Peter Mandelson

Peter Mandelson (born October 21, 1953, London, England) is a British politician, who was a leading adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a member of the British House of Commons (1992–2004), and business secretary (2008–10) under Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He briefly served as the British ambassador to the United States (February–September 2025) under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but he was sacked over links to American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

• The Epstein Files Fallout: The Firings, Resignations, and Arrests

Early life and entry into politics

The grandson of Herbert Morrison, deputy prime minister during the Labour Party government of 1945–51, Mandelson was interested in politics from a young age. A brief flirtation with communism ended while he was a student at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and he became a member of the Labour Party. After receiving his degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, he joined the staff of the Trades Union Congress. In 1979 Mandelson, by then a committed Labour Party moderate, was elected to Lambeth borough council in South London, but he resigned in 1982, disillusioned with the borough’s left-wing leadership.

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Epstein Files Fallout: The Resignations, Firings, and Arrests: Peter Mandelson

That same year Mandelson became a producer of a weekly television political program, Weekend World, a vantage point that sharpened his view of Labour’s defects and the party’s need to modernize its politics and appeal. In 1985 Mandelson was appointed Labour’s director of communications by party leader Neil Kinnock. He promoted Kinnock’s modernization agenda and ensured high media profiles for some of Labour’s rising stars, then in their 30s, such as Blair and Brown.

Role in the Blair and Brown cabinets

In 1992 Mandelson was elected Labour MP for Hartlepool, a coastal town in northeastern England. In 1997, following Labour’s return to government and Blair’s election as prime minister, Mandelson became a middle-ranking minister. A year later he was promoted to the cabinet as trade and industry secretary, but he resigned in December 1998 following the disclosure that he had borrowed money from a fellow minister to buy a house and had not officially declared the fact. By October 1999, however, Blair felt that Mandelson had paid an adequate price for his mistake and returned him to the cabinet as Northern Ireland secretary. A second resignation came in January 2001, after allegations surfaced that he had acted improperly over the issuing of British passports to two wealthy Indian businessmen.

A subsequent inquiry exonerated Mandelson, but he accepted that he was never likely to be given a third chance to join Blair’s cabinet. Nevertheless, he remained a close ally of Blair’s, especially in arguing that Britain should work more closely with the rest of the EU member countries. In 2004 Mandelson was appointed Britain’s member of the EU Commission and given the EU trade portfolio. The appointment was a logical way of both pursuing a pro-European strategy and bringing Mandelson’s troubled domestic political career to an end.

In 2008, however, Mandelson left his EU post after Brown named him business secretary, thereby returning him to the cabinet. Because he had resigned from the House of Commons in 2004, Mandelson was made a peer in the House of Lords in order to join the government. He lost his cabinet position when Labour was ousted from office in May 2010. Several months later Mandelson published The Third Man, a memoir that garnered much publicity for its candid account of the Labour Party.

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Ambassador to the U.S. and the Epstein files

In December 2024 Starmer appointed Mandelson to serve as ambassador to the United States, and he assumed that post in February 2025. The choice of Mandelson surprised some, as he had previously described U.S. Pres. Donald Trump as “a bully” who was “reckless and a danger to the world.” After his appointment, Mandelson publicly disavowed these statements, claiming that they were “ill-judged and wrong.”

In September 2025 the U.S. Congress released a tranche of documents from the “Epstein files,” a collection of correspondence and other materials gathered during the two criminal investigations of American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was accused of serial sex trafficking of women and girls and he took his own life while in police custody in 2019. Epstein’s extensive ties to the rich and powerful meant that questions about who knew about the extent of his crimes lingered long after his death. While it was known at the time of his appointment that Mandelson had associated with Epstein, the Epstein files brought to light a much closer relationship, with Mandelson referring to Epstein as his “best pal.” Within days of that revelation, Mandelson was sacked and replaced as ambassador on an interim basis by career diplomat James Roscoe.

On January 30, 2026, the U.S. Justice Department released a second batch of documents from the Epstein files, and these were even more damaging to Mandelson than the first. Emails suggested that, during Mandelson’s tenure as business secretary, he had revealed internal government information to Epstein. This included giving Epstein advance notice of the implementation of a massive bailout package at the peak of the euro-zone debt crisis. Other emails seemed to indicate that Mandelson had received payments from Epstein totalling $75,000 in 2003–04, and that he had lobbied to amend a proposed law on bonuses to financial executives on Epstein’s behalf.

On February 1, Mandelson resigned from the Labour Party in the wake of these revelations, and he faced increasing pressure to relinquish his peerage and his seat in the House of Lords. He resigned from the House of Lords on February 4, as Scotland Yard announced the opening of a criminal investigation of Mandelson for “misconduct in public office offences.” Mandelson was arrested on February 23, and search warrants were carried out at two properties connected to him.