a political movement: Zionism.
Mandelson has already stepped down from the House of Lords and will now face a criminal investigation over his possible misconduct while in public office. Meanwhile, both the Keir Starmer government and the broader UK political and media establishment are in a state of total disarray and denial.
Starmer appointed Mandelson as UK ambassador to the United States in full knowledge of Mandelson’s ties to Esptein and other transgressions. The Daily Mail reported in September that Mandelson, as a political appointee, had not faced the standard security vetting for senior diplomats. At Mandelson’s inauguration ceremony, Starmer could barely contain his glee.
The slimiest, most deceitful man imaginable. pic.twitter.com/4LUc36KjAa
— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) February 5, 2026
According to the article in the Daily Mail, it was Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, a former Mandelson protege, who insisted on taking direct control of the recruitment process:
According to senior diplomatic sources, the Foreign Office was largely cut out of it all as Mr McSweeney pushed for the appointment.
The incoming Trump administration had wanted [the then-ambassador, Karen] Pierce to stay in post for at least another year… The US officials argued that if Ms Pierce was not going to have her tenure extended then the job should go to MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore, who, a source said pointedly, ‘could actually be trusted with sensitive material.’
However, in an echo of the so-called Dodgy Dossier which paved the way to war in Iraq, sources claim that the objections were watered down [in the final report].
Labour MP Richard Burgon argued, quite convincingly, that one of the main reasons why Mandelson was given the job, despite his sordid past, was as payback for the central role he had played in orchestrating former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s demise. In 2017, Mandelson famously said he was working “every single day’ to bring [Corbyn] down”:
Richard Burgon is absolutely spot. One of the reasons why Peter Mandelson was given the Ambassador job and they turned a blind eye on the Epstein stuff was his roll in bringing down Jeremy Corbyn.
The camera cuts to Jeremy Corbyn, nodding his head in agreement. pic.twitter.com/48hidpe3pg
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) February 4, 2026
In that endeavour, Mandelson and his fellow Blairites were able to count on the unyielding support of the British press as well as Israeli lobby groups like Labour Friends of Israel, which have become almost like a state within a state over the past decade. As Peter Oborne writes in his excellent article, “Vanishingly few politicians have stood outside [the corrupt system that Mandelson embodies]. The most notable was Jeremy Corbyn.”
The Damage Done
Starmer may have issued a public apology, but the damage, it seems, is already done. When Mandelson was appointed, it was already public knowledge that he had stayed at Epstein’s New York townhouse while Epstein served out his prison sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor. That in and of itself should have disqualified him from any public role.
This article came out in the FT over a year before Starmer appointed Mandelson
Starmer knew everything
Another powerful man who failed Epstein’s victims because he didn’t care
Starmer has to go. Now https://t.co/aSYRHCPbLk pic.twitter.com/ICn9OUWsX0
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) February 5, 2026
Also, as Philip Pilkington points out in the tweet below, Mandelson is not just part of the liberal establishment in Britain; he IS the liberal establishment in Britain.
Mandelson is not part of the liberal establishment in Britain.
Mandelson IS the liberal establishment in Britain.
Understand that and you understand why the political system is in full Chernobyl mode. 🇬🇧☢️ https://t.co/w641mIwoLc
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) February 5, 2026
It’s not as if the Starmer government is in any position to weather a political crisis of this magnitude. For months, Starmer has been polling as the most unpopular prime minister on record. As Oborne writes, the party Starmer leads is a husk of its former self:
It is no longer a vehicle of the left. It has broken its relations with the trade unions, becoming a vehicle for the billionaires who today own British (and world) politics.
Ideologically and practically, Starmer’s Labour is closer to Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform than to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party of the 1960s.
Though others bear a share of responsibility, Mandelson can claim with justification that he, more than anyone else, has turned Labour into what it has become today.
Through charm and force of personality, he hypnotised three Labour prime ministers: Blair, Brown and now Starmer. Through them, he turned Labour from the party of the working class into a party of the rich.
This meant forging alliances with the big newspaper groups, especially the Murdoch media, while taking Labour’s traditional supporters for granted. This strategy worked in the short term by securing three victories in the polls for Blair – hence Mandelson’s reputation as a political genius.
Greed and self-interest
Yet over time, Mandelson hollowed out the party, causing millions of voters to defect to Reform or to insurgent groups on the left.
This was a strategy that left Labour infatuated by power, obsessed with money and bereft of values. Hence the fundamental Mandelson paradox: an individual who loved billionaires joined the party of the working class.
Of course, it wasn’t just Mandelson who developed a love of billionaires. His close friend and former colleague/boss Tony Blair was also besotted by the riches of the business and financial elites with whom he liaised as prime minister. When he left politics, Blair was quick to cash in, securing advisory roles for JPM and Swiss-based insurer Zurich International.
For a man who, in his own words, is “not interested in money,” Tony Blair has an incredible knack of attracting it. As I noted in a 2015 piece for WOLF STREET, Blair is a “walking, talking conflict of interest,… the perfect ambassador of a deeply rotten system of national and global governance.”
A recently released audio recording captures disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and ex-Israeli PM Ehud Barak discussing the “gigantic” sums paid to ex-UK PM Tony Blair for his consulting work, and questioning his financial arrangements.
Read more https://t.co/4BatjApsXj pic.twitter.com/u9vQ2IBi5m
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) February 4, 2026
Today, 11 years later, Blair has secured himself a place on Trump’s Board of Peace which, as former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy explains in an interview with Declassified UK, “continues to create new layers of a permissive environment for the continued destruction [of Gaza]”:
What is going on is not rebuilding. What is going on on the ground in Beit Hanoon and Rafa is finishing the job of making sure there is nothing.
What is Donald Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’❓
Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy breaks down the US president’s new initiative and its dystopian plan for the future of Gaza – and possibly even the world👇 pic.twitter.com/hA2H58AEdY
— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) February 3, 2026
It is not clear who paid the $1 billion contribution fee to secure Blair permanent membership of the Trump-led board. There are plenty of contenders, however, including the State of Israel and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is already the largest donor to Blair’s eponymous foundation, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
If it was Blair in Starmer’s place right now, he might find a way of wiggling his way out of the predicament. But Starmer has neither Blair’s eloquence nor his political acumen, as the following clip makes abundantly clear.
It’s a bit rich of Keir Starmer to sanctimoniously lecture about taking “gifts and hospitality” when he received over £100,000 in freebie gifts and hospitality since the 2019 general election, making him the highest recipient of such donations among MPs. pic.twitter.com/jJrYaDncJG
— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) February 5, 2026
Another problem Starmer faces is that his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who helped engineer Corbyn’s downfall as well as Starmer’s electoral triumph, also happens to be a Mandelson protegé. If McSweeney falls, it’s hard to see Starmer surviving for long, especially given his vertiginous disapproval ratings.
But who would replace him?
Labour’s neo-Blairite health secretary, Wes Streeting, was recently poised to face off against Starmer in a leadership contest, but he has also been soiled through close association to Mandelson. Plus, he is about as soulless and characterless as Starmer.
Sept 2025: should Mandelson lose his ambassador role over Epstein files? Streeting: ‘No, I don’t think we should regard everyone as guilty by association’
Streeting Oct 2025: ‘”anti-semitic” doctors will be suspended before tribunal’
Sack Streeting now. pic.twitter.com/CDlOolzx8H
— Dr Rahmeh Aladwan (@doctor_rahmeh) February 5, 2026
Another possible successor was Manchester City Mayor Andy Burnham, but he would need to become a member of parliament before being able to run as Labour leader. And Starmer just blocked him from being able to stand as a candidate for the upcoming parliamentary by-election in Gorton and Denton.
In other words, there is no clear successor. Meanwhile, the party is haemorrhaging support and even fawning presstitutes like Andrew Marr are calling time on Starmer’s premiership.
‘We have entered the final stage of the Starmer premiership.’
@AndrewMarr9 says there’s ‘no way back’ for the Prime Minister. pic.twitter.com/GlQ1hfu0zx
— LBC (@LBC) February 4, 2026
One possible silver lining from Mandelson-gate is that the massive expansion of Palantir’s operations in the UK is finally getting the attention it deserves — and not a moment too soon. As readers may recall, one of Mandelson’s few “accomplishments” during his brief tenure as UK ambassador to the US was to arrange a visit for Starmer to Palantir’s facilities in Washington.
As we noted at the time, the visit immediately sparked accusations of conflicts of interests:
Palantir is a long-standing client of Global Counsel, the lobbying company Mandelson co-founded during his time out of politics. Now that he’s back, Mandelson may have stepped down as chairman of Global Counsel but still retains “significant control,” according to Companies House.
Palantir UK’s chief executive, Louis Mosley, the grandson of Britain’s most famous fascist, Oswald Mosley, who was also in attendance, said Starmer “gets” Palantir — hardly a surprise given Starmer’s authoritarian impulses. From Politics Home:
Louis Mosley, the head of Palantir UK, met Keir Starmer that day. “You could see in his eyes that he gets it,” he tells The House from Palantir’s London office, in his first sit-down interview since joining the tech giant eight years ago. “The ambition is there – the will is there.”
The Prime Minister has described AI as the “defining opportunity” of the age. With economic growth at a standstill, Labour has rested its hopes of becoming an “AI superpower” in Palantir’s hands.
In 2023, the government awarded Palantir a £330m contract to manage NHS data, facing opposition from the British Medical Academy, patient groups and privacy campaigners.
But its rate of adoption since has been startling. Palantir is now being used across the NHS, Ministry of Defence (MoD) the Metropolitan Police and local authorities…
Palantir is not only closely tied to Mandelson but also features prominently in the Epstein files. The leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski is now calling for Palantir’s most controversial contract in the UK, to manage the NHS’s federated data platform, to be rescinded. Digital rights groups are demanding that all details of Mandelson’s ties with Palantir be released.
Palantir has secured 24 distinct contracts with UK public institutions. However, when including contract extensions, amendments, and follow-on agreements, the total rises to over 34 across sectors like defense, healthcare, and local government. The overall value of these deals is… pic.twitter.com/XhEseMGEIH
— EuropeanPowell (@EuropeanPowell) February 5, 2026
That visit led to a £240m ‘strategic partnership between Palantir & MOD. Intel committee needs to examine Mandelson’s potential conflict of interests but also the national security consequences as revealed here in@thenerve_news.
2/https://t.co/Yfx2XZAQF3
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) February 4, 2026
If Mandelson-gate does bring much greater scrutiny to Palantir’s role in the UK’s public sector, that can only be a good thing — especially in light of the Home Secretary’s recent admission that they are developing a digital panopticon, with the assistance of companies like Palantir. Whitney Webb, author of One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, warns that Palantir is essentially the new Jeffrey Epstein:
Whitney Webb:
“They don’t… need blackmail anymore… Palantir… [is] the new Jeffrey Epstein… if they want to blackmail [you]… they… access… your search history… your finances, tweets you’ve liked… you don’t really need Epstein in the Surveillance Era.”
This… https://t.co/Gz7qZ0AJPg pic.twitter.com/VAnIZXuZJt
— Sense Receptor (@SenseReceptor) February 3, 2026
On the topic of who exactly is behind Epstein, the British media (and parts of the US media) are twisting themselves into a pretzel, as they try to make the case that it was Russia — despite the fact that Vladimir Putin was seemingly one of the few national heads of state or government that never met Epstein. Meanwhile, the elephant in the room, the State of Israel, is being completely ignored.
It is without doubt one of the strangest things I have witnessed during my 13-year career covering economic and political affairs. There really isn’t any substance behind the allegations yet media outlets across the West are using expressions like
Imagine being a Russian agent, but needing help obtaining a Russian visa. pic.twitter.com/uTIUGYi7pw
— Olga Bazova (@OlgaBazova) February 5, 2026
