Mandelson is the perfect showman for our Hermit Kingdom

“One cannot expect the fattened calf to rejoice in the return of the prodigal son.” Thus spoke Saki, the Edwardian writer of short stories, his words ringing in my mind as I watched the Baron Foy, Peter Mandelson, grimace and pupate in a bizarre housewarming video for the new American hosts to whom he shall represent Great Britain as ambassador. I’ve always counted sympathy for villains among my many virtues; in this case, I wasn’t sure which of us was supposed to be the fattened calf, Peter Mandelson, or the British public. 

An impartial survey of Peter Mandelson’s career divulges scant reasons for this appointment. Mandelson is not a professional diplomat (in keeping with the Starmer ministry’s populist distrust of the civil service). Indeed, I’d be surprised to discover he spoke a single foreign tongue. The only qualification he seemed to have for his first few jobs, doing something Communist in the world of student politics and trade unionism, was a moustache. He was one of several men to simultaneously claim credit for Tony Blair’s 1997 election victory, having led four previous Labour campaigns to respectable defeats on his own merits. Nobody is ever sacked for anything in Britain, and to be sacked from the government in which Keith Vaz served for twelve years is tribute to a pork-barrel habitat that gets you banned from most Mosques. 

Of course, this was only the public side of Mandelson’s career. Behind the dodgy loans and bogus audits which the tabloid press so cruelly decided to focus on, there were shady goings-on about which they decided to say nothing at all: such as his longtime friendship with Jeffrey Edward Epstein. Mandelson has since (last week) said he “regrets” the “hurt” caused by Epstein to so many women, before telling his impertinent interviewer to “Fuck off”, in the philosophic vocabulary we have come to expect from the grown-ups in the room. Unfortunately, the “hurt” caused by Epstein to his victims was public knowledge in 2008 when the state of Florida convicted him of child prostitution; this did not prevent a series of, surely remorseful, visits by Mandelson to his old pal between 2009 and 2012. 

Yet, come on, if we banished everyone who had ever shaken hands with Epstein, that cynosure of the Open Society, we’d have nobody left to run the country (and, then where would we be?). Mandelson’s choice of boon companions extends to more conventional objects of establishment censure: the Russian oligarchs and Chinese Communist Party. Like so many of our ruling class, Mandelson has ascended to the doggy-heaven of politics to run a “global consultancy”; the clients of this firm include CCP-outfits linked to spy Yang Tengbo on account of whose friendship the Teflon Prince landed in hot water last month. 

Mandelson’s links with Oleg Deripaska are well known but his firm’s services to the Russian political-commercial elite prove continually useful, with Uber using his offices to negotiate Russian expansion less than ten years ago. Quite why exactly a basically reputable organisation like the CCP, or the innocent businessmen of the Russian Federation, felt the need to hire Peter Mandelson to burnish their credentials is beyond us. If anything, Xi Jinping should be the one apologising. 

The British commentariat has, for many years now, pretended to ignore the spirit of free-thinking and interrogation of authority sweeping Europe and America. There is nothing wrong with that, as a strategy for self-preservation. However, when one pursues a spirit of splendid isolation from the progressive world, we shall keep beating our children in schools — thank you very much, you must at least remain aware of how the rest of the world perceives you. Reactionaries can afford to become outmoded provided they never become unfashionable. Therein lies the difference between eccentricity and waving the Frosty Jack’s, hurling obscenities in a dirty dressing-gown, at the neighbour’s cat, in the early hours of the morning. 

Coverage has suggested the frosty welcome in D.C which Mandelson richly deserves is explainable by ideological differences between himself and the Trump campaign. The reality is, even a Democrat administration would be pressured to cut Britain from the important conversations if Mandelson was involved. The Americans ringing the alarm about Mandelson aren’t political allies of Donald Trump but the very much Trump-sceptical FBI. Americans don’t dislike Mandelson because he’s “a wokey-cokey liberal”, they object to him on the same grounds we’d object to a random Tuvan gangster being appointed to the Court of St. James. After the crossparty fallout of the Epstein affair and heated media investigations of Hunter Biden’s alleged links to Ukraine, Diane Feinstein’s links to China and Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russia (since disproven), the two things anyone who matters in Washington wants to stay clear of are dodgy lobbyists and friends of Jeffrey E. 

Surely, even Sir Keir Starmer, the man who compared A.I to a fork, has the brains to see this was what he’d definitely call “an own-goal”?

That the appointment of Mandelson was even taken seriously in Whitehall shows a monumental tone-deafness to the modern political culture of the USA. It is only possible in an Establishment which has come to believe it must deal abroad in the lies it tells at home — that someone like Peter Mandelson is just part of the furniture, “impressive” in his own way. This will have serious consequences for Britain even the political centre cannot ignore. Sensitive information will be withheld, invitations will be left unsent and names copied out of emails. Britain will get a backseat to the end of the War in Ukraine, despite having sent hugely expensive equipment to that cause, and the Ukrainians will be worse for it. I read today that millions of Gazans may come to Britain due to the ECHR: exactly the sort of thing which ought to be remedied by a British voice in the peace process, yet who is going to share information on those talks to a British ambassador perceived as willing to sell it on to the highest bidder? 

Surely, even Sir Keir Starmer, the man who compared A.I to a fork, has the brains to see this was what he’d definitely call “an own-goal”? If it is just a matter of the petty corruption we’ve come to know and love from this government, why not send Mandelson to a place where he’d really enjoy himself like Morocco or the Philippines? The Special Relationship isn’t all it is cracked up to be but the answer is a divorce, not domestic abuse.