The Morgan McSweeney 'interrogation' was a total farce

Our media and politicians have exposed their abject failures

The dire failure of both politicians and our media over Morgan McSweeney’s Peter Mandelson testimony is absolutely extraordinary.

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff was questioned this week by MPs at the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Select Committee over his role in the appointment of late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s friend as US Ambassador.

It took 77 minutes until the most important details were discussed - and that was bungled.

To be clear, McSweeney stated that he believed Mandelson when he said Epstein was a “passing acquaintance”.

To begin with, reports of Mandelson’s closeness to Epstein go back many years. Three weeks after Epstein died from suicide, the Daily Mail carried an article about what they described as “a Gatsby-esque friendship.”

It stated:

All of which brings us back to Mandelson. He’s known the generous host in these pictures for several years, having previously once visited his Caribbean island for a holiday — when neither Epstein nor any of the girls were there — and, on another occasion, dined with various celebrities at his $77 million New York townhouse, filled with erotic art and lurid photographs of young women.

It’s easy to say - well, it’s the Daily Mail. But, of course, Mandelson could have used legal means to block claims which were untrue. We can now say conclusively that the claims were not true - hence they went unchallenged. Instead, the newspaper reports:

Mandelson, who these days earns a crust in the well-renumerated world of lobbying, is similarly quiet: he declined to answer questions the Mail submitted regarding his dealings with the convicted paedophile.

There are many details about Mandelson’s longstanding friendship with Epstein, such as:

A 2002 report in New York magazine stated that the ‘British Cabinet minister’ had attended an intimate dinner party at Epstein’s New York home alongside a motley collection of guests including Donald Trump, magician David Blaine and Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. It added that food had been cooked by celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito, at a cost to Epstein of $50,000.

Strangely, Mandelson — then a serving MP — did not see fit to declare the expensive hospitality he received in the Commons register of interests — though he did register other events he attended during a 2002 visit to New York.

It carries testimonies, including from the now late Virginia Giuffre:

Like Andrew, Mandelson also met Virginia Roberts, a victim of Epstein who was photographed with the duke and claims to have been paid to have sex with him on three occasions in the early 2000s (allegations Andrew disputes). ‘I never heard of Jeffrey knowing Tony Blair, but he did know Peter Mandelson,’ Roberts told an interviewer in 2011.

‘I remember him [Mandelson] being at the house in New York and I was introduced to him at a dinner party.

‘He and Jeffrey talked business. I assumed they were in business together. I was never asked to give him [Mandelson] a massage.’

The same year, Channel 4’s Dispatches broadcast a documentary which included testimony alleging Peter Mandelson was so close to Epstein that the paedophile called him “Petie”. Which, of course, turned out to be true.

Crucially, in 2023, an internal JP Morgan report from 2019 was filed to a New York court.

It concluded that “Jeffrey Epstein appears to maintain a particularly close relationship with Prince Andrew the Duke of York and Lord Peter Mandelson, a senior member of the British government.”

It confirmed that Epstein called him “Petie”, but also went much further than that. It showed that Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse when the paedophile was serving his prison sentence for soliciting prostitution for a minor. “Peter in Paris with me”, read the subject line of one, with other such alleged meetings featured.

Indeed, Epstein closely described Mandelson’s movements. “Peter just got back from Russia,” read one Epstein email; “Peter will be in London next week,” said another. Mandelson offered advice about JP Morgan’s relationship with the Chinese government, while Epstein discussed the Labour Lord as a useful potential business and government contact.

This was covered by various newspapers at the time, including the Financial Times, headlined ‘Links between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein detailed in JPMorgan report’, which did this follow up article - ‘Jeffrey Epstein claimed to have set up meetings with senior UK ministers’m which said “The report suggests Epstein and Mandelson spoke and met “on a number of occasions”.

It is clear from the different reports that the Labour leadership office was repeatedly asked about the operation.

The Telegraph even ran a story under the headline:

‘Sir Keir Starmer won’t freeze out Mandelson over Epstein friendship’. The story stated that “the Telegraph understands” that Starmer would continue to receive advice from Mandelson “despite accusations he maintained a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.” To pull back the curtain: “understands” in this context means “we spoke to Starmer’s advisors”.

In January 2024, the Financial Times’ Jim Pickard asked Starmer whether Mandelson had questions to answer over staying at Epstein’s townhouse.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” the then-Opposition Leader said. But knowing what this journalist knew was more than sufficient. Like McSweeney, Starmer claims to have been deceived by Mandelson about the depth of friendship with Epstein. But how is that tenable given the public evidence at the time?

Extraordinarily, the JP Morgan report evidence was only presented to McSweeney 77 minutes into his interrogation, by the Labour MP Abtisam Mohamed. “I can’t recall reading it, no,” McSweeney said, “but I do recall thinking it was a problem and we need to ask some follow-up questions.” What were these follow-up questions? He wasn’t clear and the panel didn’t probe him. McSweeney did refer to the questions he put to Mandelson about the Epstein relationship in 2024 and said the problem was “the nature of [Mandelson’s] answers and the lack of honesty”. But, astonishingly, he wasn’t properly challenged on what he meant by this, since it appeared to contradict his earlier insistence that “I assumed wrongly he was telling the truth”. (“Sorry, I might have mumbled my words,” he said when the chair asked him about the inconsistency.)

Was Mandelson asked if Epstein was lying about repeatedly meeting him, or offering business advice? McSweeney wasn’t asked. After all, he could have been asked, there are only two possibilities. The emails were inventing times that Epstein spent with Mandelson, and his knowledge of Mandelson’s movements - or Mandelson and Epstein had a close friendship.

Despite the failure to properly hold him to account here, the questions by Abtisam Mohamed were the most important element of the entire testimony, as noted by Politico’s Playbook:

But that was literally the only coverage of Mohamed’s questions in the entire British media. Why?

The utter failure was further underscored when Labour’s Fleur Anderson asked about reports of Mandelson hosting monthly dinners. She got this wrong: it was reported by The Guardian that Lord Liddle hosted a “Sunday supper club” whose regular attendees included McSweeney, Mandelson, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Her basic lack of preparation enabled McSweeney to evade answering a key question about his closeness to Mandelson: he referred to a handful of meetings with the disgraced Labour dignitary at his home and restaurants.

If the Labour leadership were not sufficiently acquainted with the public details of Mandelson’s association with Epstein, then they are beyond incompetent. Yet this is the same leadership which proved itself remarkably adept at compiling dossiers to block left-wing parliamentary candidates over Twitter likes. That included economist Faiza Shaheen, deselected on the eve of the general election over liking a tweet about a Daily Show video sketch whose text called out the Israel lobby. Apparently, this obsessive commitment to obscure details does not extend to Britain’s most senior Ambassador.

So many other questions went unanswered by our elected representatives. McSweeney suggested Mandelson would not have been appointed if Trump wasn’t re-elected. This sought to cement the narrative that he was chosen because his Machiavellian traits would endear him to a far-right demagogue. Yet Mandelson had previously described Trump as “a danger to the world” and “little short of a white nationalist and a racist.” Why wasn’t he asked why this would endear Mandelson to Trump’s team - which in any case it did not? As Trump’s campaign co-manager tweeted: “This UK govt is special replace a professional universally respected Ambo with an absolute moron - he should stay home! SAD!”

What a farce. There is more than enough evidence that the Labour leadership appointed an ill-suited man with no diplomatic experience as US Ambassador, despite compelling public evidence he was close to a convicted paedophile, for factional reasons. Mandelson, protested McSweeney, was his “confidante” rather than his “mentor”. Perhaps we would know exactly what “confidante” means in practice if McSweeney had not allegedly had his work phone stolen - including correspondence with Mandelson that were not backed up - by what he says was “a black guy” on a bike.